Yesterday we made the trek to Maine for a joint birthday party for Nephew #3 and Nephew #4. #3 turned 3 and #4 turned 2. Whew. I’m going to need an Excel spreadsheet once my brother’s fiance has Nephew #5, which would be #1 for him. Calling him #5 makes him sound like he’s tacked on to the end of my sister’s crew, and trust me when I tell you she doesn’t want a bigger crew.

So anyway…we got there a little early. First, because it’s a 4-hour round trip for us, we like to visit awhile. Second, my husband did some master-electrician-type stuff, including listening to a smoke detector beep, identifying the doorbell box and pondering where the submarine sonar ping had come from. It was around that time The Cake came into play. It was time to write “Happy Birthday #3 and #4” on top. My sister started it off, with one of those spray cans with a nozzle you push sideways—like a whipped cream can, only with blue icing-ink. She got the “H” done before the can was handed off to me with mutterings about my being a writer.

I lasted through “appy”. By the time you depress the damn nozzle hard enough to make the icing come out, your finger’s shaking and it twitches and a big blob of blue emerges. It was torture. And my husband—clearly finished with the intense, sweat-inducing job of opening the battery drawer of a smoke detector—had nothing better to do than heckle me. OMG, the pressure! When the temptation to shove the nozzle up my husband’s left nostril and depress grew too strong, I was forced to concede defeat.

And I’m going to be in so much trouble if #’s 1-4 say “Mommy, can have some more of that :censor: :censor: :censor: :censor: cake?”

My sister gave it another go, managing a slightly large “Bi”. My brother-in-law, whose contributions to the party preparations to that point seemed to consist of moving the vacuum two feet to the left and mopping his brow, then stepped in.

It took him like 30 seconds, and it was in cursive, too. The bastard. But the important thing was that the cake got done and I didn’t shove either his or my husband’s face in it. I might only be able to manage “appy” on a cake, but I do have some impulse control.

But fun was had by all, and #3 was successfully initiated into a Thomas the Tank Engine obsession that will drain my brother-in-law of money and sanity until he’s very, very sorry he ever showed me up with a pen (even if it wrote in blue icing). :villain:

(At some point while I was muttering and scraping blobs off the cake with a steak knife, my sister said “You’re going to blog about this tomorrow, aren’t you?” Yes. Yes, I am.)