Maybe they’re coke cupcakes?

A few months ago, we (and by “we,” I mean “I”) decided we’d be ordering our wedding cake from the cleverly-named Maui Wedding Cakes. They’re one of three bakeries on the island, so we (whoops — “I” again!) did Eeny Meeny Miney Moe.

They estimated that a two-tier cake for 50 would run us around 300 bucks and asked us to contact them again once we had specifics about what we wanted. (I really couldn’t care less as long is its chocolate and tasty, but apparently Rob has very strong feelings about whether or not he can possibly get married if there is going to be a SQUARE CAKE.)

So over the weekend I sent them this picture and said, “Can you do this?”

Today, I received this response:

Option: CUPCAKES
30 Chocolate cupcakes with White buttercream icing
30 White cupcakes with White buttercream icing
fresh single purple orchids, purple and hot pink dots

6″ cake on top (serves 6-8 )
Choice of basic cake bodies and fillings (see below)
White Buttercream Icing
Smooth sides with Pearl Beading
fresh purple orchids, purple and hot pink dots

cupcake stand rental
We set up cupcakes on the stand
$4015.00

The sad thing is, after a year and a half of wedding planning, I wouldn’t be too surprised if that was NOT A TYPO.

Sent her a response with a lot of sentences that ended with “?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!???!?!?!?!??!?!!!!!!!???” I’ll keep you posted.

 

Chicago, here we come

How I know I really do hate packing:

We are leaving at 1 pm, and I still haven’t finished packing. Instead, I am editing my friend’s resume.

How I know Rob is happy to be moving to Chicago:

This morning, I’m running around frantically trying to finish packing up the car when I hear from the bedroom a half-asleep Rob singing to himself, “A wee-moweh, a wee-moweh, a wee-moweh, a wee-moweh … in the jungle, the MIGH-ty jungle, the LION sleeps TOOOONIIIIGHT! A weeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEE! A wee-um-um-away.”

 

On my last day in Nashville …

… I am greeted on my way out of the post office, having frantically shoved some additional wedding invitations into the mail before they closed, by the tiny old Japanese lady in four-inch heels and full-on geisha makeup who had been in front of me in line, complaining that the disgruntled grill-wearing black postal worker behind the counter had been “very, very rude and prejudiced” toward her.

I look up to see a black guy and a white woman with her kid standing behind my car, engaged in a very heated argument. As I approached, it became clear that what started the fight was the big OBAMA sticker on my rear window; and the woman hustled her kid away, almost embarrassed, yelling apologetically, “But that’s what I love about this country! We can TALK about these things!”

Black dude yells back, “Amen! God bless America!”

Indeed.

 

The good news is I didn’t get a single paper cut.

The best advice I can give any bride is to STAY AWAY from The Knot message boards.

It was the influence of many wedding-obsessed “Knotties” that I came up with the brilliant idea of making my own wedding invitations. Why not DIY? That way, I could save money and still have really nice invitations

Here is the result of many months and many tears and many fingernails bitten to the quick:

Now kids, this is not something you should try at home.

The bridezillas on the Internet will shriek “YOU CAN DO IT YOURSELF! DIY!” But no one tells you that it is impossible to match the ink color to even the same ballpark of the shade of the paper on a home printer. No one tells you that no pen known to man will write on metallic envelopes. No one tells you that you will spend hours slaving over the design and layout, only to have the print shop ultimately screw it up anyway.

And just when you think you are out of the woods, you realize that, after biting off all your nails and spending the better part of three months slaving over the invitations, though it will have cost about half as much to make them yourself, but you wish you had just ordered invitations that were half as expensive in the first place. Even if they aren’t as nice. No one gives a crap about the invitation. Including you.

From now on, I’m saving every wedding invitation I get so that, years later, when the couple is visiting me, I can whip it out and rave about the font they chose or how nicely the paper matches the ink or how they worded the reception card. Because, even if it doesn’t look like much, it cost at least seven dollars and/or your friend’s sanity.

Here’s the kicker: this is a destination wedding, so nearly all of these invitations went to people I KNOW are not coming, to be opened, glanced at, and tossed into the recycling bin.

Rob was right. We should have done an E-vite.

 

Yes we can! No she can’t!

While I’m ticking people off, I might as well go whole hog and just say what has been on my mind. Besides, I’m running out of time to say it, because Obama is about to clinch the nomination. Matt Drudge called it, and Matt Drudge does not exaggerate.

I really don’t think we can have a female president.

That’s right, I said it. I’m an unmarried, liberal, working, childless female in the 21st century. But I won’t vote to put a woman in the White House.

It’s not that I think we shouldn’t have a female president. Really, as a global superpower among civilized nations, it’s pretty pathetic that we haven’t had one already. Even Pakistan has had a female prime minister. I mean, that’s just embarrassing.

And of course, women have every bit as much of the intellectual capacity and managerial skill and strategical prowess and yaddah yaddah yaddah as men do. I have no doubt that our nation would thrive under a female presidency, or that our society would experience the kind of real change that we have so desperately needed. I am absolutely confident that our reputation abroad would improve.

And I am certain that other nations would respect her. I’m just not so sure I can say the same for our own.

We are a country that celebrates our hot-shot, cowboy, rough-and-tumble attitude. We do what we want, how we want, when we want. We like our men beefy and our women dainty. We’re the kind of people who still buy Hummers, environment be damned.

We are a nation that elected and re-elected a guy that turns phrases like “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” and “SHOCK AND AWE” and “BRING ‘EM ON,” as though we are playing some GI Joe video game instead of sacrificing lives in the name of an endless war with a vague and ever-changing objective.

There’s no way these same people would actually elect a girl. Particularly when the alternative has a penis. He may be old and feeble, but that only softens him just enough that a Democrat would actually consider voting for him. That, or he’ll die in office and we’ll be stuck with whatever right-wing yahoo he picks as his running mate.

Consider how ri-damn-diculous Hillary sounded this week when she tried out her new rough-rider stance on foreign policy with Iran:

Obliterate! Them’s fightin’ words! Can you sense the hesitation before it pops out of her mouth, the millisecond in which a tiny George Bush with horns and a forked tail popped up on her shoulder and whispers the word in her ear?

But what America loves to hear George Bush say just don’t sound right coming from a female-type.

It sucks. I know it does. If a man is strong, he’s capable; if a woman is strong, she’s a bitch. It’s not fair. But it’s how our country operates. I want to see it change as much as the next person, but we have fallen into such a deep political and economic hole, I just don’t think now is a good time to risk our one big chance to dig ourselves out.

 

Sun salutations with Botox Barbie

Supposedly Nashville is crawling with celebrities. Rob spotted Carrie Underwood at the mall, going into Louis Vuitton. My friend Brad regularly ends up on the treadmill next to Vince Gill at the YMCA. I imagine I’ve seen all kinds of country music stars around town, but I haven’t recognized a single celebrity yet.

Until last Saturday.

I’m sitting on my mat at Sanctuary for Yoga in Green Hills, getting ready to enjoy one of my last classes there. I’m stretching out a bit, doing an Easy Seated Twist, when I look over my right shoulder and see a girl standing in the doorway.

“Huh,” I think to myself. “That girl looks like Nicole Kidman.”

And as I twist again and glance over my left shoulder, it all comes flooding to me … really tall and thin, pregnant, married to Keith Urban, lives in Nashville … light bulb!

“That IS Nicole Kidman!”

My very first celebrity sighting! Or at least, my very first sighting in which the recognition of the celebrity was exciting. I was kind of oblivious when I was in LA.

I have no idea why Nicole Kidman would deign to attend a group yoga class, on a Saturday morning no less. SELF Magazine did a piece last fall about LeAnn Rimes practicing yoga at this studio, but that was private lessons.

But all the yogis in class all handled it pretty well. I caught a few bits of conversation about someone seeing her loading up at the salad bar at Whole Foods last week, but once class started, we were all business. Of course I stared at her during every single Downward Facing Dog, but at least I didn’t start humming “Come What May.”

I do have to say that seeing her up close actually didn’t make me feel like a stubby little troll. In fact, it was her too-yellow frizzy hair that was a little troll-like. She is obviously a very attractive woman, but mostly, she just has a recognizable face. Otherwise she blended right in with all the other wealthy-looking 40-something ladies of leisure in my class, down to the big ring on the gnarled hands that are a good 20 years older than her shiny, taut face.

Let me tell you, that porcelain skin you see on TV? It looks like Saran Wrap in real life.

I’m not gonna lie. I really almost went up to her after class to ask about those rumors that Tom Cruise is really gay and paid her and is now paying Katie Holmes to be part of his entourage and to help both their careers by having highly public romances immediately before the movie in which they co-starred was released. I mean, that has to be true, right? And what about Scientology?

 

Retraction

Several readers have pointed out that none of the addresses in my previous post are actually in Roger’s Park. And then Bench himself told me I’m too much of a dumb Trixie for his ‘hood.

Ouch! I stand corrected! Reading comprehension has never been my strong suit. I got perfect scores on the English and math sections of the ACT, but it was the reading comprehension that knocked me out of the Ivy League running. And then the science section, well, that’s why I went to a state school. Hah!

Also this: Since when does anyone but Ben and Abbie read my blog? My own mother doesn’t even read this!

 

Home Sweet Refrigerator Box

Our landlord in Nashville has begun showing our house to potential tenants. We are driving up to Chicago next week to find a place to live, but if our previous house-hunting experiences are any indication, it takes us an average of 4.5 months of serious looking to find a place that is remotely acceptable for our over-anxious, hyper-critical, penny-pinching personalities. And that does not include the eight-month lead time during which I pore obsessively over the online classifieds.

Did I mention that, this time next month, we will be leaving for Hawaii? Between preparing for the wedding and the two (count ‘em) at-home receptions that follow (it’s our very own Nuptial Triple Crown!), we are more or less out of commission for six weeks.

That leaves us about 26 days (and 11 hours, 18 minutes, and nine seconds) to find, tour, finance, inspect, and close on a condo in the city. Not to mention we have to come up with a down payment while also paying for a wedding and honeymoon.

We are about to be homeless.

To top things off, Rob has decided that he wants to spend about half as much on a mortgage than would any reasonable person in our exact same financial situation. It’s all part of his Master Plan to retire by 40 with 20 million dollars in the bank. I’m not overly clear on the details, even though he and Andy have been fine-tuning the Plan for years, but from what I can gather it involves Sara not buying any fine Italian leather goods while living in Italy and me living in a cardboard box under the highway at North Avenue with my fluffy, fluffy white dog.

Of course, he insists on finding this “affordable housing” while not conceding things like central air, newer construction or remodeling, and proximity to the lake, the gym, the El, and a 24-hour Starbucks and Walgreen’s. Oh, and it can’t be in an elevator building, either. Too claustrophobic.

I can see myself with the stringy hair and ruddy complexion already. Maybe I’ll acquire a limp and a cardboard sign with details about my imaginary tour in Vietnam.

Rob’s latest solution: Roger’s Park, the northernmost Chicago neighborhood along the lake, just south of Evanston. Did you know you can buy a three-bedroom walk-up condo with all the bells and whistles for under $200,000? Heck, you can buy a ginormous single-family home for about twice that!

(Note to Chicago virgins: I know it sounds absurd, but that is an insanely good deal.)

So we did a little research and learned from the neighborhood’s website that RoPa is an eclectic and vibrant community, a place where people of diverse economic and cultural backgrounds can live in happy harmony, practically frolicking between their well-priced vintage homes.

Too good to be true? Perhaps, but there’s nothing like a little hope to get you in the mood for packing your bags, even when you practically just finished UN-packing from the last move. Then I stumbled across some less-than-reassuring blogs about Roger’s Park.

Like the one solely devoted to photos of abandoned Cheetos bags found in the neighborhood. That’s right. There are enough discarded bags of Cheetos in RoPa to warrant an entire blog.

Or this one that detailed the police scanner from just two hours on the night of Monday, May 2. Here’s an abridged version that includes only the violent crimes (no noise complaints or parking violations):

11:30 PM - Shots fired, 1200 block N. Campbell - “gang”
11:47 PM - Man with a gun walking around at 47th and Ashland
11:50 PM - Person shot, 1800 block N. California, police looking for “two male Hispanics”
11:51 PM - Man has a gun, 1800 block N. Kedzie
11:54 PM - Dispatcher says there is a “wolf or coyote” spotted at Clybourn and Fullerton. Cops on radio enjoy this. “Can we shoot?” “Tranquilizer darts.” “Come on, it’s only a wolf, you don’t have to shoot it.” “Can we shoot?” “Wolves are endangered.”
12:02 AM - Officer arranges for “removal” of a dead 19 year old female, gunshot to the head, from the ER of South Shore Hospital.
12:05 AM - Man “masturbating in the park.”
12:08 AM - Man with a gun threatened to shoot the caller on 5500 block W. Diversey, caller says he is now walking back toward him.
12:09 AM - Person down, 1400 block W. Farragut Avenue.
12:11 AM - Need evidence technician (ET) to photograph “the victim,” who is in critical condition at Mt. Sinai Hospital.
12:12 AM - Persons waving guns at 53rd and Ashland. They are driving a white Pontiac Bonneville. Reported by people who waved down a police officer.
12:20 AM - Shots fired, 1300 block of (unintelligible).
12:28 AM - ET requested in 10th District to photograph a victim, a “26 year old male black.” One of the perpetrators is in custody.
12:31 AM - Van hit a female “on the expressway” near 1800 block of N. Ashland. Illinois State Police are investigating.
12:34 AM - Two female Hispanics flashed a gun at Ohio and Ashland, then drove eastward. Purple car - another officer calls in that car is seen going northbound on Ashland, chase ensues. “Approaching Augusta…” Moments go by; “Stopped them in 1000 block of N. Ashland. “Request a female officer for a search.”
12:38 AM - Requesting backup for large fight at a house, 800 block of Sacramento.
12:42 AM - Cop radios from house fight, “disregard”
12:42 AM - Person with a gun, somebody’s girlfriend driving dark red or maroon Pontiac with Texas plates. “They’re still in the area” (13th, 14th Districts). Search ensues. Cop on radio, “That car’s been up in this area all night, by Potomac and (unintelligible), was in the are when those shots were fired.”
12:44 AM - (Responding to above) “We stopped that car earlier… We’ll get those plates to you…”
12:47 AM - Person shot, Belmont and (?)
12:47 AM - “We’ve rounded everybody up at (2900 block, Devon).”
12:48 AM - Assault, victim being followed by assailant in 7000 block, N. California. “No further info.”
12:54 AM - “You can cancel that ambulance.”
12:55 AM - Officer reports that a victim is “stable, gunshot wound to the right arm,” ET requested to photograph a silver Ford Taurus. Nobody in custody in the 11th District.
12:59 AM - 5800 block, N. Magnolia - 30 kids fighting out front.
1:05 AM - “Everybody’s dispersed” from fight on Magnolia.
1:04 AM - Robbery; two male blacks, 300 block E. Garfield on Green Line CTA train, took two cell phones and $60.00 cash.
1:14 AM - 8500 block, Marquette; breaking into house, man banging on windows and doors.
1:22 AM - “Shots fired.” “MORE SHOTS!” at Spaulding and Kimball.
1:26 AM - “Subjects ran south from Evergreen.”
1:38 AM - Male posing as a cop, 4400 block, S. ???.
1:39 AM - Westbound SUV on Division, people throwing beer cans as they drive.
1:42 AM - Male Hispanic walking with a gun, 47th and Troupe.
1:42 AM - 50 people fighting on street, 16th and Karlov, throwing bottles at police.

You know something? That cardboard box is looking better and better. Wait, wait, how does that song go? “Young man, there’s a place you can go …”

 

There’s no place like home

We are moving back to Chicago! Wahoo!

There will be things about Nashville that I will miss, and people I will miss even more. I scarcely noticed any of them until I heard we’d be leaving. But I have spent way too much of my life pining for the past and squelching my own happiness for the sake of a really good snide remark. For once I am going to let myself be wholly excited by the next new adventure.

And that should be easy enough, because this time, part of our future lies in the past. After a year of wondering why in the heck we moved away from a gigantic network of family and friends we love, we are coming home!

Is that a cop-out? I don’t even care. For generations, everyone in my family has lived their entire lives in Chicago. I wanted to do something different, to go someplace else. But it took going someplace else to really recognize why no one ever left Chicago. My family weren’t homebodies, they were geniuses. Chicago is the best place in the world! Why would you ever want to leave?

If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with!

 

Two new national holidays

I got an email today with a petition to make September 11 a national holiday. This one was written by the son of a firefighter who died in the collapse. It called for the holiday to honor our nation’s firefighters, but I found many others online petitioning to call 9/11 “Unification Day,” a day to protest the so-called “War on Terror,” a day to remember the victims, and so on and so forth.

It’s a nice idea. The cynic in me doesn’t think that typing my name on an email constitutes a legal signature, let alone the issue of relevance of an email forward to “The Government.”

Oddly enough, tonight is Baskin-Robbins’ annual 31-cent scoop night, tantamount to a national holiday as far as I’m concerned. This year they are scooping up cones for a quarter, a nickel and a penny — that’s less than a postage stamp, folks!! — in honor of America’s firefighters. Not sure that the firefighters get anything tangible out of it, but I’m sure my brother the firefighter would be happy for me and my cheap scoop of cookie dough.

Is it mere coincidence that I should get the petition on this, my favorite holiday? You see where I’m going with this: combining the Baskin-Robbin’s concept with a September 11 national holiday. Something about the American dream … liberty, justice, and cheap ice cream for all  … celebrating our freedom and honoring lives lost by enjoying America’s favorite dessert …

Too gauche? I suppose you are right. It worked out better in my head. This is why I’m not in marketing.