After all of the weekend's Mother's Day celebrations, I think it's time to balance things out with some extra MANLY cakes. Think you can do that, bakers?
Good, because Andrea here would like a "manly" 39th birthday cake, if you please.
No, no, see, I mean the cake. Make the cake manly.
Try again for Stephanie P.'s order. Go on. Make it manly!
Hmm. Maybe the word is what's tripping you up. Ok, look: Bre J. wants a 30th birthday cake for Reese. Reese is a boy, so she wants a cake that reflects that. See, she even wrote "male" in parentheses after his name on the order form.
...which, come to think of it, may not have been the best idea.
("Malie?" Really?)
Tell you what, bakers, just make us a generic cake, no writing, and give it the manliest decorations you can think of. Something that really screams "MAN CAKE," you know?
Oh, you've got something? Great! Let's see it.
Touché, bakers. TOUCH´E.
Thanks to Andrea, Stephanie P., Bre J., Nathan W. for at least not giving us another shuttlecock cake.
1) Bought some new clothes and feeling happy and pretty while wearing them
2) Delicious homemade ice tea
3) An evening for myself once our daughter is sleeping. Not sure yet what I'm going to do, but it's going to be something relaxing or something that gives me energy
My son recently told me that he didn’t consider my work to be “a real job” because often he hears me talking about cupcakes and crusty bread during my “meetings.”
She lived with her wicked stepmother and stepsisters - who, I have to say, were a couple of dogs:
Cindy spent her days cleaning up after her step family, but she always hoped for a better life.
One day, excitement gripped the land: Prince Dream was looking for a wife!
The parties at his pad were always hopping, but he wanted to settle down with someone before he croaked.
So the Prince invited all the girls of the kingdom to play ball:
Although his froggy dyslexia led to a minor scandal in the papers.
When Cindy told her step family she planned to go, they sneered,
"What do YOU know about playing ball?"
Disheartened, Cindy was about to give up, when suddenly:
Her Fairly Odd Mother appeared!
The Fairly Odd Mother arranged for Cindy to have a coach:
He had experience with all kinds of balls.
On the day of the game, Cindy snuck out to play. Her coaching paid off, and she dazzled the prince!
Sadly, before she could meet him, Cindy's stepmother dragged her home. All the heartbroken prince could find was one of her hideous flip-flops:
He vowed then and there to find the foot that fit the flip-flop, and then buy it more appropriate footwear for sports.
Fortunately the Prince remembered Cindy's distinctive toenail fungus, and found her that same afternoon in the foot-care aisle at Target!
Their love bloomed in front of the bunion cream, and they were married that very day.
As the prince struggled to carry her off to his castle, everyone agreed that Cindy had never looked happier:
THE END.
Enchanted thanks to Olyvia S., Becca M; Sarah C., Shaina H., Iny, Kathleen C., Megan J., Leslie S., and Anony M., who helped make all our wrecks come true.
Note from Jen: For instant lolz, repeat after me: "Find the foot that fit the flip-flop. Find the foot that fit the flip-flop. FIND THE FOOT THAT FIT THE FLIP-FLOP."
*****
In case the thing missing from your life is a royally extravagant bluetooth speaker:
a word you've never understood on AO3 (Prophet by Sin Blaché and Helen Macdonald, M, Sunil Rao/Adam Rubenstein, 9150 words)
Additional Tags: post-canon, Adam Rubenstein is not fine, angst about a happy ending, “fuck off” is a love language, sex recollected but not actually occurring in this fic, fluff with CPTSD and metaphysics, alexithymia, came back exactly the same, Sunil Rao’s arguably-canonical grey-aromanticism, touch starvation, Adam's parasympathetic nervous system has not been heard from since the mid-80s, sometimes you get what you want more than anything in the world and then your brain breaks a little bit
Summary: He’s been starving for so long. He thinks he’s never not been starving.
Note: massive spoilers for canon. Read Prophet, everybody.
2) Going for a picnic in the park nearby, with 2 friends from our daughter's class and their parents, right after school ends this afternoon. Going to enjoy the sunshine ^^
3) A quick visit to my parents this evening to get some admin done and to bring some stuff back to their place
I did not end up baking anything this weekend but last night I made this angel hair pasta with grape tomatoes (NYT gift link) scaled down for one, and it was delicious. The hardest, most time-consuming part was slicing the tomatoes, but I did it while the water was boiling, so you know 2 birds, 1 stone (I also made it all in the same pot - boiled the pasta and left it in the strainer while I cooked the tomatoes).
Then today I made another of my favorite chicken dishes: Rustic Garlic Chicken with Gravy - the chicken is good but the gravy is FANTASTIC. I made 2 boneless, skinless thighs (and ate them), but the full amount of gravy, since I also made a pot of mashed potatoes in the slow cooker and stirred the extra gravy into it so that'll be lunch or dinner for a few days as well.
There was an unfortunate amount of washing up afterwards, but I guess it was worth it.
Earlier, I watched this week's episode of Leverage: Redemption and ( spoilers )
I also learned, via tumblr, that season 1 of the original Leverage was aired out of order and is still out of order on Prime. So I will definitely have to do a rewatch with the correct viewing order at some point!
I still have not watched any of season 2 of Andor - 3 episodes a night is too many and I just keep putting it off now until I have the bandwidth for it - but I might watch the new eps of Poker Face tonight, or maybe I'll finish off this season of Elsbeth. I guess we'll see!
*
Current Mood:happy
Current Music:Shake It Out = Florence + the Machine
When I got married way-back-when, wedding cakes were hardly the sleek, chic masterpieces they are today. Back then, all the hip cakes featured things like light-up fountains, fake ivy, plastic staircases from tier to tier, and rampant tulle abuse. Those were different times, kids.
Nowadays, couples have so many super stylish options to choose from, it's really quite unfair.
You don't know how good you have it, whippersnappers!
Sure, there are still plenty of wedding cakes with frills and fluff, but today we're taking a tour of sleek modern cakes that make my heart bleed with lust. Like so:
I love how it tells a story, and I'm amazed by the workmanship on the Eiffel Tower topper. (And not just because I've been playing a lot of Draw Something lately, and have learned that it's, like, REALLY HARD to draw a recognizable Eiffel Tower).
Here's a modern twist on the 'dandelion clocks' wallpaper designs of the '50s.
Good thing no one is making wedding cakes inspired by wallpaper designs of the '90s, because those would probably feature geese wearing bonnets and baskets of dried flowers. That's what I seem to remember, anyway.
Of course, black and white is so classic I'm pretty sure this couple's grandkids will never look through their wedding album and snicker at the cake.
Not that I've ever done such a thing to my relatives, of course. Especially not certain relatives who used stalks of wheat as a cake topper. Bwa ha ha!
Ahem. Sorry. That was a totally a made-up example. Any resemblance to real relative's wedding cakes, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
I just love the colors on this next cake. It's so happy and fun and summery!
Half for the bride, half for the groom, and everybody wins! Especially the wedding guests.
I love how the intricate design on this next cake wrap around the edges of these square tiers - no, wait ... are they hexagons?! No way. That shape wasn't even invented back when I got married.
Denise (synecdochic of this parish) has been moved to provide a long, LONG and fascinating Bsky thread providing an inside-baseball exegesis of the new Pope's first sermon and why, she argues, it represents Shots Fired in relation to significant portions of American Catholicism.
It is deep geeky fun regardless of your personal beliefs (and maybe especially for those of us who are outside Pope fandom and want to know what's going on).
Important contextual N.B.: The Pope is Catholic. You do not get to be pope unless you are operating broadly within the current framework of Catholic orthodoxy.
I personally am an atheist! I believe it is fine to be an atheist, and that atheists are capable of just as much moral goodness!
HOWEVER. THE POPE IS CATHOLIC.
Thus it is not a big surprise that he is going to maintain that Christianity is the right and proper religion and the source of moral goodness. I seem to recall it's been something of a shift in doctrine to acknowledge that non-Christians (who have heard of Christianity and thus cannot be excused on grounds of ignorance) might be saved.
But the idea that Christianity is still the superior religion to which ideally everyone would be brought -- that is kind of baked in to the whole Catholic Church deal. If you are in fact fully committed to recognizing all religious traditions as of equal value, you miiiight get to be a very radical priest, but you are definitely not going to progress within the hierarchy to the point of being Pope.
So I am not expecting the fucking Pope to come out and say "actually being an atheist is just as good as being Christian." I am approaching this with the assumption that he is going to be working within the current doctrine of the Catholic Church. Because, again, Pope.
And it's all sorts of interesting to look at where he is situated within that doctrinal framework, and speculate about in what directions he might develop it or how he is using it to make particular points. But the framework comes as a given.
So when Pope Bob preaches that certain Christians are "living in a state of practical atheism" -- the interesting takeaway, to me, is not "oh noez the Pope is referring to atheism like it's a bad thing," it's "what groups of Christians is he potentially referring to and chastising here."
Also: Strickland. The reveal that Pope Bob played a key role in the decision to remove him is when I went "oh shiiiiiiit, no wonder the tradcaths hate him and the MAGA-ites have decided that he's a WOKE MARXIST POPE."
Basically, if they wanted to pick a Pope as the most crushing rebuke possible to J. D. Vance specifically, this is the guy they'd pick.
Anyway, on to less stressful subjects, I've been trying to fill my days with nice things, before I start at the new place.
Last weekend roga and I got up at 3:30am and drove up north during the night, to see the sunrise from a monastery on a mountain. Then we went to a museum, met a local friend, saw a Roman relic.
This weekend we went to a different museum, then to a small local market, then to a very nice seafood restaurant, then we just sat around on the grass overlooking the sea, before heading to my place and watching hours of a TV show.
I am so grateful for this time and these experiences. I feel like beginning work again after over a year of having a different schedule is going to really mess me up at least for a few months, so it's nice that the weather right now is really good and I have friends to take advantage of that with.
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