Archive | March, 2011

Mar
28
2011
The Bad Side

Imagine a classroom of first graders, a group of six-year-olds in their first formal school experience.

Now imagine the teacher openly labeling some of these children as “good” and the others as “bad.”

Sounds ridiculous, right?

My Mom did her best to prepare me for the start of first grade since past experience indicated I would need some encouragement, perhaps even a shove. Mom took me to the school for a visit before the first day. We got to see my classroom and meet my teacher, Miss Griswold. I was still very nervous, but I hoped it would be OK, just like Mom said.

Unfortunately, Miss Griswold had other plans.

One day, Miss Griswold announced she would rearrange the room. She wanted to split the class into the “good side” and the “bad side” of the room. I felt panicked. I didn’t yet know what it meant to be on the bad side, but it couldn’t be good. I didn’t think I was bad, but I couldn’t know for sure I was safe until she finished calling out the assignments. I held my breath. She assigned me to the bad side of the room. My heart sank. I felt very confused. What could I have done? I never got into any trouble.

She drew very clear distinctions between the good side and the bad side. She reorganized our desks and created a boundary between the desks on the good side of the room and the bad side.

When she crossed the boundary, she changed her tone of voice. She spoke in a cheerful sing-song while on the good side. She switched to a threatening tone whenever she moved over to the bad side. While the bad side of the room worked on extra math problems at our desks, the good side of the room moved to the back of the room to lounge on pillows and listen to extra stories.

I was painfully shy, but I had to know why she thought I was bad. I could not think of anything I had done. Asking her why she assigned me to the bad side of the room provoked enormous anxiety. But I could not think of anything else. I worked up my courage, walked over to her, got her attention, and managed to ask her why.

She said I forgot to hand in a permission slip for a field trip before she had to ask me for it. She actually said this in more condescending a manner than that, as if it should have been obvious. “Remember the other day, when you forgot to hand in the permission slip…” After I nodded, she said “Well, that’s why.”

If there was a way out of the bad side of the room, she didn’t offer any tips. I felt sick to my stomach. Going to school everyday made me miserable.

I have no idea how long this went on before my Mom’s complaints eventually put an end to it, but long enough for my panic and embarrassment to turn into dread. I stayed home “sick” a lot. I couldn’t even relax at home, because I worried about what would happen the next day if I couldn’t convince Mom to let me stay home again. Finally, Mom said if I missed one more day, they would hold me back. I stopped staying home.

Eventually Miss Griswold introduced a new system to reinforce good behavior, a token-earning system. The tokens were small chips, round and Crayola red. I don’t remember earning any. I absolutely did not want to call any attention to myself, good or bad. I didn’t need any tokens or prizes, I just needed to be safe.

While I don’t remember how long I sat on the bad side of the room, I do remember why, and I do remember coming to understand that no mistake would go unpunished.

———–

This week’s RemembeRED prompt was to “mine your memories and write about the earliest grade you can recall.” I’m really hoping that someday one of these prompts will elicit an unambiguously happy memory because I swear I do have some!

For those of you who might wonder, Miss Griswold was my teacher’s real name. I suppose it’s possible that someone could identify her based on this post, and I have three things to say to that:  1.) Fuck her, 2.) She got married and changed her name, and 3.) Fuck her.

Mar
26
2011
Playlist Week 11: What Made You Forget That I Was Raw

I’m challenging myself to get through a whole shuffle of my music collection on my iPod without skipping. Then I write about what I heard each week.

The title of the post this week comes from “Mama Said Knock You Out” by Mr. Smith or Ladies Love Cool James, better known as LL Cool J. This song was a staple of my senior year in high school. I love this song beyond all reason. There are so many fabulous lines in it that it’s hard to pick a favorite.

  • “Cause you know I have beef wit” (what?)
  • “I’m not your average man, when I got a jammy in my hand, DAMN!”
  • “Farmers! What? Farmers! What?”
  • “Don’t you never ever pull my lever, cause I explode and my nine is easy to load” (the best part of that line is how it is immediately followed by “I gotta thank God”)

I got the Mama Said Knock You Out CD for free, because I basically stole it from my friend Erin’s sister. This CD was a large part of the soundtrack for a graduation trip to Niagara Falls Erin and I took with another friend. We met a group of hockey players staying at the motel next door and one of them was into me, which was a life changing event. I wrote the following in my diary:

“Well, for the first time in my entire life a male person told me that he loved me. I have absolutely no idea who he is, but I have his hat.” July 16, 1991

So I totally could have gotten laid that night had I wanted my first time to be with someone who professed to love me at first sight but who didn’t think it was important to tell me his name. He also was probably very drunk. But as I walked away, he screamed out my name. I liked that.

“Mama Said Knock You Out” covers the “random memory” category, obviously, but it also covers the “most embarrassing confession about a song” category, which I haven’t used in awhile.

A few months ago, a Facebook friend posted a link to a cover of the song. I admitted the following tidbit on Facebook, which I will now share here as well. When I first heard the line “Old English filled my mind and I came up with a funky rhyme,” I thought LL was talking about this Old English. Um, yeah. Everyone knows he was really talking about this Old English (blatantly stole that joke from my Facebook friend, thanks Don!). Presumably, LL meant this Olde English. Actually I prefer to believe that LL meant it as a double entendre.

I was so amazed by the Unplugged version that it totally changed my view of rap music for at least 5 minutes and 9 seconds.

Here is the weekly playlist summary:

* Songs listened to this week:  120

* Completed: 51%

* Number of double shots:  4 (The Police, The Beatles, Genesis, The Innocence Mission)

* Number of triple shots:  1 (The Police, all live bootleg songs)

* Percentage of songs that came up during running that were so totally not helpful in motivating my running:  I have no idea. I only ran indoors once this week and I used a treadmill in the disgustingly hot and crowded room so I could watch the NCAA tournament. So I wasn’t focused on my music. I was also distracted by the douche next to me who insisted on fist pumping after every good UConn play while running on a treadmill in public.

* Song o’ the fuck mix:  Wire Train “Open Sky“

If not for LL, the title of this week’s post would have been either “On the Menu for Today is Redemption,” or “I Don’t Fuck with No Buddha.” It is indeed a very open sky. This is probably my favorite Wire Train song, so I was bummed it’s not on You Tube. Probably because they say fuck…and diss religion. Yeah, I guess that wasn’t going to be a hit single, eh?

* Fun song that everyone should know about:  King Missile “Take Stuff from Work”

I love this song. It makes me feel better about my low pay and appalling working conditions. Ha-ha…just kidding, I love my job (please don’t fire me). I love the suggestion to “take a case of White Out.” Dude, I am old. When I first started at my job, we still used White Out. Because we were still typing up important documents on typewriters using carbon paper. Mother of God, it was the stone age and I was there.

* Song I’ll be saddest not to hear again until this is over:  Delays “Wanderlust”

A lot of the time, I like to listen to music to forget where I am and what I’m doing. This song works.

Mar
25
2011
Weekly Update Haiku Style

Must bump current post.

So I will write some haiku.

Like Abby just did.

——————————–

Lack of sleep hinders

executive functioning.

Lenten promise FAIL.

——————————–

I got back on track.

I’m eating primal-type food.

Sugar all I miss.

——————————–

I wrote memoir post.

It’s hard to tell but I swear

Life is happy too.

——————————–

March madness is here.

Choose my teams based on the coach.

Crush on Brad Stevens.

——————————–

It’s been a long week.

Forgive any miscounting.

I’m not a poet.

Mar
21
2011
Keeps a letter in the pocket of his coat, but he never breaks the seal

The electricity was out that evening, and it was hot and stuffy and dark inside the house. We sat on the porch to enjoy the last bit of light and the slight breeze. We sat in silence in the fading light and rocked while he held my hand. I felt complete contentment in that moment right before his confession.

When he started rubbing my hand with his finger I knew something was wrong. Then he softly blurted something out. I didn’t understand right away. If what he just said was true, then everything else wasn’t. He had been successfully keeping something from me for years. And the remarkably few times I had thought I noticed something off and asked him about it, each denial was a lie. He knew how important the truth is to me, it’s one of the things that drew him to me.

I felt sick and fled to the bathroom where I crumpled to the tile. I sobbed over the loss of my certainty. I had years of memories to replace with the truth. Each new connection brought a different emotion…betrayal, anger, humiliation, and fear.

How could he have done this? Why didn’t he just say something? How could I have missed this? How much damage has he done?

Questions filled my mind, each one unanswered before the next one began. He came into the bathroom and gingerly sat down facing me. My frustration was heightened by his inability to answer any but the most factual questions. He was able to explain the what, but not the why. He didn’t fully understand his motivations.

Unfortunately, I thought I did. The worst of the emotions pounding on me was guilt. I was taking an objective look at myself and imagining the kind of reaction I might have had to learning the truth earlier. I shuddered at how punishing I can be, how punishing I likely would have been. Would I have offered him forgiveness, without really letting it go? Used it against him at the slightest provocation? Oh God, probably.

While not an excuse to lie, I certainly didn’t create an environment in which it would feel safe to tell me truths I didn’t want to hear. I wouldn’t have wanted to tell me this either.

What kind of person was I, so intolerant of weakness in others and in myself, and so oblivious to the struggles of others, even those I love? What could I gain if I stopped the denial of weakness and embraced vulnerability? Providing forgiveness was not a sign of weakness, it was a gift to myself to be a person I could be proud of and to build with him what I believed I already had.

By this point, it was almost completely dark and I struggled to make out his features. He looked sad and worried. He didn’t know what I was going to do. He didn’t know I would not leave him. He didn’t realize that I would forgive him. So I told him these things. And I meant them.

———————————————

The title of this post comes from the song “Postcards from Hell” by the Wood Brothers, which I interpret to be about the dangers of protecting yourself from things you don’t want to know.

This week’s prompt from the Red Dress Club is about forgiveness.

Mar
21
2011
Playlist Week 10: Never Let Me Slip, Cause If I Slip, Then I’m Slippin

I’m challenging myself to get through a whole shuffle of my music collection on my iPod without skipping. Then I write about what I heard each week.

I didn’t get through many songs this past week since I only worked three days. I took some vacation time for a visit with my Mom and to go to the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament (CBS and the NCAA want me to call these the “second and third” rounds now that there are more play-in games, but I hate change) at the Verizon Center. The two Butler games that we saw were very exciting. And I’m not going to mention how adorable Brad Stevens is because that gets on Dave’s nerves.

The title of the post this week comes from “Nuthin But A G Thang” by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. As a metro commuter, I don’t get a chance to drive much. But recently I had to drive to a friend’s house and got to rock out with Sirius on the way. I heard several great songs during that drive including “Nuthin’ But A G Thang.” I also heard Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative” from the very beginning and was overly excited about it. That song came out during my sophomore year of high school and over 20 years later I still remembered most of the words, right down to “Yo Teddy, kick it like this.” Maybe I’ll download that song after the shuffle is over, you know, if I feel like it (I mean, I made this money, you didn’t, right Ted?). Hopefully I sounded a little better than this guy singing…

One of my favorite lines in “Nuthin But A G Thang” is the one from the post title, you know, about the slipping. When I googled the lyrics to make sure I had the line right, I found someone who called this line one of the worst in rap. I disagree, I think Dre has deeply and profoundly captured what happens to me when I allow myself to slip on something difficult. One slip, then I’m slipping, so I can’t let myself slip. This is deep, know what I’m saying? OK, I’m just very amused by this line.

So how is my sleep challenge to be in bed by 11pm going? It’s a good thing I don’t believe that doing this as a Lenten promise will get me closer to God because I’m failing (I guess I should say slippin). Almost two weeks in and I haven’t been in bed by 11 once. The first two nights I was in bed before midnight, which is a vast improvement over my usual bedtime, but lights out was basically my usual time because I messed around on my iPad for awhile. I had hoped that physically being in the bed would make it easier for me to give in to the exhaustion and go to sleep, but apparently not. The siren call of the brightly screened electronics is very seductive. Then I had to work late a lot to prepare for the vacation time and reverted right back to carving an evening for myself out of my sleep time, so I’m back to 1am again.

I hoped to get back on track during my vacation time, but with Mom visiting and late nights watching basketball, and the ability to sleep in since I didn’t have to work, I’ve been staying up just as late as before vacation and I’ve been getting out of bed later. I go back to work tomorrow and I’m going to try moving my alarm clock so that I can’t turn it off without getting out of bed.

Here is the weekly playlist summary:

* Songs listened to this week: 71

* Completed: 47%

* Number of double or triple shots: zippo

* Percentage of songs that came up during running that were so totally not helpful in motivating my running: 14%

The song “Starship Edelweiss” was very motivating to my running, except for when it made me start laughing.

Speaking of laughing while running, there was also Ween’s “Fat Lenny.” I almost used the line “Fat Lenny knows what it is to be Fat Lenny,? ’cause he’s Fat Lenny” as the post title this week.

* Song that disproves my assertion that I don’t like Peter Gabriel-era Genesis songs that I haven’t heard Phil Collins sing: “Dancing With the Moonlit Knight” At least I don’t have any memory of ever hearing Phil sing this.

* Number of songs that I’m so totally deleting:  at least 1 (LL Cool J “Cheesy Rat Blues,” I did NOT have to rip all of Mama Said Knock You Out)

* Random memory:  The Judybats “All Day Afternoon”

I don’t exactly remember when I first tried running, but I know I ran off and on in college. The Judybats’ Pain Makes You Beautiful CD fueled many a happy run and walk along the river from campus to Genesee Valley Park.  Occasionally there would be a sunny pleasant day and listening to this while being outside would make me happy. The weather on Friday this week was so lovely and running that morning reminded me of those sunny days in fall and spring during college.

Mar
17
2011
Chuck O’ The Irish

Apparently we often get our dog Chuck groomed in March, as evidenced by all the Irish-themed bandanna pictures I seem to have of him. In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I thought I’d share the best of Chuck celebrating his Irish (?!?) heritage. Dave insists that Chuck is a Finnish Lapphund, but I guess he can still be an honorary Irish dog since he looks so good in green.

We had Chuck groomed last weekend in preparation for a visit from my Mom this week. She really dislikes animals (I have no idea how I came from her), so we like Chuck to be all freshly coiffed when she’s going to be around him. Here is this year’s shamrock bandanna…I think Chuck rocks the argyle.

Last year’s bandanna was a little creepier…leprechauns!

But the bandanna that started this photo series was from a grooming visit in 2006. The picture from that year is quintessential Chuck. Not only is it the best of the Irish-themed Chuck pictures, but it is also my favorite picture of Chuck ever.  I titled it “Chuck looking adorable.” I love the sparkling bright happy eyes, I love how it looks like he’s smiling at me, and I love how his cheeks and neck are made entirely of fluff.

Dave used this picture to buy me the best present ever a few years ago for Christmas. He sent Baby Faces this picture and they made a custom pendant for me. When I opened it I was so confused. I thought Dave somehow found a Chow Chow pendant that happened to look a lot like Chuck, which would be weird since Chuck is a part-Chow mutt. I asked him how he found such a thing, and he explained that he had it made for me. This gift made me a little teary. It gives me comfort to wear this pendant when I have to be away from my Chucky puppy.

Quite frankly, I find the pendants of people kind of creepy, but the pet ones are adorable. I think animal eyes lend themselves to this application better.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Mar
12
2011
Playlist Week 9: Hard Now To Picture A Me Without A You

I’m challenging myself to get through a whole shuffle of my music collection on my iPod without skipping. Then I write about what I heard each week.

The title of the post this week comes from Mew’s song “Chinaberry Tree.” Mew’s music is so pretty and evocative, I just want to travel to this song and be a tourist inside it for awhile.

Here is the weekly summary:

* Songs listened to this week:  136
* Completed:  44%
* Number of double shots:  2 (The Police, Genesis)

* Percentage of songs that came up during running that were so totally not helpful in motivating my running:  29%

The songs that came up during my Tuesday evening run were so great, including my favorite running motivation song ever:  Electric Six “Gay Bar.” I’m linking to a not-at-all official video for this song because it is so excellent, you have to check it out for at least a few seconds.

* Best coincidence:  After finally mentioning the under-representation of Interpol songs in the shuffle thus far, four of their songs came up this week. It’s like the iPod knows, even though I’m sure it’s just my human brain looking for patterns.

* Guilty pleasure:  Olivia Newton-John and Cliff Richard “Suddenly”

Rude Cactus, one of my favorite bloggers, discussed guilty pleasures this week and when I commented, I was all like “You don’t know from guilty dude!” Now I feel a little bad, because who am I to say that his guilty pleasures aren’t guilty and that mine are more so. Guilty pleasures are personal. Anyway, with that said, at the risk of judging guilty pleasures again…THIS is a guilty pleasure. I’m fully aware of how cheesy this song is, but goddamn, I love it. Just watching the video when I grabbed the link for this post made me all tingly. I’m a sucker for songs that are fun to sing. Plus, that Cliff Richard is dreamy, no? And I adore Olivia Newton-John, have loved her ever since my Mom took me to see Grease when I was five years old. She epitomized cool to me, even before Sandy becomes a slut in the movie.

* Best double shot of heart-satisfying musically-intelligent love songs:  James “Just Like Fred Astaire” and The Police “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”

I would totally have chosen “Just Like Fred Astaire” for my first dance wedding song if Dave and I had had a real wedding with those traditional bells and whistles. Oh yeah, and if the album had been released prior to our wedding.  I think it came out a few days later.

I could listen to “Every Little Thing” eight million times on repeat and never tire of it. Before the shuffle challenge, having one of the live bootleg versions come up on my iPod made me stop the shuffle and play the original. Just hearing the first soft cymbals at the beginning makes my heart leap with joy that I get to hear this song. I love how energetic it is, a love song you can dance to. I love the video too, the guys are just so adorable with their dancing around. During the Police reunion frenzy, I downloaded what are apparently some of Sting’s demos for the Ghost in the Machine album. This song is just brilliant even on the demo. They supposedly couldn’t record a better version in the studio, so Stewart just played his drums over the demo.

* Random memories: The Beatles “Two of Us”

This song reminds me of high school. I planned on using the line “you and I have memories, longer than the road that stretches out ahead” as my senior yearbook quote but think I changed my mind to something dumb at the last minute. I can’t check this because somehow I have possession of my grade school yearbooks, but not the ones from high school. I just added that to the list of crap my Mom needs to bring down next week when she comes to visit for the NCAA tournament at Verizon Center.

I had really hoped that line from the Beatles would still ring true years later, but sadly, save for a couple of exceptions, I have lost touch with so many friends over the years, not just from high school. Often it was my fault, but sometimes it was just a drifting that happens when you can’t choose to live nearby to everyone you love after you grow up. Sucks.

* Song/video to celebrate the week that Dave’s bass pedals finally arrived:  Genesis “Abacab”

Dave helpfully forwarded me the link to this video so that I could see the bass pedals at the beginning (at the 4 second mark). You see, Dave needed bass pedals. Now he has bass pedals. Every day is like Christmas around here!

Mar
9
2011
I Gets No Sleep*

Getting more sleep was my key goal for 2011. Here’s an update…not so much.

If anything, my sleep deprivation might be worse so far in 2011 because there’s just so much that I want to do. Like I said in my year-end post, I resent the small amount of free time I have so I just steal hours from my sleep. Recently, what’s been worse than the stubborn drive of mine to stay up is the sheer inertia of my exhaustion. I’m not even actively choosing to still be awake anymore, I am just too tired to move from the couch downstairs to the bed upstairs. Listen to how messed up that is–too tired to go to bed.

Part of the problem is the winter running group I joined to help keep me motivated to train for a 10 mile race in April. I did this last year too and I forgot about how much it messed with my sleep schedule. Every Saturday since mid-January, I’ve had to get up earlier than I want to–about as early as I get up for work. Getting up early six days in a row means that I sleep like the dead on Saturday night. Like snooze 4 or 5 times without being aware of it deep.  I get up really late on Sundays and then have trouble getting to sleep on Sunday night and thus start off each week already sleep deprived. You would think after 9 weeks of this (and 16 weeks last year) I would have figured out a way to get a handle on this, but apparently not.

I’m pulling out the big guns on this sleep issue…LENT. While I’m sure the Pope would excommunicate me if he was even aware I existed (I am Satan, you know!), there are certain things that stay with a person after 14 years of Catholic school. One of those things for me is the Lenten promise. I’ve long since passed the time that the fear of God made me do this, but for some reason I have better willpower to do difficult things during Lent.

So a few years ago I decided to take advantage of this situational willpower of mine. Since then I have given up fried foods, TV (!), and dessert (twice!) for Lent, all successfully. Two years ago, I tried sleep for my Lenten promise and not once did I go to bed by the appointed hour of 11pm (or even by midnight). My sleep problem is a pesky little bitch.

But I’ve had enough. I’m so tired lately that my executive functioning is noticeably off. I’m exhausted yet wired all at the same time. I give my best hours to work, so that means it’s really my personal life that is suffering the most and that’s not acceptable.

Given the recent difficulty I have had physically getting myself to the bed from the couch where I’m entrenched with my entertainment, my Lenten plan this year is simple. Each day during Lent my goal is to be in bed at 11pm. I’m not saying lights out, I’m saying physically in the bed. So as long as I am in bed, I can read, screw around on the iPad, or do anything else that can be done in bed (!) after 11pm. If I start getting groggy like I have been, rather than having to forklift my ass off of the couch and go all the way upstairs, I can just close my eyes and drift off to dreamland.

NOTE: I’m finishing this post around 11:10pm, so already you can see how fantastically this is going. Love the irony of breaking my Lenten promise on day one because I was writing a blog post about my Lenten promise. Oy vey!

*title comes from ‘Insomnia’ by Faithless, which ironically came up on my iPod shuffle last night during my run

Mar
9
2011
Cupcakes Part The Last (!)

The cupcake eating must and will stop…on Ash Wednesday, which is technically today, so I need to get my latest reviews posted now. The last thing I’m going to need while trying not to eat cupcakes is to write a cupcake review.

We tried Bake Shop in Arlington a couple of weeks ago. The reviews I’d read were quite favorable, and it’s local and not part of a chain so I wanted to like it, but this place didn’t do it for us. The cupcakes were small, I’m talking tiny. They weighed a bit over 2 ounces. I got red velvet, since that’s my head to head comparison flavor. Bake Shop doesn’t frost its red velvet with cream cheese frosting. I think I would have been OK with this had the buttercream been really good, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t sweet enough, it tasted like barely sweetened butter and the texture of the frosting was unpleasant–very greasy feeling,  like whipped butter. Dave didn’t think his toffee cupcake was anything special either. For people who don’t like things sweet, these might be the cupcakes for you. We are not those people. The cupcakes there were cute though…

I knew that there was an Arlington location of Crumbs from New York City, but we hadn’t tried it yet. During a recent staff meeting at work, I learned that there was also a location very close to my office. This was information I really didn’t need. I lasted one day with that knowledge before stopping by. I got a “fluffernutter” cupcake that day and ate the whole thing but should have stopped at half. It was good, but so sweet. I love sweets and have never really tasted anything too sweet, but this was close. These are about as far removed from Bake Shop as I can imagine, and strangely I didn’t love the cupcakes from either shop. Here is a photo of the cupcake I ate after lunch at work (stooping to new lows, eating dessert with lunch!).

Dave surprised me one night with Crumbs’ red velvet and I couldn’t even finish it. It was overpoweringly sweet and half was more than enough. These cupcakes aren’t really horrible, but they are huge, taste processed rather than homemade, and are so sweet that they burned my throat about half way through. They are just too much. I also thought about shipping these cupcakes to my nephew for his birthday because they seemed like a treat a teenager might enjoy. But the cost to ship 6 Crumbs cupcakes is $58. You can buy a dozen from Georgetown Cupcake and ship them for less than that. Insanity. Here is me being artsy with my macro lens on the Crumbs red velvet.

Finally, the long-awaited Sprinkles opened in Georgetown on Thursday of last week. They even sent me an email about the opening…how did they know? By Sunday, I was shaking like a junkie with the need to try them. So Dave and I drove to Georgetown in the rain. Even with rain and the new Sprinkles competition, the line outside Georgetown Cupcake was as long as I’ve ever seen it, so we didn’t bother to get their cupcakes for a head to head. We’ve eaten enough Georgetown Cupcake to do this from memory.

There was a short line at Sprinkles, and it seemed like a place that had only recently opened. Even though there was what seemed like a reasonable number of customers, it was chaotic. Everyone was very pleasant, but there were a lot of people behind the counter and too many of them dealt with us. It was very confusing. Also, some flavors are available in sprinkled versus non-sprinkled versions and Dave hates sprinkles. Luckily I told the girl who waited on us this fact, because it sounded like the default would have been sprinkled. So I saved myself listening to some whining.

I got a red velvet and a carrot. Dave got a chocolate with dark chocolate frosting and a vanilla with milk chocolate frosting, which was the closest available to his usual flavor (vanilla with dark chocolate frosting). Sprinkles cupcakes are bigger than Georgetown’s, with the important and annoying caveat that Sprinkles does not appear to be very careful about portioning their batter. The dark chocolate cupcake was noticeably smaller than the other three (one of the things below is not like the other…).

Here are the weights:

red velvet:  4.8 oz.

milk chocolate:  4.6 oz.

carrot:  5.0 oz.

dark chocolate:  3.4 oz.

I think the dark chocolate discrepancy is unacceptable.

When I removed the red velvet, I noticed a greasy feel to the cupcake liner (see the picture of the bottom of the box after I’ve removed the red velvet and notice the grease mark the cupcake left behind). That didn’t seem good to me. I was also worried based on the look of the cupcakes that there wouldn’t be enough frosting but the look was deceiving as once I bit into the red velvet there was clearly enough frosting. The circle decorations on the top of the cupcakes look nice but are hard as a rock and don’t taste good, unlike the fondant decorations on Georgetown’s cupcakes which are softer and taste fine.

I liked the flavor of the cream cheese frosting on the red velvet a lot. The cake was very moist and flavorful as well. The cake was pretty delicate, almost like a boxed cake, and didn’t seem to want to hold up the frosting once I’d eaten about half. The carrot cake was moist as well. It was very spiced and flavorful and I liked that it didn’t have any fruit in it, just nuts and carrots. The cream cheese frosting was flavored quite heavily with cinnamon, which I didn’t like at first but grew on me. This cake also had a delicate feel and crumb and a somewhat greasy feel. This one actually left a film on my teeth which I could have done without. Here is a picture of the frosting depth on the red velvet.

I realize that these comments might make it sound like I didn’t like Sprinkles, but that’s not accurate. I did like them, but they reminded me of boxed cake mix (which I happen to like). The resemblance, both visual and texture-wise, of the cupcakes to boxed cake made me start to think that Sprinkles must use oil rather than butter. That would also explain the difference between Sprinkles and Georgetown in taste and texture, since I know Georgetown uses butter. But then I found a review of Sprinkles red velvet cupcake mix and the directions clearly call for butter, not oil. So much for that theory.

Dave didn’t like his vanilla cupcake. He said the cake was tough. He let me have a bite and I loved the flavor of the cupcake (I much prefer milk chocolate to dark, so this cupcake was right up my alley), but I could see his point about the cake part, as it did have a tougher crumb than either of my flavors. He much prefers the Georgetown (and Baked & Wired) version of that flavor. He really liked the dark chocolate cupcake, although he said it was as good as the chocolate cake I always make for his birthday (from the can of Hershey’s cocoa), and given the price of these cupcakes, maybe the cake should be better than what I can do at home. In terms of the delicateness of the cake, the dark chocolate split in two when Dave tried to take the cupcake out of its liner.

Dave says we should stick to Georgetown and Baked & Wired. I think I want to give Sprinkles another chance (perhaps next week, when they offer “green velvet” for St. Patrick’s Day…what? green is my favorite color!). It’s weird how all three of our favorite cupcake places are so close to each other. When I looked up the location of Sprinkles on Sunday, I noticed that Georgetown Cupcake, Sprinkles, and Baked & Wired were situated in a sinister looking compass-like shape on the map. I guess the Masons are behind the D.C. cupcake trend too.

Mar
7
2011
Bear

My childhood best friend lived next door to us. She was three years older than me, three years more creative and more fun. Playing with her was much more fun than playing by myself and those were usually my only options. We were inseparable, especially during the summer. She would come over and make up impossibly sophisticated stories for us to act out with my dolls.

During middle school, she started to tire of having a younger shadow. She and some other girls her age would gang up to play tricks on me and laugh at my confusion. I would blink back tears and go home, only to go back for more at the first invitation. Over time, she stopped being my friend altogether. The next summer extended before me like an eternity of empty time.

The couple who rented her family’s upstairs apartment got a puppy. I discovered the puppy once when I headed out to sit in the backyard to pretend I had something to do and I was overjoyed. I realized I was considerably more excited about this puppy than his owners were because they left him out there alone a lot. I think I learned his name from the yelling his owners’ provided from the back door.

Bear was adorable and sweet and very aptly named. He looked like a little teddy bear and he was desperate for attention. I started engaging him through the chain link fence that separated our backyard from his. I felt sorry for him and I fell in love with him. One day he started digging under the fence. Though I sensed there would be trouble, I encouraged this behavior. I wanted to hold him and pet him and love him without that stupid fence in the way. When he finally squeezed over to my side, being with him was as wonderful as I had imagined. I picked him up and brought him to my face and talked to him and felt his warm puppy tongue on my cheek. I plopped him down on my lap and stroked his soft puppy fur and felt such joy and love.

I wanted to keep him.

The neighbors were paying more attention than I thought and it wasn’t long before I started hearing them calling for Bear. I hid behind out house for awhile in a futile attempt to keep him longer. The longer the search went on when Bear was right next door, the more trouble for me. Eventually I decided to go sit with Bear on our front porch and let his owners find us.

I held Bear on my lap and tried to make peace with giving him back. I watched with dread as Bear’s owners turned the corner and finally noticed us sitting together.

“Didn’t you hear us calling him?” They looked pissed.

I ended up saying I’d found him, that he must’ve dug under the fence and gotten free. I could tell they didn’t believe me. But there was no harm done, so they just took him back from me without another word.

When I went to the backyard after that, Bear would run over and immediately go to the hole he had dug. The owners tried to fill the hole with soil, but that was no match for Bear, so they eventually secured that area of the fence with plywood. I couldn’t go out there anymore because he would still try to dig and it was heartbreaking and I was afraid he’d hurt himself. I also didn’t want to have to see the day that he stopped trying.

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The prompt this week was to write about a scene from your life that best illustrates your true self.