The View from a Drawbridge

First of all, I should know better than to go grocery shopping when I’m hungry. I never know what I’ll come home with. It’s like I’ve been lobotomized and my brain doesn’t know what my left hand is doing. Anything could wind up in that cart.

This weekend it was Tie-Dye Cake Mix. “The GROOVIEST cake you’ll ever make,” or so says the box. I haven’t made a cake in years, but what the heck. It looked like fun.

What it turned out to be was a metaphor for my life. I got some of the colors all wrong. The purple turned out a sickly mauve, and the red was actually more of a pink. I got food coloring all over the counter. And I swear to God I followed all the instructions, including using non-stick cooking spray in the pan, but the first layer came out of the pan in a big old crumbly mess. It said you should let it cool out of the pan and on a plate, but after that happened I let the second layer cool in the pan.

Well, that didn’t work, either, so I was left with two piles of cake crumble. How the heck was I supposed to frost that? So I decided to make the best of it. I put down one layer of crumble, glopped in the frosting, and used the next layer of crumble to spread it out.

Yep, that’s my life. I try so freakin’ hard. Things usually come out a mess. Even though I abide by the rules, things still don’t go according to plan. But it is still fun, and in the end it’s still good, so there you go. My life is one big colorful tie-dye crumble.