Birthdays and other events, like cucumber rallys

My husband suggested I take the patio umbrella out to the street behind our house and set up a stand to sell cucumbers. I told him that probably wasn't going to happen. But we are seriously overrun. The neighbors have cukes, my critique group has cukes; my daughter takes 'em to work, my hubby takes 'em to work--and still they multiply. Two mounds, that's all we planted, but yikes!

I mentioned we were having a birthday party. Our family has grown so much that it's a rare month that doesn't find us gathering for birthdays at least a couple of times. I love to get creative and serve brunch, with breakfast casseroles, etc.. My daughter LeighAnn and I occasionally cook up Mexican Day or Soup Day. But of course, with such a large gathering, we often have the old standbys, grilled burgers and dogs, tastees, chili, and good old ham and turkey on the holidays.

I don't know how I always get the same jobs at these events--but I'm trying to shake off the stereotype. My son-in-law Brad claims he's going to have me buried with an ice cream scoop in my folded hands, just so I'll look normal. I bought him one for Christmas one year--one just like mine, a heavy duty industrial strength flat scooper--but of course I am the one who wields it at their house. Last birthday I hid until the scooping was underway.

While I'm on the subject of birthdays--when we moved I organized photos into albums until my brain went numb and I stashed the rest back into boxes where they will await the next millennium.

Birthday cakes. Remember how exciting those first birthday cakes were? You couldn't get enough pictures of your baby with that first taste and frosting up his nose. Wasn't that darling? Then the second, third, and fourth birthdays, etc., and then the second third and fourth kid--yes I have four and I lived to tell.

And then the grandchildren start arriving--or so they say.

Here is my pledge: I will never, as long as I draw breath, take another picture of a birthday cake. I mean how many cake pictures does a person need? And you know, one shot was never enough, you had to take two in case the first one blurred or something, heaven forbid, and you wouldn't be able to see Strawberry Shortcake or Spiderman clearly once he was a sweet memory in someone's tummy.

You know what I'm talking about. Just you try sorting 20 or 30 years of photos and try to get sentimental about a cake that was only so so in 1983.

And darned if I'm not the one who gets stuck opening all those kids' toys that have been hermetically sealed and wired and clamped. Sometimes you need a screwdriver! I'm telling you, Santa could catapult those boxes out of his sleigh onto our concrete driveways and Barbie wouldn't have a hair out of place.

The packaging is three times the size of the toy inside. It takes half a roll of wrapping paper to go around this box, and once you get the twisties unwrapped and the taped peeled off and the plastic removed, you have a little pile of Power Rangers and half a dozen bags of trash. And---

ever lost a minuscule part and had to search through all those bags because you might have accidentally thrown it away? heh heh It's always with Colonel Mustard in the sofa cushion.

Anyone have a cucumber muffin recipe?