Every so often, I will think a thought or observe something truly insane, and will make a mental note to myself that when I actually have a second, I will return to the land of bloggers. Well, in the meantime, here is a short bite-sized recap of what has been going on chez Sorelle.

1. Two weeks ago, my daughter turned four, and all I can say is that if this is her fourth birthday, I can't begin to imagine what her wedding is going to be like. She has been preparing for her birthday for months, and took dessert cookbooks to bed with her in case she had a last-minute change of heart.

The festivities were a week-long affair, resembling Sheva Berachot in length (and almost expense!), beginning with a party in gan on the actual day of her birthday with a Cinderella and Eliana masterpiece for a cake. Thanks to the wonders of technology, and the ability to print out images onto sugar paper, Eliana did end up going to the ball! Eliana dressed up as a princess for Purim, so Josh, the Internet genius, put the image of Eliana and put it next to Cinderella, and voila, we had it printed out on top of sugar paper, and placed it on top of the frosting. Ladies and gentlemen, for your viewing pleasure, I present Cake # 1.

Yes, we did win the Cool Parents popularity award amongst 26 very sugar-happy four-year-olds.

For Shabbat, we had over my husband's cousin, who Eliana is in love with, and for lunch two of Eliana's close friends and their families, and we gobbled up the remains of the Cinderella cake. A good time was had by all. We bought Eliana for her birthday a trampoline; the idea being that she will be able to channel her considerable amount of energy in a positive way. The jury is still out. At the moment, her energy seems to be more directed at fighting with Tzofi over it.

Then, her birthday celebrations culminated with a private party at home. I was in two minds about whether or not to have a party at home - it seemed like it was encouraging cliquey behavior by asking her to select 10 of her best friends. But since many of her friends had had parties at home, I could hardly NOT give her a party. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, and all that. Anyway, the exclusivity element didn't turn out to be an issue in the end. Eliana decided that in addition to the invites I had already handed out, she would randomly invite some other friends in addition, so our initial plan of having a nice SMALL party morphed into something quite different altogether. It was hectic. Very hectic. But we pulled it off. We had a pitta pizza party, where the kids made their own personal pizzas. We put out pittot and various different toppings, and it was a big hit. Josh was also phenomenal. I was standing wide-mouthed and passive in horror at the sight of 16 four year olds in my living room, but Josh just held it together, and took the reins. So for the second birthday cake, Eliana requested... a rubber duck. Every night in the bath, she asked for a rubber duck, so a rubber duck it was. Not bad, eh?

Thankfully, the celebrations are behind us now. I now see why birthdays only come once a year, thank goodness. You need the other 364 days to recover.

2. What else? Well, there is less than a month to the end of the gan year, and I am working on four projects simultaneously. Busy is an understatement. And because we are going away to the States for a month in September for the holidays, we are trying to work extra hard now so that we can take some time off while we are away. That is the PLAN. Let's see what happens.

3. About three months ago, I posted a message about my zero tolerance for noisy eaters, and it seems that I am far from being alone in this affliction, as evidenced by the ongoing comments (OK, there are only 9 comments [and yes, 2 of those 9 are my responses], but that's record-breaking on Double Take) I still receive about the problem. Here it is again. The people who commented seem to suffer even worse than I do, and I thought I had it bad. One reader, Matt, summed it up perfectly (sorry Matt, I fixed your typos. I can't help myself. It's another disease I suffer from).

As for a cure I think we are all well aware that this is a psychological issue but feel like we need or have to live with it. I mean, we can all appreciate how it seems like a non issue to non sufferers and that such an incidental, intangible noise should stir such violent, hateful emotions.

The annoying thing (apart from the condition itself lol) is that AFAIK there is no current classification for the ‘condition’ so where do you start to look for help? It’s not a phobia as it instills a feeling of rage rather than fear. I would love to be free of it but what do you do? Go to the doctor? Where do you even start to explain it without him having you sectioned under the mental health act? The other issue is that the usual treatment for phobics is ‘de-sensitivity’ therapy and that scares the shit out of me as I couldn’t be held responsible for murdering whoever tried to de-sensitise me!

A few months ago I emailed a few hypnotherapy clinics detailing the issues and feelings I go through in the hope that was the way forward and received a couple of emails that were quite vague and mentioned being able to help in the inner rage side of things but not enough to make me take any further action down that route although I’m still of the mind that it would probably be the way to go.

Well, from what I can gauge, I am not the only one who starts entertaining violent thoughts when in the company of munchers and slurpers and biters, and I also would like to consider myself a fairly nice person in most situations. I agree with Matt, though - desensitization and hypnotheraphy to help you get in touch with your "inner rage" definitely scares the living daylights out of me.

Well, on THAT note, I bid you a fond farewell. Until the next time.