So remember how my beloved son's birthday was a MONTH ago?
Well, he spent several weeks badgering me about a classroom cupcake party because "all the kids have cupcakes or ice cream or stuff that we eat at snacktime to celebrate their birthday...blah blah blah."
I pointed out the fact that we celebrated his birthday THREE times with THREE different cakes and THREE different sets of guests. He was unphased by this data.
The next day (Friday) I went to work and shared my pain about having to buy a bunch of cupcakes to bring in the following Monday. Of course, I keep company with wonderful over achieving uber mommies...they looked at me blankly and in unison said "But aren't you going to make the cupcakes from scratch? It only takes a second and it's really worth the time."
Time...in my life it's far more valuable than money. Which is why I took a huge paycut and career downshift to have time to be the mom and creative person I wanted to be rather than another high strung, anxiety driven executive management droid that I was.
So I spent last Sunday looking for all the ingredients I need. What an education that was. Did you know that the East Village is NOT a really great place to find cake flour....at one point I was tempted to throw up my hands and ask "who do you have to f*ck to find baking ingredients in this neighborhood?"
You see, I live in an area where most people have an oven in their kitchen only because it came with their apartment. Many of my childless friends/couples use the oven part for storage. When you live in a neighborhood that has ten zillion places to eat within a two block radius - sweating over pots and pans doesn't make much sense. Of course, it's also true that in the East Village - diet coke and coffee have their own dedicated space in the food pyramid.
Long story short. It's Sunday night at 9pm and I 'm toiling away, stirring the batter, getting the cocoa out for the frosting when I look at my husband and say "do you think that Ben will remember how his mom made cupcakes from scratch for his class snack/celebration?"
To which he replied "No. He'll just remember that he ate a chocolate frosted cupcake."
So I gently woke my son up, brought him into the kitchen and said "Look Ben. This is your mommy making cupcakes from scratch because she loves you more than anything in the world. So just in case I kick off sooner rather than later - I really want you to remember this."
He rubbed his eyes and said "okay" and returned to bed. The next day Ben woke up with a fever of 102. He and the 27 cupcakes stayed home from school.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Will write about today's anti-war march soon. Brian/Ben and I marched from Union Square to Foley Square down in the financial district. It was a beautiful day and there was an ocean of people.
Support Our Troops. Bring Them Home Now!!! Not Another Death For Oil...
5 comments:
Two of my students brought in chocolate cupcakes this week. (I'm certain that both frosting and cupcakes were out of cans/boxes). No one noticed. Chocolate makes such a mess that if any of my parents ask what to bring for birthday snack I put on my pitiful face and say "Please do not bring chocolate cupcakes." There is something about the texture that makes them so delicious and yet oh so crumbly and then it gets all over the floor etc which I then have to clean so the janitor doesn't get upset. A couple of weeks ago I had a parent of a child turning 2 who brought in a yellow two layer cake with icing (straight from the bakery) with forks and paper plates and those children didn't leave hardly any mess and they are all turning 2!! It comes down to the texture (and maybe messy eaters :-)
I loved the part about the kitchens in the city - so true. I remember unpacking box after box of dishes and glassware when we moved into our place, wondering where in the world we were going to put it all.
I now have a kitchen with more than adequate cabinet space and an island to boot, but you will find Pillsbury cake mixes in my pantry because I still value my time more than baking from scratch. And Tacy doesn't care either.
I hope Ben is feeling better.
HI really enjoyed catching up on your posts and notes. Hope you somehow get used to taking the photos and dragging them onto your desktop and then pressing "photo" and choose in your post editor here in your editing blogspot area.......it took me a while but I got it going now... I love seeing phots of life in NYC. Blogspot re-vamped their photo edit system so no one needs flickr anymore. You are so lucky and so cool to have that rent stablized apartment wow!
Cheers,
Candy
http://gnosticminx.blogspot.com
That is so typical. You work your ass off and sickness comes to ruin the whole shebang. I wonder when classroom birthday celebrations started because we never did that when I was a kid. Bummer. I like cupcakes.
Jar - I would love to have baked an almighty sheet cake. But I guess that just isn't cool with this second grade crowd.
MG - I lived with a trained chef for ten years - he always said that when it came to kids - a box mix didn't make one bit of difference. It was just be be a neurotic working mom. I'm sure I'll do other ridiculous overcompensating acts in the future!!!
candy - I'm really going to try to post my own photos. My husband said he's willing to attempt our millionth training session on the topic.
kranki - Actually I had classroom parties when I was a kid but they stopped at second grade. You usually had a party in class when you were a summer kid. (i'm born in August). I just never celebrated my birthday six or seven times each year.....
but maybe we all should because it might cheer us up.
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