Happy Birthday, Love

Poet's Coroner

Mr. Peperium

..

Yes, dear readers, it's that time of year again. When I and the little Peperatzzi climb in the ancestral Jeep and head off to the nearest high-end mall to collect the rich gifts that will be flung at the feet of Mrs. P. For once again it is her birthday.

This year's program was somewhat complicated by the fact that, being new to the area, we had no idea where such gifts were to be collected. Never fear. Sir Basil's good Countess steered us in the right direction and, despite a closed highway or three, we won through to an emporium so small and so select that it actually made me pine for those extravagant, three-tiered affairs with acres of parking and seven food courts which are now all in the process of doing the brother-can-you-spare-a-dime routine back up north.

But, of course, this is all a side issue Yes, presents were opened this morning by the fireside, but the real business starts tonight. RKFDIL and Little Bertie will help me whip up the gooiest, chunkiest brownie mix Betty or Duncan can provide (the "from scratch" posts, you'll notice, are all penned by Mrs. P). Once sufficiently cooled--I say sufficiently, because they still need to be warm for the next step in the process to work--we top each slab of brownie with a generous scoop of peppermint stick ice cream that will proceed to melt ever-so-slightly, mingling with the gooey crumbs along the edges of our plates. Then we all do our level best to hide this august assemblage under a top coating a chocolate sauce. This being the sort of thing I used to do for Mrs. P in our old pre-kids/renting-town-house-days, I thought it was a good time to revive the old tradition. Thanks to the recent unpleasantness of Wall Street we have even less money now than we did back then and once again we find ourselves renting. Also, the little Peperatzzi will get a kick out of making the brownies.

You've probably figured out by now that the illustration up top has nothing to do with the subject of this post beyond the happy co-incidence of a word. Well, if you've hung out here long enough you should know that we love indirection. While searching for an image of a sundae that bore some sort of resemblance to what we are planning on tonight, all I could find were nouvelle cuisine monstrosities by Rachel Ray and Paula Dean, all looking more like modern public sculptures than anything you could square your elbows at. So typing plain old "brownie" into the search field, this is what I got.

Beyond the fact that after our sundaes we're all going to strongly resemble this little chap, the picture works somehow. It works in the same oddball, off-beat, conservative-yet-Bohemian way that Mrs. P and I work together. This year has been, as Mark Twain might put it, one damn thing after another, Bun. And the wildest thing is, just like the aftermath of every other hair-bleaching crisis we've been through together, we've ended up in a better place. I'm not saying that at times in the last eight months I haven't thought of toddling off and ending it all in the village pond. But two things always sustained me. First, our village didn't have a pond. And second of all, I knew I'd miss you too much. Happy birthday, Love.

...

...

Comments

[Christine]

Bon anniversaire, Madame P!

[MCNS]

Happy Birthday, Mrs P!

Nicely put, Mr P!

Lots more Brownies here:

http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/brownies/The_Band.html

Sir Basil appears to be among them.

[Old Dominion Tory]

Happy Birthday, Mrs. Peperium!
Sounds dessert time at the Peperium house this evening will be a fine one, indeed.
One question, however: seeing as you now live by Sir Basil and the Countess are presents really necessary?

[Crackie]

Happy Birthday!!
I hope you always choose pond-free villages, because I think we are all in for more hair-bleaching.

[Dewey From Detroit]

Happy Birthday Mrs. P, from MOTUS and the two-Deweys. Hot fudge peppermint ice cream brownie cake! You've soooo got yourself a winner.

[Mrs. Peperium]

Thank you everyone.

Crackie -that cracked me up. ODT, yes, even more presents in fact...