Two weeks ago, I threw my forty-first birthday party.
Invitation by A and Rachel.
Party cookies
I really wanted to make fortune cookies from scratch, and the rest of the party kind of fell out from that. Over a decade ago on a now-defunct blog, I had seen someone do this for a New Year’s Eve party, and it has rolled around in my head ever since.
Hannah and I used this recipe, which turned out to be more forgiving than I expected. You do have to limit yourself to batches of about three at a time, but with one extra person you can double that to six, and we got through ~35 cookies pretty quickly this way. Putting the fortunes in is easy.
I want to make these again, maybe collaboratively, where everyone is asked to bring a fortune, we make the cookies all together, and send everyone home with a bit of enchanted entropy.
Atlas helped make the batter, and he was very annoyed that we had to wait to eat the “party cookies”, which he now talks about every few days. (YOU WANT TO EAT PARTY COOKIES AND CINNAMON ROLLS, he tells me.)
Fortunes
I wrote them myself. I like the creepy ones the most.
- What are you avoiding?
- What you’re looking for is —OH MY GOD IT’S RIGHT BEHIND YOU
- Your disgust is holding you back
- A lifetime of happiness lies ahead of you (in bed)
- What painful experience do you think everyone should have?
- You need to change your mind about something important
- You will soon question a decision you made five minutes before
- That prophecy about you was technically correct
- Be vaguely afraid
- If you see something suspicious, say something suspicious
- If you see something, say nothing
- You were right to be suspicious
- You will understand too late
- By the time you see it, it won’t have been the first sign
- What are you not looking at?
- You keep changing the subject
- Do you actually believe that explanation?
- You didn’t understand the first message and you won’t understand this one either
- Trapped in joke factory, send fortune cookies
- The self is less coherent than it feels; it’s freeing to acknowledge this
- There is nothing new under the sun, but there’s a chance at novelty on the other side of it
- Don’t worry about that blank spot in your vision, if you even notice it
- Be careful of what you eat
- A stranger will enter your life; I suggest you lock your doors
- Future historians will argue about the date of your birth
- You don’t actually need another sign
- That thing you’re so sure of — are you?
- It was only funny the first time
Divination
We got a tarot card reader to come for a couple of hours. These were my cards. My interpretation is kept secret but you are free to draw your own conclusions.
Food
Home-made char-siu pork, rice, Thai noodles and peanut sauce (which Atlas called “peanut butter spaghetti”), loads of frozen apps, a mai tai from Noah and a lion’s tail from Josiah. A huge feast. I made about 6.5lbs of pork and I am pleased to report that we ate every last bite of it.