Crab-y

A sideways post:

July 17: Baked a lemon cake with vanilla frosting for G's b-friend. We had a minor crisis when she ran out of decorating gel and the cake spelled "Happy B-Day Big Boy! Size Ma" (I should add here that G is the queen of innovative cake phrasing. Once she gave me a cake that said "Happy B-Day Mac Daddy from Daddy Mac", a tribute to our 7th grade KrisKross obsession.)

July 21: Baked a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting for my mom's friend Susan. Same crisis encountered when I ran out of gel. Cake still reads "Happy Birthday SU"

Ironic how I don't feel I know any Cancers beyond Sean and my old pal Lucas, and here they are cropping up like dandilions. No, I don't mind baking people's birthday cakes, especially when it's too hot to go out, and all I would be doing if I weren't baking is lazing about in my underwear reading G's copy of "The Blind Assassin" or grooving to Coco Taylor. Multitalented as I am, I can do that AND bake cakes. I just can't decorate them.


Tonite I will attend the birthday party of my life's numero uno example of the phrase "communication breakdown". He is the person who, through unlucky circumstance, bore the brunt of the emotional tornado caused by my father's death. I go to trouble to keep most relationships, past and present, wreckage-free. The path between Ray and I is strewn with it, and it makes me sad, especially because I was responsible for 99% of it. So I'm preparing to mount a mental clean-up effort in hopes of negating the evidence that I can be vulnerable to relative strangers.

I am not the maker of the cake in this venture. This party will have been planned by his wife and his best friend's mother. Karyn assures me I should bring my crab-stuffed mushrooms.

Moral: Everyone needs a fungi now and then. Go find yours.