Sweet Sixteen

The best laid plans, you know? We started out planning a surprise party for Em. Not my idea, the credit for it goes to the artist formerly known as Frau Lobster.

It was the first time we'd planned a birthday party jointly since our divorce. The last one was her tenth, when we were still freshly separated.

But the cat got out of the bag, and one thing and another we ended up having a surprise party for the un-surprised Em that was mostly friends and an even less surprising family party the next day where nobody had to even pretend they weren't in on it.

Beforehand, Corinna thought it would work better to keep it just one party. More people, more fun, right? After, I started to think that maybe it would have been better that way, too, but by then she'd come around to see it was probably better to split up the chaos.

Em seemed fine with it either way.

I'm not sure why it wouldn't seem natural that my ex-wife and I would plan and attend the same party. Both my parents were there, and they've been divorced for going on thirty years.

The cake was enormous. I was still moving my cookware and couldn't find my cake pans. Wal-Mart had some spring form pans that were supposedly non-stick. They were super cheap, so I guess I have myself to blame that of course the cakes stuck. I'll use a visible layer of butter next time I use these pans.

Anyway, since we were planning on a larger number of guests, I doubled the batch and used all three pans. The resulting cake was a monstrosity so huge I cut it in thin wedges and then most folks only wanted a half a wedge.

The frosting alone took three pounds of cream cheese and two sticks of butter.

I made Em some notebooks as presents.