Good GRIEF!

One of the cakes fell. So now it’s three layers, I whacked the top part of the fallen cake off – it will be good with some leftover frosting.

WHICH brings me to the debacle – oh, yes! You thought the cake falling was it?

I keep all our baking goods in rubbermaid containers. Some are the same size. This may seem superfluous, but there’s a reason I share this information. I started out making a double batch of cream cheese frosting. I had half the powdered sugar added, and was dumbfounded by the recipe. It was balling up, the kitchen-aid mixer was straining (though fleetingly I thought, maybe it will burn up & I can finally get a newer bigger one!) – and then I tasted it, yep, needs more sugar. What is the DEAL????

Oh, golly, maybe because I wasn’t using powdered sugar? Nope. Fucking cornstarch. FUCKETY FUCK FUCK FUCK. There went four packages of cream cheese & two sticks of butter, into the trash. (plus two cups of cornstarch but that shit can burn in hell right now.)

I’m a little peeved…however, I have tasted the cake & the new, fresh, correctly-made frosting, and it is awesome. Good thing we shop at Costco & I have everything in BULK.

For once, I’m not talking about the band.
Right now, I can smell cake baking…. and this is one helluva cake, if I dare say so without seeming too preening or apt to pull a muscle as I pat myself on the back.

My friend Shelley’s wedding shower is today, and I said I’d bring the cake. And for once, not CostCo cake. I wanted to make a cake. I don’t bake desserts a whole lot, but I’m pretty good at all adventures in the kitchen, and committing to the time & creation of this cake was important to me. Now, one of the helpers in this shower immediately asked me to please make the cake co-ordinate with the invitations, OR the cups, plates & napkins. Um, let’s see, NO. I’m just not that girly-girl or matchy, I guess, nor do I take direction well. Besides, I already had a vision of the cake, and when I get my visions, people just better get out of the way.

Shelley loves strawberries, so it’s a white cake with strawberry jello added in, PLUS, pecans, coconut & mashed strawberries. Frosting will be cream cheese, and the cake will be topped with white edible glitter & a layer of fresh sliced strawberries. Oh, and I doubled the recipe (and took some liberties with it) and am baking it in two enormous 10-inch silicone cake pans, and will cut the cakes in half, so it’s four layers.

LOOK OUT, I have a vision. I will take pictures. You will fall down at your computer monitor and I’m warning the glucose-intolerant, you will feel the sugar.

And, last but not least, as most things are with me, there’s meaning within the cake. The subtle joke is that Shelley used to buy Jell-o in the deli in our building when we both worked together, and it was topped with whipped cream, and she’d always talk about how she wanted some pecans on her jell-o, because that’s how they always ate their Jello in Texas, which always made me shriek, because we have many uses for Jell-o in the midwest, most of which involve floating items and molds, but putting nuts on on Jell-O is just plain wrong. I apologize for my inconsistent capitalizations in the word “Jell-O” as well. Anyway, she liked nuts on top for the crunch, and finding a recipe that uses (jello) and pecans seemed absolutely perfect to me. I know she’ll find it funny, and if the batter is any indication, the cake is going to rock. JUST LIKE THE BAND.

If you know me at all, you know I love metaphors. Big, bright, colorful, gerber-daisy metaphors. Intricate, thread-woven tapestries of a metaphor. Imagery that evokes a visceral reaction, the connection between emotion and the mind, the vision & understanding appears in the listener’s eyes.

Quite some time ago, I tried explaining myself to my father in a series of heart-to-heart phone conversations. One of those times, I explained my depression. I told him it’s like the Furies, from Greek mythology. Those Greeks were on to something when they created those bitches. The Furies were sent to torture a mortal for their crimes, to drive them from one end of the earth to the other, with no rest. Unlike mortals, the Furies never tired. I think a light bulb went off in his head, because at my darkest point, it felt like no matter how I tried to move, to walk, to crawl, this evil weight would tear & scratch and push me down, immobilizing me in pain. I never heard voices, in the sense of a hallucination, but we have internal voices that put ourselves down, that dismiss our ideas, and put ideas and images and scary things into your mind. Sometimes, those voices tell you you’re never going to get away from the Furies. Those voices are, I’m glad to say, wrong. Better living through chemistry – and if you need it, get it. It’s that simple.

The other metaphor I love also comes from my own shortcomings. I struggle, as most people do, to step outside of myself, to be objective, to see events and interactions as expressions independent of me. Again, I explained to my father, for he did pay for those art history and studio art lessons, it’s like viewing a Seurat. You know, the guy who did the paintings with all the tiny dots of paint? Like viewing a Seurat one inch from the canvas, and you can’t move your feet. So all you see are these seemingly large blobs of paint that make no sense. Of course, this is why there’s the term in art, called “perspective”, and it applies to so much more than lines & the horizon. Because it is difficult, when you’re in the midst of such a confusion, and you have two or three Furies clawing at you, and you’re trying to figure out what you’re looking at and all you can see is a black dot, you don’t see the dog in the park and the lady with the parasol, or that you can bat the Furies out of the park with the proper assistance. Like the lady’s parasol. Or good pharmaceuticals. I catch myself still, in work and my personal life, with my nose to the wall, seeing only a negative spot, seeing only a fraction of the big picture, and it’s harder than hell sometimes to tear yourself away, to step back, to not obsess over that one dark purple spot that seems “wrong”. As a species, we’re exceptionally capable of being hard on ourselves.

Alright, this has gotten nice & heavy. :) I wrote most of it a few nights ago, after my insurance-prescription battle & I was grappling with some work conflict to boot. Happy Friday. I woke up and thought it was Saturday. That was a joyous perspective, for about 1 minute. Have a splendid weekend, and enjoy the big game on Sunday – and if not the game, then those pesky, yet funny, commercials!

I was working tonight on getting ready for tomorrow night – Survivor Panama Premiere! We’re having friends over for dinner, so I made the spaghetti sauce ahead of time & was cleaning the kitchen & tidying up, when the next song on the CD came on, and such a rush of memory & emotions….. I was listening to Annie Lennox’s Medusa album, the one with all the cover songs, and she re-did the Blue Nile’s “Downtown Lights” – and I could see myself, 22, living in Minneapolis, listening to that Blue Nile CASSETTE TAPE (insert stodgy laugh!) over & over, the ache & pain of my foolish young age, the apartment I was living in – it was like having a crazy slide show just jut into your brain & take over the screening room.
(My brain gnomes were freaked the fuck out. One of them hit the tear supply by accident, causing some leakage – it was a mess.)

After I recovered from the surprise, I thought, everyone’s got those songs. Not the ones that make you go bonkers butt-dancing in your chair, but those songs at those pivotal times in your life, when you didn’t know diddly-squat but you were charging ahead into Life, anyway, and when you hear them again, it’s like part of the ceiling falls on your head, you’re slightly stunned to see that part of your life again. We forget how far we’ve come in our journey, and I still marvel at the fact that there are still so many songs to be written, that there are infinite arrangements of notes & words in the world.

I wonder if I’ll hear Fall Out Boy’s “Dance Dance” when I’m 50, and I’ll have the same crazy slide show…. :)

So the other night, after finishing dinner at our nearby Thai restaurant, James & I were joking around & he was being a cheeky monkey and I responded by feigning as though I was going to up-end the entire table over onto him.

Then I said, “Just once, wouldn’t it be fun to do that? Just once?”

James thought it would be an excellent diet ploy, as it would prevent us from ever returning to our favorite restaurants.

I couldn’t let the idea go, I kept pretending I was going to do it. It just seemed like such a FUN thing to do, and so dramatic, and something that only happens in movies, and never something ordinary people like us would just…. DO. Which makes it all the more tempting!

On the drive home, I brought up how we’d come a long way in the 6+ years, and while there isn’t a magic recipe, or that conflict ever goes away, some things are just more “known” now, and we don’t get worked up the way we did, say, when we were living in the apartment, buying the house, etc.

“We’ve mellowed, JWo,” I said.

“Except for the part where you’re turning over tables in restaurants.”

“True, true.”

1. I have spent my morning battling with my mail-order prescription pharmacy, who amazingly, can still answer the phone despite their heads being firmly inserted up their asses. Then more time spent calling my doctor’s office, and in general fostering a white-hot rage towards our insurance provider & their lack of customer service. Fortunately, my doctor’s office shares my rage. Thank god for pharmaceutical samples, which will tide me over until this gets resolved.

2. Parmesan goldfish are excellent for breakfast. Wash them down with Diet Coke w/ Lime – Breakfast of Champions!

3. We have these status meetings every week, and every week I think about how yet again, I’ve forgotten to bring an ice pick. You know, to stab myself in the face. I don’t care for status too much.

4. I was not surprised to learn Jack Bauer has a disciplined method for gouging out eyeballs. He starts with the right, then moves to the left. Jack Bauer is not to be trifled with. Perhaps he could stop by my prescription company on my behalf?

5. Speaking of Jack Bauer, his love, Audrey, has the best glasses & jewelry, ever. Fox needs to tell me if I can afford to replicate her style or not. I want a source! And I’m not afraid to gouge out eyeballs to get it!

6. Right now, you are glad you are not having my day.

7. But I still love my job.

8. And life, overall, is pretty good. Despite my desire to overturn tables in a restaurant. That’s tomorrow’s blog.

There are a lot of times in my life when I look to movies & whatnot for reference, reminders, inspiration & laughter. There was a time when I lived in St. Louis, and had been completely fucked over by my boss (you know, the one who drank, cried in her office & played Free Cell instead of working? Yeah! That one!) My extremely wise aunt was getting tired of listening to me bemoan my fate. So she pulled out the big guns. The baddest-ass movie about work you could ever imagine.

The Godfather.

“Jennifer! You need to be more like the Godfather. You need to remember as Don Corleone said, ‘It’s only business.’ You are taking it all way too personally.”

Moi? I fucking wrote the book on taking things personally. Masterpiece, really.
But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Hell, if Michael Corleone could rig up and “go fishing” with his brother Fredo, and we all know how that turned out for Fredo, then I sure could stop taking every slight on the chin. Well, that’s all grand in theory. I still take things personally, but I’ve gotten smarter. It still bruises, some of these pitfalls & things that happen in the daily grind. People are volatile, hard to deal with, and in any workplace, there’s always a buffoon idiot, a passive-aggressive freak, and a blind follower, no matter the business or industry. Accounts are won, accounts are lost. The thrill of the chase, the sadness of defeat. It’s the natural ocean of the agency world, and no matter how many years you sail it, there are still times you get salt water up your nose.

Better than going fishing with Michael Corleone, anyway…

I stood outside on the screened-in porch and felt the unseasonable warm air gust around me. I thought of all the women who had gone before me, who had done the same things we were doing tonight. My friend’s mother had died. We came together to clean our friend’s home, because the inevitable parade of visitors had already begun that night, when I arrived. She had spent the last two weeks in the hospital by her bedside, so she asked for that help, despite how clean it really was. The direct link between death & food was already apparent, as her refrigerator was overflowing. I laughed at myself, because I had also brought an assortment of chips, cookies, crackers, chocolate, juice boxes. My girlfriends brought food, flowers, and buckets of cleaning supplies.

For two hours we scrubbed & swept & vacuumed. Intermittently, one of us would stop and talk to our friend as she moved among us, hug her, listen, and look into her eyes, reminded that someday, this will be ourselves. Her daughter, still so young, was delighted by the company. She rocketed among us, talking, laughing & giving us orders. I picked her up and squeezed her and told her in a year, she was going to be taller than me, and that pretty soon, I was going to get shorter, and she’d be even taller. She informed me I was going to teach her to knit a poodle, that night. (I finessed my way out of that one.)

I thought of my great-grandmother, Hattie, as I took a break on that porch last night, and how she was born before she had the right to vote, how her life was filled with hard labor as a farmer’s wife, how she never saw the internet, wouldn’t know what to make of an iPod. And how she probably did this exact same thing for her friends in her own lifetime, coming together, quiet strength and ordinary work – showing love in the face of great sadness.

I am having the craziest, up-down, nutty day. INSANE. First of all, the work, it is like seven softball pitching machines lined up & have a never-ending supply of balls & are pelting me as I race back and forth.

Second, Kristin tried to bring our waiter home from lunch today. Yes, he was very cute. But the rest of just ADMIRED him. Kristin? Asked him if he’d like to come home with us. It’s why I love her.

Third, it’s as if we’re all doing stand-up today. My boss Jim, Kristin, me, the new girl – she knows a lot about stripclubs – it’s just hilarious and exhausting and then hilarious all over again. We had lunch with one of the funniest people I know, my rep Joe, and I adore him. He does the best gay Cuban voice ever.

I won $50 this morning, because Max (of Max, Tanna & Moffett, the morning show on KYYS), called me at work yesterday & said they’d be saying my name on the radio & I should listen, and then call in. Well, duh, you don’t have to tell me twice. I’ve got a price. He even told me the time they’d be doing it. SWEET! Unfortunately, as I am wont to do, I was rather unaware of him and his fame and Kansas City Icon Status. So I just shot him shit the entire time on the phone: “Hi Jennifer, how are you?” “STRANGE, MAX. I am feeling STRANGE today!” because I get tired of the same ordinary conversations, so I was mixin’ it up. He was not quite sure what to make of me, and probably a little weary of being whored out to call media directors & buyers in the city to buy their love & listenership, if only for an hour. Whatever. Fifty Dolla make me holla. And, I made him laugh.

So the insanity continues: I have to work this weekend; one of my good friend’s mother passed away last night – I’m so sad for her, I had to get it together at my desk, because she’s also an only child & I suddenly saw her kindergarten-age daughter & my heart ached for her; I’m having fun at my job; we’re getting things done, we’re torturing people (legally) — it’s like getting the good, the bad, the highs, the lows, the extreme hilarity, the extreme sadness – all in an encapsulated, concentrated timeframe. But I tell you what. When life gives you a lemon? BITE IT. Just bite it. Throw in a sugar cube. Add 151 rum & a shot of vodka & you hit all the softballs out of the park.

Right now, I feel extremely alive. And as though I could begin to start speaking in tongues – any minute.

So, I am having sudden, intense cravings. NO. Stop right there. I am not pregnant. I can’t imagine what that would be like, given how strong my cravings have been. I would end up on the 10 o’clock news, feature story, on how I terrorized a Sheridan’s custard stand because they didn’t have the right ingredients on-hand, and the video they’d show would be me with some poor teenager in a headlock, screaming “GIVE ME THE GODDAMN HOT FUDGE NOW!) I can’t even punctuate properly, I’m that discombobulated.

Seriously, though, I had the most peculiar one, right after a sip of coffee the other morning. Like a bolt of lightning. I just instantly desired a hotdog, the way my mom made them when I was in 2nd grade. Sliced almost in half, put under the broiler, cooked until brown, a slice of cheese put over the dog & popped back into the oven until melty. Sometimes we’d put sauerkraut on ’em – but you always dunked these into ketchup – no ketchup applied directly. Crazy! Because I didn’t start drinking coffee ’til 10th grade, so there’s no direct hotdog-coffee connection that I’m aware of!

And I’m also on a tear for Sonic’s Sweetheart Shake or Blast or whatever the F it is, all I know is that they have it around Valentine’s Day, and HELLO, that’s like less than three WEEKS AWAY, and it has hot fudge & cherries in it. And they DON’T GODDAMN HAVE IT yet. Fuckers. They are OUT to destroy me. Again.

Because I fancy myself something of a wheedler, I attempted to get one at Sonic yesterday, anyway. OH, yes I did. Only I asked for strawberries, because I knew I’d increase my odds of success. (Insert loud blasting buzzing noise to indicate lack of success HERE!) Well, I guess it AIN’T MY WAY however I like it when I want it and you don’t have it!

And if it’s not obvious by now, I’m really not being charitable to my sales reps this week. Unless one of them shows up with this shake thing I want. Then? PUTTY.