Eat the Damn Cake

I don’t have a full post today because I stayed up all night last night reading a book about Wall Street. I mean, all night. Until seven in the morning. That’s really stupid. I am dead to the world right now.

But since I am too dead to write, I thought I’d share something else. Some of the recent photos that I’ve received from readers and quietly added to the Cake Gallery without letting anyone know. I’m a bad businesswoman. Maybe I need to read even more about Wall Street. Maybe I really, really don’t.

So here are a few of the awesome cake shots I’ve been getting:

Amazing, right? Send me yours!

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Unroast: Today I love that I am too tired to look in the mirror.

P.S. Congratulations/mazel tov to my grandmother, who just received an award for all of her volunteer work at her local hospice! That woman is amazing. She never stops working. She also reads this blog regularly, so I know she’s seeing this. Hi, Grammoo! I’m sorry you have to read about your granddaughter’s awkwardness and body images issues and marital stuff on the internet!

P.P.S. There’s a version of my post about talking to other women about weight gain up on HuffPo. Just so people know I still appear occasionally on really big international forums, other than this blog 🙂 Wait, can you call HuffPo a forum? That sounds wrong. Maybe if people were nicer in the comments it’d sound more right.

Things are looking up, from yesterday. Bear has referred to Minute/Minnow/Minette and I as “my girls” several times. He calls her Minna, so there’s yet another name.

I’ve also made myself incredibly annoying–both by taking lots of cellphone pictures of the cat sleeping with her paws over her head (probably in an effort to hide her face from the camera) and by trying to think of common phrases with the word “minute” in them.

“Just a minute!” “It only takes a minute!” “Give me a minute!” “Minute Maid!” “Minute to win it!” Is that a common phrase? It doesn’t sound like one. Whatever. And Minute Maid is orange juice. Whatever again. I’m clearly not very good at this.

Thank you, commenters, for the cat thoughts and advice. You always help me out. And make me less afraid of dying of horrible parasites.

But this is not another cat post. This is a post about a weird thing I learned about the world this week:

It is really hard to give big things away (in NYC).

We moved a little over a month ago, and since then, I have been dragging this giant black Ikea shelving unit from room to room (there are only two rooms, so it’s not as much dragging as I guess it could be). In our last apartment and the one before that, there wasn’t enough space for two dressers, so we got this thing and some cloth bins and put Bear’s clothes in/on it. It’s like six and a half feet tall. And then there’s the pretty almost-oriental rug (what exactly makes something an oriental rug, anyway?) that my uncle, an auctioneer, got at one of his sales and gave my parents who gave it to me. It feels nice, looks nice, and is 8×10. We are using another rug, also from my uncle through my parents, that matches the couch more and there isn’t enough space for two. I’m sorry, that was boring.

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Trader Joe’s Honeynut O’s make this strange crackling sound in the milk. It’s distracting. It also freaks me out a little. Why are they popping? Is that what all-natural cereals that are supposed to be made out of pure sugar do?

The other thing that’s distracting is this tiny orange cat on my lap. Her name is Minette. Or possibly Minnow, or Minute, or all three of those and more. My cousin found her outside, being bullied by other, much larger cats. We have taken her in for as long as it takes for her to get all of the shots and tests and apartment-training she needs before she can be officially adopted. Except that she has a bump on her nose, and I sort of love her.

And Bear and I are having the most stereotypical moment in our new marriage, because, while he likes her, he doesn’t see any reason why she absolutely has to stay, and he is making a lot of points about the smell of the litter and how this is a new apartment and how there’s this awful parasite cats carry that can destroy your brain. It’s even worse if you’re pregnant. It will destroy your brain and the brain of your unborn child, who will appear perfectly normal for several years and then suddenly…I point out that I am definitely not pregnant. Still, he says, he doesn’t want anything to happen to HIS brain.

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Note: I’m on Ignite Social Media’s list of “100 Women Bloggers You Should Be Reading“! Lots of thanks and offers of cake to Olivia Hayes, who put  me there!

Occasionally I am awkward the way someone is awkward in a slapstick movie.  When I’m flustered or nervous or just really not paying attention, I have been known to drop things. And then drop other things. I mix words up in interesting ways. I can’t count on myself not to.

In the train station the other day, I was running late, but I was really thirsty, so I grabbed a bottle of water at a convenience stand and attempted to pay for it. First I dropped my purse. Then all of the cards (credit, license, metro, Zip car, Borders gift with $3 on it that has been there forever for no reason) fell out of my wallet. I crouched down to collect everything, my scarf slipping off onto the floor. Then, when I managed to pay, finally, the water started rolling down the counter. The cashier grabbed it, laughing.

(source)

“Good luck!” she called after me.

“I’ll need it!” I called back.

Sometimes I think I look about that awkward, too. As though I might at any moment be caught by surprise by the strangeness of my own face in an unexpected reflective surface. My body might do something crazy– like bulge in a place I hadn’t thought it should bulge, or slouch in a part that I’d thought wasn’t slouchy. In the East Village the other evening, I walked by a long, dark window, and actually had to put my hand on my stomach, to see if it was really my stomach sticking out that far, or if it was just my shirt. Because it had to just be my shirt.

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This made my day. And the day after that. And it will make tomorrow, too. So I wanted to share it with everyone. This is ETDC reader Laurie Skelton‘s response to my post about how the pretty princesses we’re exposed to growing up never seem to have big noses. Or flat chests and big butts. Or very much that reminds me of myself at all, actually. This princess, created by Laurie, clearly has her priorities straight:

Her blog is here. Her tumblr is here. She is fantastic and I love her forever for this.

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Unroast: Today I love the way I look in little strappy sandals. Or barefoot, vanquishing the dragons that try to keep me from my cupcakes.

A lot of my friends are on OKcupid, the dating site where Bear and I first encountered each other (I know! It’s the most romantic love story ever! Online dating!), and occasionally, one of them will pull me over to a laptop and ask for my opinion on, say, fifty or so guys.

“OK, so he’s pretty vague about what he’s doing with his life, but look at all the books he likes!”

And “Look at his eyes! You can tell he’s really nice. But do you think he’s funny? I can’t tell.”

And “Oh my god, this one’s hilarious. Listen, he says, ‘I will search your soul and find the answer and then I will turn that answer into all of your dreams coming true.’ Is he really, really high?”

We pour through pages of guys. I am often surprised by how picky my friends are.

“Nope. He works in an office. Boring.”

“Nah– those are the show-offy glasses. And what is he wearing??”

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