so much special all at once

This is a celebration cake. It's divided into several celebrations that I didn't even realise I was celebrating (the recipe yields 2, and I could have halved it...).

It's this girl's birthday. She is mucho special, for reasons I know in secret and for the ones she will happily tell you. Here is her cake, to be shared among an office full of people who I know are lovely but simply couldn't be with today:



It's also another girl's birthday. She is Lauren and if she has any web presences I don't know about them yet. But I do know that she is very special in some circles whose opinions I tend to respect, and that makes me feel like we are connected in this web of special-ity that is constantly being built up around us, ladies that we are in this land of the foreign and the familiar. Here is her cake, bearing her initial:



Tonight is also the night where Penguin Pete makes so many musics in a room. I think it will be beautiful. I have seen him before and he is doing some tiny squeal boom box rumpus room comfort sounds. They are special too. This is Penguin Pete making some sounds:



This is his cake:



So much love goes directly from my bursting heart to Bobby and Lauren and Pete. Directly.

And so that's the story of how one little cake celebrated so many things on this day of common excesses, which happened to be a day I randomly decided not to go to the grindstone of my wagework and decided to live instead.

p.s. This is Lauren's cake and Pete's cake looking like Ls and Ps, which is what you get in Australia when you drive somewhere with very little experience.