birthday girls!

the same week i worked on Brenda’s ice cream, i also did a big platter for Shannon, another friend from back-in-the-day.  Shannon was a fellow She-Ra fan, the take-no-crap middle kid between 2 sisters, and the daughter of a mom who called BS and won against a grinch of a vice principal’s no-snow rule that earned 2nd graders Shannon and me an hour of solitary. in jr high i remember her more in the hairsprayed crowd (those bangs!! remember??) and i drifted to the weird girls who went on to shave parts of their heads. i didn’t, but i did have every hair color. 

anyway, before we all went to different high schools and moved away, Shannon lived next door to Paul, who i remember as an energetic, affectionate boy who wrote me love letters when i was 7. i spurned him, only because that’s what girls did on tv.  he gave me a polished rock.  i think i still have it, but it seems smaller every time i find it.  {hey Paul!}  Shannon’s mom and Paul’s mom Jennifer go way back, and Shannon thought Simeren’s hula girls were too cute, and she was delightfully specific about what she wanted for Jennifer's surprise 60th birthday party: little ladies, with shoulder length black hair, wearing her signature shirt, and bell bottoms, and why not bare feet for a flower child look, and daisies like on the invitations, and hearts somewhere for her odds-beating longevity after a long ago heart operation, and her age. [i actually encourage bridezillism, the condition of wanting something as though one’s emotional stability depends on its presense and perfection. no one really goes that nuts, or even close, but it really wrings the details out of someone’s requirements.]

i used the gingerbread girl shape like with the hula girls, but tried to angle the little ladies to look as though they were walking, then turned to their right to strike a little arm pose mid-stride. And those gerber daisy petals were kind of a pain, but they turned out nice and …petally.  and then i dropped them off—after all these years, Shannon and i live about 8 minutes apart. J  thanks lady, and i’ll see you around town!