So, as it turns out, we are, in fact, the kind of parents who bring a copy of a Laurie Berkner CD to the bakery to see if the image can be put on a three-year-old’s birthday cake.

I wheeled the girl into our bakery of choice and handed the disc to the nice lady behind the counter. She stared at it, headed downstairs to talk to the bakers, and came back with the verdict: no go.

Evidently this particular bakery won’t put “real people” on cakes for legal reasons. However, they were happy to put Victor Vito and Freddie Vasco, Laurie’s two Tabasco-loving polar bears, onto Lucy’s cake, which she happily agreed to.

Of course, the nice lady behind the counter was plying her with sugar cookies at the time of her consent, and I am pretty sure Lu would have agreed to anything, including a birthday cake featuring a Scarface-era Al Pacino on it, as long as the cookies kept coming.

In non-birthday news, the Opal Mehta plagiarism controversy has come to the best conclusion possible: Little Brown is recalling the books.

I’ve held off commenting on this whole mess because A., I blurbed Kaavya Viswanathan’s book; B., Megan McCafferty and I have the same agent, Joanna Pulcini, and C., I gave Megan’s new book, CHARMED THIRDS, a quote, too (hey, at least I’m consistent).

I’ve been following the story all week long, feeling sorry for everyone involved — for a young writer who got in over her head, and for Megan McCafferty, who’s worked so hard for so many years on honing the funny, irreverent, utterly convincing voice of her heroine, Jessica Darling and wound up at the center of a media firestorm for something that wasn’t her fault.

She handled herself gracefully throughout what had to be an ordeal, and was generous in the wake of Little, Brown’s decision. Joanna was a wonderful advocate on her behalf — and, really, on behalf of all authors.

This is a victory not just for Megan, but for writers everywhere, affirming that an author’s work and the voice she writes in, whether she writes YA or chick lit or the most sober literary fiction, belongs to her, and her alone — an important point that got lost in the whole gleeful schadenfreude pile-up.

And I don’t think this is the end of the story. I’ll be interested to read more about the business of book packaging, and to see what else comes out about precisely how chunks of Megan’s books wound up under Viswanathan’s name, and whether she, or some anonymous munchkin at 17th Street/Alloy Entertainment was the one who put them there.

Small is not only beautiful but also edible. Take a good look at each of the photos below and then decide what you think they are. Leave your answers in the comments section along with your email.

The first person to guess all the items will win the utterly delightful Itty Bitty Kitchen Handbook featuring 100 recipes. Two runners up will win packages of Marcona almonds. Only one entry per person, so choose carefully! Remember, you MUST include your email to win. Good luck!

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FOOD

Last night I got home, ate a frozen entree, poured myself a glass of wine and called Red Beard. He was happy to hear from me, and we caught up while I cleaned out the three-foot-high chest of drawers that contains my make-up, lotions, potions and vitamins.

We talked about my growing to do list surrounding my relocation plan. I told him, “I know I’m jumping the gun, but I’m dying to give 30 day’s notice for my lease on my apartment so I can put an end date on my time here. But that would be incredibly stupid, because if a job offer doesn’t come through before my lease would be up, I would essentially be homeless.”

Red Beard concurred, “Yeah, you don’t want to wind up with no where to live. Although there’s a storage facility near my apartment, so you could just move all your stuff down and then come stay with me. What would you do if that actually happened, where you had to be out of your apartment, but you didn’t have a job offer yet?”

I mused, “Well, I think I would take you up on it - quit my job here and move in with you until I could land a new job in DC.”

He laughed, “What would your parents think? We’d be living in sin!”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. My parents are seriously trapped in the ’50s. But I’ve got us covered. I told Mom I would either stay with Boy, or I would rent out Julie’s condo.”

“Well, like you’ve said. She probably knows the real story, but she prefers you lie to her and keep up the pretense.”

“Seriously, like over Easter. Mom had to know I was staying with you. I mean, we kept showing up everywhere together. Ooh, I just found my rhinestone false eyelashes. I’m not sure there would ever be an appropriate occasion to wear these babies down in DC. Unless you and I play a hooker game. You could drop me off on a corner, drive around the block and pick me up again.”

Red Beard giggled. “Yeah, we should definitely do that. Do you have hooker shoes? You know, those things with the clear plastic platform heels?”

“No, but we can certainly make that purchase. Put it on the to do list.”

Red Beard went over the list. “Go car shopping. Buy a new cell phone. Get hooker shoes. Look at apartments.”

We’d been on the phone for over two hours before we decided to call it a night. I told him, “I’ve got an early morning meeting tomorrow, so I need to get ready for bed.” We said our goodbyes and our I love yous, and hung up the phone.