The Cake

Yesterday, my husband made a cake. I think he wanted to see if he could add to his successful baking attempts (the week before he made a pistachio cake for his mother's birthday, that was surprisingly good). I was, of course, running around, making last minute preparation for my sister's bridal shower. With my son in tow, off I went to Bossier, and then Shreveport. The week had been exhausting for me. Back to School Night on Monday, the DRAMA that I endured at my school (read on), and Liam's little music class started this week. So I am really thinking how truly exhausted I really am. I fly to the department store for a wedding present, all I can say is thank God for registries, then to a party store to buy all of the paper goods that I should have bought when I took Liam to his class on Thursday, but didn't, and then to the final destination where the shower was to be held. I felt like I was totally off my game, but thank goodness for aunts and cousins who are pros at functions like this, they helped me set it all up. The shower goes off without a hitch. Well, maybe a few hitches. Like the deli did not have the food trays ready when my mom goes to pick them up an hour before the shower (even though they were ordered the day before and the order was tacked on the bulletin board above the workers' heads, only after they saw the shocked and angry look on my mother's face did they start hopping to get them done). Oh yeah, me realizing I had no forks, spoons, or anything to cut the cake with, or a pen to write the gifts down for thank you notes. And my personal favorite, the register locking up while the party store employee was checking me out on my second visit of the day to retrieve items that I forgot listed above. I really liked the fact I had to wait ten minutes for the girl to wiggle with wires to get the stupid thing to work making me late for the shower I was throwing, nice. Despite our troubles, my sister got great gifts, the food was good and there were utensils to eat it with, and I wrote a detailed account of every present received. It was a lovely shower. I was so glad for my sister and I was so relieved when everything was over.

So I get in the car and get a text from my husband, and I am not quite sure what to say. There it is a picture of his cake, or a volcano I really can't tell which. I study the image trying to find the layers, but it just looks like something a kid would bring to school for a science project. So I can't wait to see the real thing when I come home. When I finally get home to my beautiful sanctuary the cake is revealed to me and I can't help but laugh. It is the most hideous thing I'd ever seen. The picture did not do it justice. After walking with Joyous, picking up and eating Chinese take out, we sampled the cake de jour: a dark chocolate, mock-black forest cake. It tasted really good despite its appearance. I was surprised. This cake that my husband made had been the smile that I had needed all week. This ugly/beautiful thing was a metaphor for my week. In essence, it started out crappy but ending up tasting pretty good, thanks Mark.