Michael's birthday today

We are making such good friends here but because of Michael's unpredictable schedule, I didn't feel I could invite people over tonight. I get very nostalgic at birthdays because we used to have so much fun en famille. It will be tough this year with just the two of us. I don't even remember his birthday last year. I'm assuming we were apart which was even lonelier than this will be.

In our home, you always get to pick what you have for dinner and what cake or dessert you want. Remembering what all the kids used to ask for makes me miss them. NS may remember that putting candles in lemon meringue pie is very difficult. MF's was my favorite dinner to make because she wanted what I like best, fried chicken with rice and cream gravy.

But Michael's birthday always keeps me busy. He's never able to narrow his choices for what he wants for dinner so I make suggestions. The suggestion he took this year is spaghetti with sweet Italian sausage. But the cake is a no-brainer, it's the white cake with his mother's fudge icing recipe. In an act of great nobleness this year, he offered to have something else since I'm having trouble standing. But I will just have to sit on a stool or something since I only make it once a year. Here is why. His mother wasn't the best cook in the world, but she was a wonderful baker and could get that fudge icing right every single time. I either have puddles of icing on the floor because the fudge didn't set up or a big clump of fudge lying on the top of the cake because it got too hard before I could spread it. He never seems to mind that I seem incapable of doing this recipe and loves it in all its permutations. I will definitely post a picture of the cake so that everyone can laugh at me.

I have to share this in case I forget. My physical therapist told me something very funny today. We were talking about Texas and I told him how much I missed the sunrises and sunsets. He said he had had a client from Kansas who complained, "You have no sky here!" He couldn't understand it. When he looked up outside, he saw sky. But I totally know what she meant. You only see a little piece of sky at a time and no horizons at all!