Greasy Flukes

                Last year, I played a fifty-something woman in our school’s Grease-inspired musical. It was undoubtedly the best play in our school’s drama career. Nonetheless, I made more mistakes in six hours’ worth of performances that what I normally make in a week (not counting the various walls and microwaves that tend to punch me in the face). Let us take a tour through some of these highly cherished memories.

                Everything was fine, up until the first dress practice.

Things kinda just went downhill from there.

                The first night of the performances, I slipped into my 3-times-too-large costume, and I felt invincible. I felt like an ACTOR.

       That same night, while we were all putting on lipstick backstage, the director’s worst nightmare happened: The Spotlight Broke. It happened while she was giving her pre-performance presentation, so we actually had no idea until the next day at school what had happened. Now, I had grown to love that light. I have been in six plays, all with a spotlight. When I went onstage, the drastic change completely threw me off.

                It made me nervous.

                Later that evening, I walked in on my friend, who played the lead Greaser role, as he was staring soulfully into nowhere.

                So I stood there as he finished and went backstage. I don’t know if he ever knew I was there.

                This actually happened because of the way the set was placed. During certain scenes, a black curtain covered the main stage. The lights glared right through it, so anyone waiting for a scene had to lie on the floor behind the curtain while they waited for their cue.

 I couldn’t see whether my friend was done soulfully staring, which is why I walked in on him.

                                                          ________________

                The second night went remarkably well for me, and I was feeling all ACTOR again.

                But I was too presumptuous for my own good. I Messed Up A Line. Butchered it, actually.

I panicked. My friend flinched. A few thoughts whirled through my mind. A wave of dread swept through me, and I heard the members backstage gasping. I fought to survive. Desperately, I blurted out the only words that could save me.

                I’m sure the audience wouldn’t have known it, but what looked like a massive chain facial seizure was actually the cast members onstage trying not to laugh.

 --Sabrina

Artsy!

                I feel fluffy right now! I feel like skipping through a dandelion field!

                I feel…ARTSY.

                What’s sad is that while I am practically exploding with this aura of artsiness, I am sitting on my little mattress eating granulated sugar out of pure boredom and texting my friend in a heated conversation concerning orange juice, gauges and stick figures.

                But am I daunted? No! Instead I am encouraged that I am slowly but surely acquiring the composed dignity of a true blogger.

                But really.

                I am categorized as many things for my more emotional tendencies and hobbies—I’m a musician, I prefer to be alone, I look odd, I draw, I have an entire wall covered in clippings and paper on which I basically vomit my thoughts, I write stories, I have a poetry notebook, and I love all sorts of music with the burning passion of a thousand suns. I also have a strange attraction to certain types of eyebrows. And that is where I will end my list.

                I love doing these things and sometimes I feel these little internal explosions of creativity, at which point my train of thought begins to resemble that of a dog—SABRINAWANNAMAKESOMETHINSABRINAWANNAMAKESOMETHINSABRINAWANNAMAKESOMETHIN—and I think of all these great things I could do or write or draw…I just get all wired and I just wanna DO something. While my brain is flipping out, amazing transformation takes place. It is obvious I am thinking artistic thoughts.                                                                                                              

And that’s it. Then my sister comes into my room and catches an eyeful of The Artsy Face burning tiny little artistic holes into her brain with my Magic Laser Eyes.

              

    

   And then at this point I lose my train of thought and realize that I should probably be doing something a little more beneficial, such as scraping paint off the wall with my teeth.

--Sabrina

Stuffed Toys

I feel very pressed today to write about the terrifying and vastly profitable idea of stuffed toys. I blame it on Steve.

                Steve is a highly unmotivated stuffed baboon who has spent the majority of his weekend on my bedroom floor. He originally lived in the Sunday school modular by my school, which we tore apart last  October to make room for a game of Extreme Dodge Ball, which involved fog and a strobe light. I met Steve as we shoved everything into the closet, and he ended up coming home with me.

                So there he lies, right where I dumped him when I emptied my backpack, looking broken and forlorn among all the odds and ends that found their way there over the course of the week. I haven’t touched him until now, because I was afraid I’d provoke him and Mama Steve would come find me.

                So as I sat on my bed, observing his unmotivatedness, I began to ponder this whole ‘stuffed animal’ thing. Why do little children need to have large-eyed, fuzzy, deformed creatures sitting around them? I just imagine how long Steve’s been at that Sunday school, gradually absorbing all the cracker crumbs and odors of preschool over time. And now he’s in my ROOM. He’s out there in the dark right now, somewhere in this room. I can feel his scratched black eyes boring a hole into my soul.

I am reminded of my friends’ parents, who saved every one of their stuffed animals and actually GAVE them to their children. And I am also reminded of how many places those stuffed animals must have been. And were they ever washed? Noooo!

                Do our children really deserve to be forced into this realm of madness?! I mean, it’s not like they’re bent on destroying humanity or spreading a deadly virus, but OHMIGODSTOPSTOPSTO

--Sabrina

The Concept Of Murse

Today’s subject is: Things To Carry Stuff and Things and…Stuff.

                Being a female, I naturally own one or two purses; owning several bags as a female is a law of nature that must never be questioned. Being me, I naturally use none of them. I prefer a backpack, actually, though it sometimes becomes so heavy that I just let it choose the location I am traveling to, drop it wearily, and camp beside it, using its shadow as a sort of awning during the summer.

                I have several friends, all who are male, who have a sort of “murse,” namely, a backpack that they never lose bodily contact of, come hell or high water. I could never name all of the things they carry, but the pure randomocity of it all makes embarking on an archaeological dig in one of THOSE babies much more terrifying than rooting through a woman’s purse, because while there may be near everything in a woman’s purse, there are two kinds of everythings—male and female. Females’ bags usually contain things like toiletries, receipts from the dollar store from 1981, and a full wardrobe of clothing. Guys’ bags—the ones I know anyhoo—usually contain around $302.78 in nickels, a rubber hose, a miniature television set, dozens of electronic charging cables from everything from mini fridges to an iDog, three full video gaming systems,  calligraphy ink, the remains of a BLT from Pita Pit (I think it was a BLT from Pita Pit anyways; anyhow it resembled one somewhat), burned photographs of algebra teachers riddled with pencil stabs (the photographs), toilet paper, a pair of pajamas, a dead beetle, several He-Man action figures, glass eyes, a rental tuxedo, and Pop-Tarts.

 I rest easy now, because I know for a fact that because of my several all-male friends, the president of Pop Tarts Industries can sleep well at night, knowing that his company will never, ever go bankrupt.

                We women have a perfectly good reason for packing what we do into our purses and bags and backpacks and carry-ons and suitcases and whatever else we can take on vacation without being fined for interfering with the plane’s flight speed due to weight—if ever we crash in the middle of a deserted island and the apocalypse comes and everyone dies except for us and a convict from Toronto, by God we are going to be dressed well.

                I frankly do not understand guys. They confuse the heck out of me. Recently I witnessed one of my murse-wielding friends packing his backpack. He first dumps everything out on the(garden) bed and begins sifting through it, saying he has to get rid of most of the stuff in his bag because it is all useless crap. Then he picks up a ball bearing from Goodwill, looks at it, scrutinizing, contemplating the decaying process, and stuffs it into the front pocket. “Might need that really soon,” he mutters.  Then he’d pick up a farming supply catalogue from1988. “Never throw this away,” he murmurs to himself. Then he picks up an empty Germ-X hand sanitizer bottle. He hesitates a little on this one. Finally he decides to put it in the bag as well. “Used that on my first date,” he says.

                And so it goes on, until the garden bed is clean and the backpack looks like it did before, in other words basically resembling Augustus Gloop attempting to demonstrate a flex-off in a small, non-elastic, incredibly resilient backpack from Target. Then my friend, whom I will call “Mitzel” for further reference, went into the church we were having youth group at and returned carrying several water bottles filled with sand and gravel, an Xacto knife, and two short pieces of bamboo from Home Depot. I have no clue what he was doing, but I suspect he was making dumbbells in order to begin working out and balance out the strength in his back from carrying his backpack, what with its own personality and climate and everything, with his arms.

                Anyways, Mitzel keeps stuffing his backpack, starting all over every morning. It’s getting to be pretty scary. One time I saw tampons sticking out of the front pocket. Unwrapped.

Sigh. Welcome to my group of guy friends. I’m perfectly fine with it, however; when the apocalypse comes we can trade our clothing with them for Pop Tarts, which we will toast over our handy receipt-fueled fire. Maybe we’ll even share.

--Sabrina (possibly chef stef 2.0)

I Met a Princess Once...

This is from a long post I had posted in bits and pieces on a cake forum earlier this year...with a story of a very ODD customer.  If it seems pieced together, it is, but it was so funny I had to include it here.
____

One day my phone rings and it's this woman, who sounds very..normal. No foreign accent, articulate, friendly, personable, slightly chatty, etc. She tells me she's calling me from Africa (eyebrow up), and that they are going to be moving home soon to a local mansion that they have bought. They are "renewing their vows" (at this point I'm still with her) before flying off to Hawaii and Disneyland, in that order (other eyebrow starting to go up).

She asks if I can do a pillow cake with a crown on it. I say sure. She says, "Because my husband's...ACTUALLY a prince." I'm thinking, "Okay, your husband's a great guy." But she's trying to say he's actual royalty, and she mentions it several more times. I'm unimpressed (sorry).   But yes, I can do a crown on a pillow.

Her next request is that she wants a four-foot-tall Faberge design cake, and can I do this? I say that I can, but first I need to know her wedding date. She says, "Oh...you know...soon." We talk about design for a minute. She's obviously on my website, and compliments me on cakes.   But in small talk she also keeps mentioning that her husband "works at the embassy," and that they are "financially comfortable," (starting to lose me here, why does this matter?). She also needs to tell me that her husband, who's a prince, remember, is half-Australian and half-South African, but that her daughter is: White (me: "Huh? So?").  Both eyebrows starting to be annoyed.

She asks about tastings and flavors, and we have a somewhat normal conversation about that--what he likes, what she likes etc. She sounds pretty sane. I tell them they can come in if they want (when they're in the States, that is). She tells me again, "That would be nice, but my husband's...black. But he USED to be white." At this point, I'm like, WTF?? 
I told her to send me an order online and I would check my calender and see if I'm available (I'm booked thru June heavily, so that's true.). She says she only wants to work with me.

I figure I'm not going to hear from her. Ten minutes later I get an online order with her info (her name as Princess *insert name*) and that she will take whatever date I want and give me directions "when they're in the States". The order has no capitalization (even for the name of the mansion), and the design info is...odd (like those Nigerian scam orders) and random.
I looked up her number (duh, Poynt, people), and it's a LEWISTON, IDAHO phone number. Okay.   So she took her Idaho cell phone to Africa to live? And the name of the "mansion" they're "buying" to live in, in two weeks, is a major venue I deal with in Spokane, so I called them and said, "Hey, this is Stef--are you guys for sale?" Of course we had a bit of a laugh about it, because of course they're not. But really. What's the POINT of all this???

I emailed her and said I'd gotten to my desk and see that I don't, in fact, have any dates open in June, best luck in the future, etc. 
The same day,  I got a TEXT from her with an incredible photo of a Faberge egg vase filled with gorgeous flowers. This would be the inspiration for the 4' tall cake she's wanting. With a CB# of her Idaho cell number.

WTH?

She did sound very rational, but yes, she did keep bringing up his color, and yes, I swear she said he's black,...but he used to be white... I let that one go. But I did say I don't care what color he is; bring him in.

I decided to call her and tell her I didn't see any June dates open (I really didn't have time for a 4' cake that month unless I worked 24-hour shifss) and see where it goes.   But NO sending me extra money.

She also asked for a caterer's number for a reference, and I gave her one before I started wondering about the whole thing, so I then called THEM and left a message that if an African princess calls for a party, to please let me know.

Also I'd love to know what time is it at the South African embassy, when it's 2 pm PST here? Just a thought...

Assuming I'm willing to go along with the fact that, okay, yes, they're royalty and they don't know their next address, then (possibly) I could be looking at a very expensive cake. Am I supposed to call her Your Majesty next time? What's the protocol for visiting royalty by phone in Idaho? The whole conversation was very pleasant and chatty, albeit surreal and with way too much odd personal info from her ("Did I mention we're rich?" WHO announces that??), and I was driving in heavy traffic, which makes me a little ADD anyway. But maybe she's an eccentric princess who really just loves red velvet and wants a 4' Faberge egg in cake.

Assuming all that--she also still reminded me very much of a woman we knew when I was a kid, who actually lived with us in the 1970s, who was very schizophrenic and on heavy meds, and when she would go off her meds, she would call me from Seattle when I was 13 and be like, "Hiiii Stef...I'm having a tea party. Do you want to come to my tea party?" And I'd be on the phone looking at my mom, like, "Isn't Diane still in SEATTLE?!? Seven hours away??" Then, "Sure, Diane, I'd love that. Yeah, okay, well, here's my mom." She was very odd when off meds, but in a sweet believable way.

Here's the next chapter. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

She called me the next day. I knew it was her, because I saved her in my cell as "Princess XX from Africa LOL." My kids are like, "Answer it!! Do it!"

So, she had now picked a date in July and a venue (the nicest one in the area, and no she's not living in it) and a backup venue idea.

She picked a cake from my website, said she wants exactly that design. She did mention she wants it 6' tall. I stopped her here and said: "OKAY. First I need to know how, many are we feeding?" She's like, "About 40." I said, "You realize a cake to be 6' tall is going to need a lot of styrofoam dummies, or you're ordering a ton of extra cake". She's like, that's okay, I love cake. I said, "No I mean, thousands of dollars worth", so she said that it doesn't matter then, just copy the 4-tier round on the web and add some pearls and sugar diamonds. She picked flavors and fillings for all four tiers, although at one point she said she wants ME to pick all the flavors (huh??? um, no). I reminded her that the cake she's ordering will only be like 18"-20" tall. She said that's fine, it doesn't have to be huge (?).   This is all starting to REALLY NOT MAKE SENSE.

She didn't mention anyone's color this time, which was a plus.   She did mention that it was 4 a.m. where she is, and she was kind of tired, but she that has to get up and deal with all this planning at wierd hours because that's the time difference to get vendors over 'here' during regular hours. (oooohh-kay).

She still wanted a pillow cake with a crown and gold tassles (because that's a royal color), and a frog inside the crown, because she had to kiss a lot of frogs to get her prince (believable? sure).

I asked her if she's already booked the venue; she said it's one or the other but hasn't booked yet. (I have calls in to both to check this). She didn't mention moving INto a venue this time, just said that by that time "their house should be finished".
The whole time, I'm thinking, she is so rational to visit with and very appreciative of my taking the time to help her with this, etc., etc., that (aside from the original wacky details) she could be any lady I've talked to, who's planning a cake.

So I wrapped it up with telling her that I will get all her details into a quote and email it to her. If she wants to book it, there's a $100 deposit to hold the date. The balance is due a month before the event. She said that's fine and that her daughter is here in Idaho and can get that to me. (very normal, no offering of extra funds or whatever). She's like, "Oh thank you so much; I know it will be perfect." etc.

Ok, I do have to recall that she mentioned some of the cake is being taken BACK to Africa, at which point I said italian meringue isn't a good idea for long travel, and she said they'd be using dry ice. (what EVER)

NOW the 64 million dollar is: WTH..  is this?

I called my bank and totally enthralled the lovely girl there with the story. She now wants to be on the list of updates when this all does/doesn't happen. ("Call me. I mean it.") She said a cashier's check is okay but can be a fraud, and frauds can go for 7 years out, in terms of them being able to suck the funds BACK out of my account if it turns out to be fraud. She said cash of course is best, or a credit card from the daughter and give everything lots of time to clear, etc. Of course my contracts state that nothing is refundable after certain dates etc. And of course I wouldn't let her 'over'pay me (whoops), so I'm thinking...yep; I'm booked, lady.  er, Your Highness... (muffled laughter)
I took the time to reverse look up the phone number, remember I said it appears to be a Lewiston number?

Well.  It says it's a...(ready?) LANDLINE in Lewiston.

So how. IN. THE. HECK is she calling me from AFRICA?

I decided I have no idea what is up with this, but she's got to be lying about everything or, as a friend suggested, making her "one phone call from the asylum today" to yank my chain.

So much for rational, sane-sounding lunatics.

"Yes, hello, Room Service? I'd like a glass of water and some librium. Thanks." --Stef

An Ode to B&B weekends

Here’s the reason I’m a huge fan of hotels, as opposed to B&B’s.  Let me also point out that, seriously, everything in this story actually happened. 

Last year my husband and I decided to use a free stay at a B&B that we had been given, and we thought it would be fun to use it for a getaway for just the two of us.  We had looked at the online brochure for this place, and it looked idyllic and beautiful.  In my head, I pictured us sitting on the porch of our private cabin in the morning mist, sipping coffee while looking out at the mountain meadow setting, listening to the birds, possibly seeing a deer grazing quietly in the field…you know, kind of like those old Folgers coffee commercials, cozy sweaters and all.

We made reservations and packed for our getaway, then took off for the B&B, talking about how great it would be to have our own private cabin, a coffee maker, and a nice home-cooked breakfast tomorrow.  That was about as close as we got to the dream actually coming true.

We drove down what seemed like a reallllly long gravel road, and then a realllly long dirt driveway, and finally arrived at the main house.  So far, so good.  We could see the cabins and the surrounding pastures and hills.  It looked great.  The hosts had called and said that they’d be out in the pastures feeding animals or fixing fences or something, but that they’d leave us a note inside with instructions for our stay.  Ok… There were a couple of kids sitting around a fire outside, toasting marshmallows.  They told us to let ourselves in the main house, which we did.

Right inside we found a note.  Ahh, we thought, here are directions to our cabin, and there’s no one here, so it’s nice and quiet already! Sigh!  Peace!  The note said “Hi guys! Welcome! Please make yourselves at home (ok, good).  We’ll be back shortly.  Your room is down at the end of the first hall to your left , and the bathroom in the hall is yours.” (eyebrow up—the hall inSIDE the main house..??)  We thought, OK…this is not what we had in mind, but whatever, I’m sure it’s fine; so we walked down the long tiled hallway, past a laundry room and a bathroom, to the end, where we found:  Our Room.

The room was solid wood.  Wood walls, wood floor, wood ceiling--decorated like a granny’s bedroom, with just a rocking chair, bed, antique tiny dresser with a mirror, and that’s..IT. (No wait, there was also a window).  No closet and thus, nowhere to hang clothes.  No…TV.  ?  Not even a radio.  There was a large box fan on the floor, which we wondered at…but ok.  We set our bags down (because, that’s all you could do with them), and sat on the bed (which immediately said “squeeeeeeeaaaaaaakkkkkkk”)

Assuming people who come here congregate in the ‘communal’ living room if they want to watch TV or something, we figured, OK, let’s check out the bathroom.  Out in the hall. 

We stepped into the hallway bathroom, which at first seemed very large and nice—hey look, a giant round jetted tub (score!) AND a double-headed shower (yay!).  We thought, why not enjoy the jetted tub, so we got that started and got in.  It wasn’t *quite* big enough for us both, so he had to sit with the faucet sort of jabbing him in the back, but we settled in.  Unfortunately we had added some bubbles to the jetted tub, which were now multiplying at an alarming rate.  Bubbles were growing around us and over us.  Pretty soon we couldn’t see each other or ourselves, so we turned off the bubble machine--I mean—jets.  Now we’re covered in soap suds.  So we’re like, “Hey, ok, we’ll hop across into the 2-man shower (and it was huge), and rinse this stuff off. 

We stood up to get out and realized there were two towels for us, but nothing on the highly polished , super-slick tile floor to keep us from falling and killing ourselves while getting out, covered in bubbles.  We laid the hand towel on the floor between the tub and shower and gingerly stepped out and across to the shower to rinse off the soap.  This was still OK at this point.

I turned on the shower head on one side, and we’re like, yeah, this will work.  Since there’s two heads, (how cool is that?) he turned around and turned on the other shower head.  Which immediately sucked all the hot water from the shower on my side (and possibly the whole house) into THAT head, leaving me under a stream of freezing cold water.  “AAAAieee!! Eek! Yikes! Shut it OFF, SHUT IT OFF, SHUTITOFFFFFF!!” 

We managed to get rinsed off, shared a towel getting out, and stepped back out onto the single hand towel ‘island’ in the middle of the shiny slippery-as-heck tile floor, and tip-toed back to the bedroom to sit on the bed (“squeeeeeaaaaakkk”).  On the way out of the bathroom, I also noticed that if we were thirsty that night, we appeared to be limited to the tiniest Dixie cups imaginable, next to the sink.  Ok…

We decided, well, we may as well try and get some rest, so we got in the bed.  Which appeared to have been short-sheeted by the Housekeeper from Hell, so we spent the night yanking and tugging to get the blankets and sheets up to our chins.  The pillows also appeared to have been constructed by taking three feather pillows and combining them inside one pillowcase, so they were HUGE and caused us to have our necks bent at almost a 90-degree angle when lying down. 

Once settled, I noticed, “Boy, it sure seems warm in here”.  It was summer, so it was very warm out.  The room (or the house) appeared to have no heating or cooling system that we could discover.  Then we remembered the box fan under the window.  “Turn that on,” he said, “that will help!”  I opened the window and turned on the fan to ‘low’.  It sounded like a 747 was coming through the bedroom.  We started laughing…but at least there was a breeze.  We left it on as long as we could stand, but we eventually felt it could be a fire hazard at the rpm it was approaching, so we turned it off and tried to relax, still yanking at the bedding.

At some point, we realized we were thirsty, but we also realized there was no nightlight in the hallway OR the bathroom, so we had to either turn on all the lights or creep through the dark on the tile to get to the Dixie cups in the bathroom for our 2-ounce-at-a-time shots of water.  Ahhh, that’s refreshing!

Then the family appeared to have returned home, with their kids.  Or a large basketball team.  It was hard to tell from the AMOUNT OF NOISE COMING FROM DIRECTLY OVER OUR BEDROOM.  It sounded like they were getting about a dozen 9-year-olds ready for bed.  Lots of yelling and banging around.  I thought they were possibly have a tumbling meet and/or a full-court basketball game upstairs.  We waited for what seemed like FOREVER, sort of staring at the ceiling in amazement, until they finally settled down. 

So, house quiet (still hot), window open, fan off, necks at 90 degree angles, we tried to sleep.  We must have dozed off, because at about dawn I realized the temp outside had dropped, and now we were freezing to death under the short-sheeted bed covers.  What actually woke us UP, though, was the wolves.  Yes, wolves.  Howling.  Outside.  Not coyotes.  I’ve lived here a long time, and I know coyote sounds.  These were definitely not coyotes.  What the--?? So we shut the window and tried to survive til morning. 

Ahhh , morning.  Breakfast sounds were going on, and we got up and dressed, put on our coats (yes, it was probably 50 degrees INSIDE) and went down the hall into the main area, where three couples were already sitting at the dining room table (only one table, and it’s full, sorry) lingering over the end of their breakfast.  The hosts greeted us (though looked a little strangely at our wearing coats) and offered coffee and said the table would be free anytime now, and then they’d be happy to serve us breakfast.  We nodded and dumbly held out cups for coffee, went to the smallish couch and sat down to read a magazine and wait.  We waited and read.  And waited and read.  Refilled the coffee.  Finished the magazines, cover to cover. 

The couples from Seattle made no attempt to finish and leave but sat loudly discussing all their traveling (can you name drop any MORE?? We don’t CARE where you’ve been, we just want to eat and LEAVE!) Then they started in on how cool their homeschooling was going. 

Next they moved on to the issue of Silverwood theme park and how the safety on the rides was in question, and how could the park discriminate like that, by making people move around on a ride, based on weight.  Isn’t that discriminatory? Someone should really make a complaint...It’s really nothing like the park at Blah Blah Blah and our trip to Blah Blah Blah, and on and on.  And on.  It was too cold to even sit on the porch with our coffee, so we were trapped there, listening to them.

Occasionally one of the hosts would say “Can we get you anything while you wait?” and we’d say loudly, “No, three cups of coffee is good.  (glancing at table and then at the clock) We’ll just WAIT.”  Pointedly.   The super-cool folks finally decided that they’d loudly talked about everysingletraveldestination that no one else in the room had probably been to, so they put on their LL Bean jackets and left.  *sigh*!

We got up and moved to the table.  The host said finally, “All-righty folks, now..what sounds good for breakfast?” I’m thinking “Yeah!! Breakfast!” so I said, “Oh, I’d love an omelet and some bacon.”  He said “I don’t make omelets.”  ???  Excuse me—what??  So I said “What DO you make?” He said he made really great scrambled eggs, and I was pretty sure that scrambled was ALL they offered at that point, so I said, sure the scrambled eggs would be great.  After the amount of time it takes to chase a chicken down, teach it to lay eggs, and then fly to France and learn how to make cheese for the eggs, he finally emerged from the kitchen with my eggs.  Not, however, two plates.  Just mine, in a bowl.  My husband looked at them and said, “Wow, that looks really good…”  The host looked at him and said (I swear I’m not making this up) “Oh, did YOU want some too?”  Seriously????   Long pause while he made another bowl and we ate what was left of the fresh fruit from the cool Seattle folks. 

We sat there in our coats and ate our eggs, while the host and his wife kept hovering around trying to make small talk with us.  Finally I just said, “I’m really not much of a morning person; I just like to sit and stare in the morning.”  So the wife disappeared, and we didn’t see her again.  We managed to smile and thank them for the stay and their hospitality, but we know now that we are definitely not the B&B *type*.   :P  We actually laughed about it a lot on the way home, because it seemed too crazy to be true. --Stef

Won the BEST of Spokane!

I found out today I WON the BEST OF SPOKANE, best wedding cakes of course...  woo hoo!!!

Of course, now I have the big grown-up 'Best Of' party to go to next week, in a ballroom and everything, which begs the question:  What do I wear?  Anyone who knows me, knows that this question often revolves around the shoes as much as anything.  Or...can I lose 25 pounds in a week?  hmm

so many things to wonder!

does this mean I have to also blog now...?

Ok, so after randomly deciding that I (or we, since this will be a sort of collaborative thing with Sabrina) might enjoy blogging, and since I always have lots of random things to say...here it is:  The First Post.

First, I'll explain the name-- (you were wondering, right?) 

We were driving the other day and talking about wanting to run or do something, you know, exercise-y, to counter the effect of our not ever having all those healthy snack things at home like most people do.  At least I think they do; I know we always have carrot sticks at home, but I NEVER crave them...so I imagine that other grown up healthy people probably not only buy the carrot sticks, but also actually EAT them.

ANYway, we're driving and chatting about how if you're going to eat junk (or at least carbs instead of veggies), you should do something to burn it right off.  Like run.  (which I HATE to do).  Which led to someone saying "Running with cookies."  Then we all started laughing, and for some reason it led to that being a great name for a band someday, which I will leave to Sabrina to continue...

So.  Running with Cookies.  We aren't about cookies (any more than the next family), and we sure aren't runners (well, she runs sometimes...I just text her things like "where are u?"), but the name struck us funny, and you have to admit it's a heck of a band name. 

I will add more later, but if you're reading this, you probably know us, so you know that she loves to play guitar, and I own a busy custom cake bakery, but we both thought this would be something fun to do this winter, so stay tuned :)

cheers
--stef