get that dirt off your shoulder

A little ranting and raving serves as a good outlet for stress, but I'm going to try to keep the venting to a minimum today. It's Friday. I do occasionally miss the days when Fridays weren't so momentous, when time was not measured by the working week. But it's hard to brood too much about that sort of thing on a Friday, so I shan't.

The Mother's Day present was sent, but in a rush, so no photographs. It was nothing that spectacular anyway, and I'm sure I'll get confirmation of that at some point this weekend. At any rate, it frees me up to work on other things that need my attention.

Last night, I was supposed to bake a cake for my friend JP's birthday. Loathe as I am to admit this, I completely, completely wussed out. I had all these plans of making a white chocolate cake, a small one, 4" in diameter, wee, cute, and covered with milk chocolate frosting and strawberries. But doubts started to surface. I had never tried this recipe before, and I'm never able to follow recipes entirely anyway. I was sitting on my couch reading the recipe, plotting out the various ways I was going to violate it, when the scenarios started flashing through my head. What if I don't know how to make cakes this small? What if the batter overflows? What if the cakes stick to the pans and come out misshapen, or worse yet, in pieces? What if the frosting is too heavy, or too light? What if I don't finish in time? What if I rush, don't let the cake cool completely, and wind up messing it up?

It should be noted that JP is one of the most fabulous cooks and, well, overall, one of the most fabulous individuals I've ever known. The chances that I'd come up with something mediocre outweighed the chances that he'd appreciate the effort, however shoddy. That's not doing him justice, actually. I know he would have been quite sweet, and thoroughly gracious. But I don't want to spend his birthday with a pit in my stomach about the crappiness of this now-virtual cake. It always boils down to something selfish with me, folks. The bottom line is that I have to bust out of this joint and make a quick jaunt to my favorite bakery. However, the idea of this cake has now lodged into my head, and I consider it a personal defeat that I did not accept the challenge. So it's now on the weekend docket.

I recently discovered that my cousin has been keeping a Xanga for quite a while now. If you ever read it, serious doubts would be raised about the claim that she is my cousin, or, in fact, that we share any DNA homology. Her journal is a tribute to Celine Dion, torch songs/ballads, and hindi film tunes, crossed with her ruminations on love/schmoopiness/breakups and the difficulties of a college education. Yes, I know, she's young and so I should not be so hard on her. But we're family, so I'm allowed. At least, we're allegedly family. I'd claim one of us was switched at the hospital. Except that we were both born in hospitals so homogeneously white that there isn't actually the possibility that a nurse could have mistaken either of us for the child of another new mother. I guess this just proves the random nature of genetic crossing. One of us definitely landed all the recessive genes. Based on a brief survey of the family, I have to say, I'm probably the one that got them.

One last thing in my Anna tribute week. I read an article the other day, and the headline had the words "Jane Fonda flogs" in it. My first reaction? Wow, Jane Fonda has a Fotolog? I'm blaming that moment of flakiness on too much Anna on the brain!