As birthdays go, this year (08/08) mine was… well… there’s no other word for it…. it was crap. Oh wait, that’s right! I’m supposed to be grateful I’ve made it through another year. At fifty-something, it starts to get a tad more precarious as each year passes.

As this year goes, it’s been a pretty horrid one, culminating in an even more extremely blah birthday.

Yes, I had some calls from my wonderful friends who’ve been around me for 20 and 30 years. It’s always a delight that they remember. Most of them are 10 hours drive away. If I could afford to fly them all up and we could go out and do daft birthday things.

It was my 50th when we were all last together. A riot of a party with a Middle Eastern theme and I did a beached-whale-belly-dance in full (but modest) costume! It was more than fun and fabulous. It all went a bit downhill from there. I miss them but I know I could never live back in Sydney. Too busy, to crazy, too everything for me.

Of my other close friends, 1 died early this year and 3 more are overseas with only 1 returning later this week, 1 over there for a few years and 1 coming to visit for 3 months, but nowhere near me.

Birthdays have morphed into days that I take stock. The more psychologically challenging stock-taking is still being mulled over.

Of the more mundane stuff…  What fashion item, shoes or makeup do I now need to throw in the bin because it has ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ written all over it? When do I have to get my hair cut short because I’m over 50? When do I have to go to bed at 10pm, have an afternoon nap, and have a fibre-filled breakfast?

When will I accept that the wrinkles and sags are here to stay and that I’ll probably never fit into the kind of fabulous clothing my 21 year old daughter wears, let alone look ok in it? (Oh, how shallow! Right?)

As I write this, I’m channel surfing and happened to land on the Fashion Channel. It always makes me want to throw up or cry. Wow those girls look fantastic! I was probably never that reed-thin or that gorgeous, but 20 years and more ago, I could certainly wear almost anything out of my mother’s clothing boutiques and get away with it.

Now count me in with weight-gaining insulin, post menopausal pounds and a penchant for good food and you get beached-whale – almost. Not quite in the BMI obese category but hovering and at times, falling in.

These days, I can’t wear heels (sore feet and lack of balance), and designer clothing is made in one size either way of reed-thin and often priced out of my league, so that’s out too. In fact, this past week, I’ve been hobbling around with a fractured toe on my left foot (the middle one), wondering why I still don’t have a car with automatic transmission (because they’re always $2,000 more than I can afford) or special shoes for broken toes.

But there was one good thing amongst a few others today – cake!

I was going to makeanother Persian Love Cake, but yesterday, time got away from me. Here’s the one I made last year for my husband’s birthday.

Theoretically, if you have insulin, you can eat whatever you want. On the other hand, theoretically, if you have diabetes, if you keep the carbs down, you can control the diabetes much more easily and blood glucose spikes can be reduced. Both theories are true. I like a combination of the two.

If your diabetes is out of control, lower the carb intake to start with. It goes a long way to help the control.

On birthdays, all that flies out the window.

I have cake-eating with insulin-taking down to a fine art. And while a store-brought piece of cake doesn’t come with carb instructions, I’m pretty good a guestimating after the first bite.

So, tonight my fancy was taken by what was labelled as a Jaffa Chocolate Cake. Yes indeed – carbs multiplied by carbs!

The first bite was heaven. I could taste the dark chocolate, orange and the surprise of coconut. It was unexpectedly moist, with a measurable layer of thick chocolate ganache on top.  As cakes go, this one took the cake!

With an insulin pump, if you get the carb-guestimate right, it’s so much easier than trying to manage a fat-laden (read: long-absorbing), high carb slice of heaven with injections, although certainly it can be done.

A combo bolus over 2.5 hours did it. At 4 hours post ingestion, I was a tad high at 9.0 mmo/l (162 mg/dl), but all things considered and without an exact carb amount per slice, I think I did ok. A quick correction bolus and I was done.

Maybe it wasn’t such a bad birthday after all! Did the cake make up for the absence of close friends? Um.. I think the right answer is ‘no’, but my honest answer is… kinda… yeah it did, for a few scrumptious chewing and tasting minutes!