The YOLO Approach

Some of you probably remember, back in another life, I had a baking blog. I was going through a difficult time and decided that I would deal with it by learning to bake. The plan was that I would bake a thing a week, and then give it away (in an attempt to connect with more people) and then I would blog about it.

Well, it will shock, SHOCK you all to know, I'm a little cavalier with direction reading, probably why the mechanics of crocheting aren't difficult, but the pattern reading... What even are those things? But back to the baking. I was always kinda like, Is this step really necessary? What happens if I don't do this part...

This type of thinking was well on display one evening when I was attempting to make a multi-layer cake, and my husband, who was not my husband then, but was rather a guy who kept showing up in my life and asking me to spend time with him, appeared at my door. I had been very sneakily avoiding him up to this point (because I wasn't looking to date anyone despite the fact my whole baking project was about trying to meet new people... Leave those mental gymnastics to past me), but that night, he showed up bearing a freshly grilled steak on a paper plate.

At this time in my life, I would forget to eat. That evening I was in the middle of a very important baking project, but steak. I had made zero plans to feed myself, so I let him in my house.

(Side note: THIS NO LONGER WORKS ON ME. I AM NOW WELL FED AND DO NOT LET RANDOM MEN WITH HOT FOOD INTO MY DOMICILE... Unfortunately, what would work is if anyone, literally anyone, showed up on my porch with a cat. My husband knows this is a vulnerability to our home security, but alas, it still plagues him.)

So my future-husband showed up and asked to spend some time with me. In order to continue my very important baking mission and to get that steak, I told him he could sit at my kitchen table, which happened to be a giant, round outdoor table which I had shoved into a nook clearly designed for a table with corners. I said he could sit there and watch me bake if he really wanted to.

I was hoping this would be off putting and he would leave, but instead he settled into the free chair I'd collected and proceeded to engage me in conversation while I baked. Now this project was not an easy one. It was a ten layer cake, and the layers were pancake thin. Then I had to frost it. And, I was making it for a birthday cake for a co-worker I really liked, so I had to get it done because the next day was her birthday.

And the time crunch, that was the start of this particular disaster. It was getting late, I mean like past ten, and the layers were still in the oven. The recipe CLEARLY said not to ice them while they were hot, and I was like, I'm clearly not going to listen to that because I'm a very busy woman on a mission and I have no time to let the layers do something as superficial as cool.

So while the layers were cooking, I got to work on the frosting. I put the pot on the stove, melted the chocolate, and the recipe said I needed to sift in powdered sugar into the hot pot.

I clearly remember saying something, out loud, to the tune of, "Sifting seems like an unnecessary step." And in my reckless abandon, I moved to throw the entire cup of powdered sugar into the cooking pot, not a sifter in sight. Then several things happened at once.

My grey cat ran between my feet and the oven, causing me to move back. By stepping back but continuing the movement of adding the sugar, I missed getting it all in the pot and instead, it not only landed on the cat, who was now running away because something had attacked him from above, but also on the stove burner, which immediately lit on fire, and then partially into the pot, where it immediately clumped together, rendering the frosting not smooth and delightful, but weird and lumpy.

I'm okay in a crisis, and I am okay at creating my own crises. In this moment I deftly demonstrated I had both these skills. I was able to get the fire out pretty fast, then I saw the cat had decorated the floor under the inappropriately sized table with sugar, so I had to clean the cat before he got powdered sugar everywhere ants could find, then I had to go back to the pot where I remember saying, out loud, "I see why they wanted me to sift this..." And I went to work unfucking the lump of frosting I'd made and nearly set fire to.

All the while my future-husband watched this, and I was thinking, this will make him leave, but instead of leaving, he was actually LEANING IN to me. He sat on the edge of his seat, seemingly enthralled with the utter disaster I had singlehandedly created and then dealt with, and now, looking back on it, I like to think this is when he first fell in love with me.

But, the cake wasn't done. After I had rescued the frosting and gotten the layers out of the oven, it was getting close to midnight. I decided the lack of insulation in this house maybe helped the layers cool down, so I counted them as cool enough and went to work frosting the cake.

But, as many of you no doubt know, because your baking knowledge is better than mine was at this juncture in my life, frosting hot cake layers causes deformation. And in fact, once I assembled the ten layers, upon which and between which I coated the slightly burned chocolate frosting, I realized, instead of making a flat cake, the cake was curved. And by curved, I mean, I basically made a chocolate dick. And I was planning to give this chocolate phallus to a middle aged single woman for her birthday.

It was past midnight. The kitchen was destroyed. A man I hadn't wanted to entertain was still in my kitchen. I had promised I'd bring a cake to a work function in less than eight hours, but instead of making a cake with ten delicate layers, I'd made a sexual harassment statement piece.

"Fuck," I said, staring at the disgusting cake.

"This has been really, really fun," my future-husband said.

"Fuck," I said again, still looking at the cake.

"I'll let you know when I'm back in the neighborhood."

He left, and the next day I brought the cake to work. I left it in the break room complete with a note it was for that it was for that day's birthday. I knew I needed to apologize for the shape of the cake, but it was a few hours before I could link up with the birthday celebrant.

When I finally saw her, I said, "I'm really sorry about the cake..."

"Cake? You mean the chocolate pancakes?"

"What?"

"It looked like you made me a stack of chocolate pancakes, but honestly it was hard to tell."

"I know..." I said.

"Yeah, the [insert freegan, dumpster diving, dirtbag work group here] ate pretty much the whole thing before I even saw it."

"Oh..."

She hugged me. "It was so nice of you to think of me on my birthday."

So the moral of this story is: Sometimes not reading directions gets you a husband, and every now and then the assholes who eat your lunch out of the employee break room actually save you from being investigated for workplace harassment.

It's nice when things fall into place like that.