Okay so you’re writing schedule is all off. It’s summer and things just aren’t as efficient in the summer. Or maybe you’ve moved and it’s hard to lay down words because you have no sense of place right now. You have to use what you got even if it isn’t the real thing, or it doesn’t feel like the real thing. Here’s what you do: go to the grocery store and get one of those cake mixes for $1.89. I know, I know, you want to bake one from scratch, but you don’t know where your flour and sugar are so just get the box. Pick up a container of frosting, too. You can get funfetti if you want, but yellow cake with chocolate cream frosting is really what does the trick.
While you’re at the grocery store, take a look around. You can find so many stories at the grocery store. The guy who greets you is named Art and he wants to know if you’re going to the Art Fair downtown. The grocery store is playing Del Amitri’s, “Tell Her This,” your favorite. Go ahead and take note of a few things on a piece of paper in your wallet. They’re not real stories. Yet. You never know when you can use those observations.
So you get home, but it’s not really home because you’re in an apartment filled with so many cardboard boxes you feel like you live in a warehouse, but why do you want to open them up just to pack them again? Don’t bother. You need underpants and you need some shorts and shirts. Maybe some shampoo. Who are you kidding? You are so high maintenance. Just take out all your products and hair dryers and put that surf spray away because you know you’re not going to go three weeks letting your hair air dry. There’s no lesson to be learned in that.
Find a bowl and dump in the cake mix. Crack a few eggs, pour in water and oil. You can’t find your measuring cups? Eyeball it. It’ll be fine. The box is going to say you need to stir this up with a mixer, but you are not getting your Kitchen Aide out for two minutes of mixing. No, m’am. You go ahead and get your daughters involved in the cake making process. “Hey, kids! You want cake? Yeah? Alright! You mix for a minute, and then let your sister mix for a minute!” Take a seat while they take the spoon.
You can make cupcakes, a 9 X 11, or two 8 inch cakes with this recipe. Why not just make the two cakes? Layer cakes are so much more delicious than a cupcake or a 9 X 11. And let’s be honest, a square of cake from a 9 X 11 pan is not cake. That’s a crumb. You may as well eat half a donut, and nothing makes me more angry when people eat half a donut.
You can write while the cakes bake, but I know, it’s hard to do that in a cramped apartment when your family is around. Your family’s great, I know, but you make weird faces when you write, or you rock back and forth or stare into space when the words won’t come and they don’t need to see that, so if you don’t want to write, think about some stories you could write. Every morning you open windows and the fresh air spills in. That’s nice. So far, you can get to the library, a bookstore, and a grocery store without Siri. That’s nice, too. Just about every where you go you can see green highway signs for Chicago. It’s not too far.
When the cake is done, put it on that blue plate with the sailboat on it. Your grandma’s plate; the perfect placing for a layer cake. She has matching mini sailboat plates with a matching cake server, too, but you don’t know where they are right now. That’s OK. Your first cake in this place is from a mix, and it will go on her sailboat plate, and she’ll be OK with that. She knows you’ve baked several from scratch before, and you’ll do it again. These things take time.
All that’s left is frosting it and pouring rainbow sprinkles all over the top (your friend calls them “Jimmys” and you think of her and the fun you’ve had together as the sprinkles fall).
Slice it on up and serve. But wait, did you forget to frost the middle? You did, didn’t you? How could you forget to do that? That’s kind of like eating an Oreo without its filling. “OH, crap,” you might say. “What a mess I’ve made,” and you think this is what you’re really good at: making messes. You try and you try but a mess is all you make. But then here’s your daughter standing at your hip holding a plate and saying, “Mommy, it’s cake. It’s a delicious mess.” So you plop a piece on her plate, and on her sister’s plate. You give a piece to your husband and slice one for yourself, too (don’t be that person who bakes but doesn’t eat it).
And the four of you sit around your seventeen year old dining table and you eat up that cake down to the last sprinkle.
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