Death or Cake: The Cake is a LIE....VE... ALIVE!!!!

When I was in my senior year of high school, we had a saying in my rather tiny but well loved class: They go on and on about how great it is to be a senior, but they never tell you about how much work it is.

Yes, being a senior was great, especially when we got to go through other people's classes randomly rubbing the fact that this was our last year of high school in their jealous faces, but no one ever told us we'd be forced to preform manual labor for the school and ourselves in order to pass the year. Yard sales? I never want to see another one in my life. Pizza? I'm still hesitant to eat it if I get it from a restaurant anymore. (Not because it was bad or anything, just because we had to order so much of it every week I got sick of the smell and taste.) And if I have to bake another red velvet cake, I will gladly throw myself into an insane asylum.

Am I that desperate to avoid baking, you wonder briefly?

Yes.

Why? You sorta kinda almost wonder, but not really.

Because I was nearly brutally mauled by one when I had to make one for the senior fundraiser we were organizing so we could make money to go on our senior trip.

What happened? You think skeptically secretly thinking "How can anyone be brutally mauled by a cake of any kind?"

Keep reading, blog reader, and you shall know.

It all started with a bake sale to help raise money for our senior trip to D.C. All the seniors and juniors (for we were two VERY small classes) were to bake pies and cakes then sell them to people in the church, neighborhood, and where ever else we could expect to mooch some cash off people to get enough money to saved up. This wasn't as easy as it sounds for all of us had to contend with those little girl scouts selling their diabolical cookies of cuteness.

Some of us (namely me) considered taking them on and running them off (cause I mean we were bigger than them, and that place outside of Walmart was a choice selling place) but my class mates were against me... I suspect it had something to do with the fact we'd all seen the Pacifier and weren't willing to get our butts kicked by a bunch of tiny ninjas wearing pigtails. Cowards. We totally could have taken them. (Okay, so I did see their point. If we tried to get them somewhere with no witnesses to avoid shame should we get our butts kicked, it would look like we were some kind of weird pedophiles. I didn't want to do hard time. I had a test later that week. At least, I'm pretty sure I did. We had at least a quiz or test of some kind every week, so I'm pretty sure I was pointedly not studying...uh...forgetting to study for something - how else would I have all that extra time to come up with ways of avoiding getting publicly humiliated by nine year olds?....uh... I was.... booked and studying really hard. So it was best we didn't take on the Girl Scouts.... Hi mom.... Love you.)

If I was going to get my butt kicked I had to make sure I had plausible deniability - in other words, no witnesses...uh work on securing places to do the bake sale, then I had to make sure I had all my studying done.

As it was when the day came, lots of orders came pouring our way and we split up who would take what. Pumpkin pies, pecan pies, red velvet cake - numerous sugary desserts. I had a lot of orders, but I could handle it. I loved making pies. Pies were easy. They did what I asked of them. They cooperated. I like pie. If I told it to mix, it mixed lovely. If I told it to bake, it did so with out quarrel. I told it to cool, it cooled quietly.

Then I had to make the red velvet cake.

Here's where my troubles began.

The blasted thing was rebellious from the start. I told it to mix, and it clumped, so I beat it and it sloshed me. I tried to pour it into a pan hoping to fill it half way, but it became greedy and decided to take up most of the room.

At this point, the cake and I were not on good terms, but I was keeping my chin up and putting on a brave front - anything to make the cake cooperate. I thought "Okay, I'll let you take up most of the room in the pan. Just so long as you bake like a good yummy dessert is supposed to bake." I prayed it wouldn't give me any more trouble.

Pffff- DAHahahahahaha! No more trouble. Right. Like that would ever happen. What was I thinking?

Around 2:30 that afternoon, I took a break for I had been cooking all day. I thought I would relax and watch a little TV, or play on the computer and listen to music (or all three because my ADD is cool like that), but a few minutes later, I heard a rather odd noise and smelled a rather odd smell. I knew something was up when I heard a gurgling sound coming from the oven followed a high pitched whistle.

I got up to investigate and opened the oven to reveal a horrid, lumpy monster rising from the remains of the cake pan that was hidden somewhere beneath all its disfiguredness. My brain, in the panic that now gripped it, decided it would be a good idea to grab another cake pan, and scoop out some of the extra cake batter that was threatening to take over my oven and burn my house down.

This wasn't a very good idea.

Actually this was a terrible idea.

At the time it seemed like a good idea because the insides of the cake were still a bit soupy, but I'm telling you right now, never do this. Especially if you and the cake weren't on good terms to begin with. If you do this after you have battled a demon cake, it will not be happy with you.

Well, in retrospect I can see how it would be unhappy with me for trying to distribute it between two pans when it out grew the one. If some one covered you with strange gooey substances, beat you with a metal whisk, put you in a circular metal cage without a ceiling, stuck you in the fiery furnace of Hell to bake at 450 degrees, then decided to come back and scoop out your brains and distribute them into another circular cage and expect you to be okay with all of it, you'd probably want to give them a piece of your mind too... If you could find it.

I should have realized it then that there was going to be trouble. I should have noticed the signs: failure to cooperate on many levels, the growing discomfort of the cake in its.....lair, the inability to cook like a normal cake, choosing instead to rise up like Frankenstein's monster....

But I didn't. Nope. Sure didn't. I went back sometime later to check on it expecting it to go something like this:

^ The Oven of Awesomeness
(Star pic by DeathofCaelum here:
http://deathofcaelum.deviantart.com/art/StarShot-178647926)

I expected to open the unassuming oven, to reveal an oven of awesomeness where two beautiful (if not slightly damaged) twin red velvet cakes would emerge and we would all celebrate that they overcame the monstrosity that had nearly consumed them and my oven. Heavenly music would have sounded from with in the confines of the oven, and rainbows would shoot out and birds would sing (hopefully not from inside the oven cause I have a thing about finding feathers or worse things inside my cakes).

In stead, something went terribly, terribly wrong.

At first I didn't see the danger, for the angle I was at, I could see the contents of the oven. I reached inside and slid out the shelf, then suddenly the red velvet cake lunged at me. It was neither solid nor liquid, living nor dead, and it was very, very angry at me. It hissed at me, and I lurched back in surprise.

They growled a death threat to me in the language of pastries and sugary goodness evil. I was pretty sure it was about to suck the soul out of my body and eat it. I had to think fast or this twin plague on cake kind would envelope my whole oven and then... the world! Or worse - my house.

I stood my ground and declared my warning:

"Turn back into a good, proper cake and no harm will come to you! If you refuse, you choose death!"

In the end, I had to start over from scratch. There was nothing even resembling a cake in that oven. After ward it sorta turned out alright, but the cake looked kind of groggy and disgruntled, like while it was trying to sleep through the baking processes it was suffering from the ghosts of the two previous cakes that now haunted my oven. I covered it with the appropriate icing, and it didn't look quite so bad, but it was still giving me the evil eye. I was glad I didn't have to deal with it for much longer.

I sent it on its way come bake sale day, and have never cooked another red velvet cake since.

The Day My Mother Was Attacked by a Crocodile

I remember that day very clearly. It has been burned into my memory forever. As I look back, I'm not sure how she survived. I remember watching as my mother - my very own beloved mother - was nearly taken from me by a supposedly 'friendly' ghost.

It was around mid afternoon and my mother and I were in the living room watching TV. The Crocodile Hunter was on, and they were trying to transport a white crocodile to the Australian Zoo. I was laying on the couch next to the window and my mother was at the computer desk next to the entertainment center, and both of us had our eyes glued to the television. My cats wondered aimlessly about the house, and my neurotic black and white dog was hidden up under the computer desk. (This was before we had fart blossom dog.)

The Crocodile Hunter had caught himself another crock - but it was no ordinary crock. This here was a white crocodile. The thing was lashing about and biting people as best it could. And why shouldn't it? Some one bursts into your house and says "Whokay time ta move ya!" and a whole bunch of burly sweaty men come in, sit on you and tie you up? I'd be cranky too. It's kind of like how people think sharks are the bad guys. I'm sorry but if a hairy man in a speedo came into my house and started playing around, I'd attack him too.

Anywho, so as they were transporting the crocodile to the Australian Zoo, you could hear Steve Erwin's voice commenting on the whole ordeal.

"We named this feller 'ere Caspur, cause 'e's a whi' crocadel. An' 'e's the furst won the Australian Zoo 'as eva' 'ad! Though I'm not quite sure 'ow friendly 'e is - CRICKEY!!! 'e almost got me that time!"

As Caspur - er Casper - lunged around trying to bite all those around him, my mother and I stared transfixed at the screen. We watched as the men bravely risked their lives to save this poor defenseless animal. (Well, you know, defenseless besides the giant razor sharp teeth and whip like tail and massive size. Other than that he's totally defenseless... Armor like skin and really cranky mood excluded.) One slip and the crock could kill them for sure. Watching every move the crocodile made, we held our breath in anticipation, but neither of us could have seen the real danger that loomed ever closer in its conquest of death.





The something went horribly horribly wrong. Many things happened at once though. First, as Steve Erwin was narrating, his camera man, Wes, was getting a little to close the the danger.

"Oh! You betta' woch it Wes! That crock is out for ya-!" BAM!

The crocodile lunged for the camera just as something grabbed my foot.

The mind is a weird thing. Especially an ADD mind. It's not that we can't focus on one thing at a time, it's that our brain thinks a lot faster than most people and we can think of lots of things in the same span of time that normal people can only think of one thing. The first thing that popped into my head was the story my friend told me one time about a book she had read. In this book a man was forced to stay in a place that he described as a place where you would expect room service to be brought to you by six foot tall cockroaches.

This thought reminded me of the time I was sitting in my room at my desk doing homework, and I felt something tickle my foot. I wiggled my toes trying to get away from what was tickling me, but no matter where I placed my foot, I could still feel the tickling sensation. So finally, irritated, I looked under my desk to see what was tickling my barefoot, and there, crawling across my toes, was an enormous roach. Needless to say I was less than calm about it. My poor desk never recovered. I think they found the leg of it somewhere out in the back yard, but it was so deformed, they couldn't give a positive identification to it.

All this passed through my mind in a matter of milliseconds and that, paired with the knowledge that something had just grabbed my foot and the snarling of Casper the not-so-friendly-white-crocodile, made me realize that a giant, six foot tall cockroach had some how snuck into my house, grabbed my foot, and was preparing to kill us all and eat us. I knew that if we were to survive this ambush, I must warn my mother immediately for neither of us were fond of cockroaches, and she, especially, was terrified of them.

So I warned her the best way I knew how to. I declared there was a roach in the room very loudly, although I'm not entirely sure I got the entire statement out of my mouth.

Let's just face it... I panicked.

When I screamed "RAAAAHHHH!!!!!" in fear of being devoured by giant man eating cockroaches, the white crocodile on the television lunged for and bit the camera at precisely the same time. My mother, who had been just as absorbed in the program as I had been was caught in between two things of horror: The Casper the white and highly unfriendly crocodile, and a giant six foot tall cockroach that was trying to eat her child.

How did my mother react? Did she scream? Did she run away?

Nope.

She jumped up, fell back down into the chair, jumped up again whilst trying to lift her feet up so that the crocodile couldn't get her, and only managed to lift her feet above the computer monitor before dancing in her chair like a legless person trying to stomp on a herd of mice.

Apparently though, the combined tactics of mine and my mother's worked for the not only did it make Casper lurch back unexpectedly, it made the roach think that its dinner had some kind of mad cow disease. I mean really, would YOU want to eat something that all of a sudden started raving like a lunatic?

My cat, who had some how miraculously survived not being eaten by a six foot tall cockroach, scampered away in five different directions at once from all the commotion, and my dog, who had began barking wildly in all the confusion continued to tell any monsters or six foot tall cockroach armies that they were not welcome to terrorize his humans.

After apologizing to my mother profusely, the men on the television recaptured Casper (thanks to her ingenious distraction) and carried him off to be taken to the zoo. It was only once the crocodile was safely taken away that my mother dared to return her feet to the floor ever so cautiously.

Though she never screamed, my mother, she and I both knew this was a day that would burn in our memories forever. For we would never forget the day that we barely escaped the clutches of a six foot tall cockroach and Casper, the unfriendly white crocodile that lives in the TV.

Awkward Situations

I have a dog that has a gastro intestinal problem. I'm pretty sure the fart fairy beat him senseless with its fart stick when he was but a pup so that he may have the gift of smell. 'Cept not in a good way. Sometimes it gets so bad, that we have to evacuate the house for a few hours. Thankfully those moments are few and far between, but they HAVE come about. The problem with the farts is, not only do they smell bad AND linger, but they come in packs. Whenever I hear my dog fart (for they are generally audible and very human like at times), I shoo him away because I have been warned: there are more to come. But this has created a slight problem with my dog. He now thinks that farting means run as quickly as you can away from the area in which you have just farted. This has created many difficult scenarios for me - especially when I have company over.

So I'm left to dig myself out of these situations.

But with friends and family it's not so bad. After a little bit of teasing, the whole thing is forgotten and you can move on. My dog must have realized this, and not only became quite comfortable farting in front of my friends and family, but decided to branch out to see how many people could get a good laugh at my expense out of his farting. I'm not entirely sure what I did to make him want to do this to me, but it must have been something rather horrible.

I take classes online. And every two weeks, I get a call from my mentor to make sure that every thing's going smoothly - which it rarely ever is, but I don't tell him that. So I'm listening to him intently explaining the up coming courses I absolutely MUST take before my term is up, and suddenly my dog becomes very interested in what I am doing with this little black box like thing pressed to my face.

At first I pay him no attention, and continue sitting there listening to my mentor. This was a very, very bad idea. Apparently the lack of attention that I was giving my dog reminded him of something from his puppyhood that he didn't much like, and in the bringing back of these displeasing memories he began to develop a bad stomachache which quickly turned into something nasty.

In the middle of my mentor's sentence, my dog suddenly lets out a rather loud and disturbingly smelly fart that I am 100% certain the poor man heard, but was too polite to say anything about. And out of habit, I got onto the dog and shooed him away. This was also a mistake, for it made him realize I was unhappy with him, making him more upset and wanting to seek my forgiveness.

When my dog is upset or out of his element, he tends to get gassy. Sometimes his farts smell like a sick water buffalo on a hot day. Or worse. When I'm upset with him, he tends to become gassy and neurotic because if he farts he feels he must flee from the spot immediately and seek refuge elsewhere. So not only does he get gassy when he's nervous or upset, but he gives himself a panic attack every time he farts which causes him to fart more. It's a vicious unending cycle until I comfort him or take him outside to relieve himself.

At this point in the conversation with my mentor, I have a very gassy distressed dog who is trying to seek my forgiveness and get my attention to play with him at the same time. And I'm pretty sure he has to pee now.

So he farts again.

This time I KNOW my mentor heard it because he stuttered awkwardly for a moment before continuing on with what he was saying as if nothing happened. I now wanted to hide under a rock. Most people can understand a dog making an awkward sound once and put it out of their minds, because dogs are multi talented like that and are often creating awkward scenarios for their owners to get out of.

But twice? That was too much for anyone to believe. In my embarrassment, I think I started to apologize but suddenly the smell hit me and it was like trying to talk through a mouthful of really smelly bad tasting mush.

Now I was gagging and tearing up, but trying not to make choking sounds or cough at the same time. Meanwhile, I was also trying to make my mentor believe everything was perfectly fine and that my dog had not just spewed noxious clouds of poisonous gas from the lower, less-handsome regions of his body. My head was spinning from lack of oxygen because I was trying to hold my breath and not breath in the undead expulsions of my dog's butt. I was pretty sure I wasn't long for passing out. My dog wasn't making it any easier because he took the strange noises I was making as a game to figure out. He began to dance around me wildly, trying to weave in and out of my legs like a cat, while I tried to flee the room before I died, or my mentor suspected not all was right with my world.

It couldn't possibly get any worse from here could it?

Oh so very wrong.

As I was wading through sea of dog, a cord, still attached to the computer, caught my leg and made me not just stumble but start hopping on one leg while my dog danced around me in glee, and I tried to make my voice sound completely stable and not like my current situation was having a complete and total meltdown.

So then my cell phone rings.

That blasted Ninjaberry Assassin was mocking me, I know it. It had been watching me from where every it was hiding with evil joy at my misfortune dancing in its black heart and couldn't pass up a chance to add to its mirth.

So it began to play a song.

Which song you ask?

Dum Dadi Do by Nightcore.

And it didn't just start anywhere.

It had to start with "When the Morning comes comes, You're dancin' like your dumb dumb, and when the grove is high, The dummies jump to sky."

I don't even remember getting that song on my phone. I think it purposely downloaded it just to make an idiot out of me. That evil-evil-EVIL creature!!!

So there I am hopping around on one foot, my dog doing his own dance of glee around me, I've got one hand holding a phone to my face and the other arm flailing around for balance, and my own personal Ninjaberry Assassin is playing Dum Dadi Do somewhere in the distance.

Nothing could make this any worse.

How many times is a person allowed to be wrong in one day? I'm pretty sure I've surpassed my limit of all time wrongness.  But no, there was more. It was then I realized something about the cord that had tripped me. The one still attached to my computer? It was my headphones. The music wasn't coming from my Ninjaberry Assassin. Oh no. It was coming from my computer.


 

IT WAS A CONSPIRACY!!!! My electronics were out to get me!!!! I was sure that the computer had conspired with the Ninjaberry Assassin to do this to me, but I briefly wondered how many electronics had already been turned to its side. The stove I knew was already on their side for it tried to kill me with a flame thrower several times in the recent past - especially when I was cooking with oil. What else could go wrong during this conversation?

"Is everything alright?" my mentor asked.

Oh crap! In all the confusion of hopping on one leg while my dog danced around me to the tune of Dum Dadi Do and the horrid realization that my Ninjaberry was creating a household appliance army to take me out, I had forgotten my mentor was still on the phone listening to all this.

"Oh, yes! Sorry, I just tripped!" I hastily replied before putting my thumb over the mic so all the noise wouldn't be spilling through the phone like knives spilling out of a drawer and stabbing his eardrum.

Thankfully, I sounded convincing enough for him to continue on his verbal escapade while I was left to regain my balance and send my dog running for the living room where he promptly began to fart again in agony. Yup, he definitely had to pee.

My next foe to face was the computer. It had now moved from Dum Dadi Do to "Get Ready to Die" by Andrew W. K. and I knew I'd be in the battle for my life. Thankfully, the computer was tethered to the wall, so it didn't have the free range capabilities that the Ninjaberry Assassin had and that was very VERY good, but I still had no idea how to take it out. If I got any closer, I'm sure it would have smacked me in the face or tied me up with its cords, and then my mentor would certainly know something was up when I stopped responding to his inquiries.

So I did the only thing I could think of: I ran... for the circuit breaker.

I heard the "Beeeeep!!!" of pain as the power was cut off from the computer of evil (which consequently is the same sound that my surge protector makes when it detects the loss of power), and I knew my plan had worked.

My mentor was none the wiser, and he was wrapping up his speech to boot. Today was a good day. I had taken care of everything in a swift, calm manner, and now nothing was amiss. All my tasks were now complete.