Birthday Cake Cupcakes

I have a secret. It's a dirty little secret that my shock and enrage all who read it. You may wish to burn me in effigy after reading it, but I can't keep it from you any longer.

Here's the truth: I never liked cake growing up. Phew, that feels good to let out in the open.

The cake itself was tolerable, but not something I'd choose to eat. It was more the frosting. I hated frosting. With a passion. I've mentioned before my dislike of creamy things, and that might have had a hand in it. But it wasn't just the texture that threw me off. It was the sweetness. Nobody ever made their own frosting when I was growing up, so it was all that stuff from the can, and that stuff just turns my stomach. Put that on top of cake, which I didn't especially like to begin with, and there was no way that I was going to eat it.

So suffice it to say that I never actually ate birthday cake when I was growing up. When I decided to make "birthday cake" cupcakes for my sister-in-law's birthday, my image of birthday cake was a vanilla cake with a light, sweet vanilla frosting. If that doesn't remind anybody else of birthday cake, well you can deal with it.

But wait, there's more!

Banana Lime Whoopie Pies

I've never been a coffee drinker. Ever. I've tried it a few times and I just don't enjoy it. But there are some mornings that even I think I could use a cup.

The job can be fairly monotonous. When it's busy, it's I-need-about-five-more-people-here-but-am-all-by-myself busy, but that comes in spurts and doesn't happen all the time, and there's no way to really know when it will happen. Most of the time, it's pretty predictable. Answer the phones, mark down appointments, create security badges, easy peasy. It's all routine enough that I get the urge to answer the phone at home with a "How may I direct your call?" So the times that I screw it up are the times that I think I could really use a cup of joe.

(Question: why is it called joe? Is there a higher incidence of Joes drinking it than any other name? Did Joe invent it? Does Joe mind that we drink him?)

Once at work, I nearly answered, "How may I decorate your call?" A few times before I bought the Silver Dragon I answered, "How may I direct your car?" This one time, I answered an e-mail with, "Thanks Theresa!" when I was answering Janice. I've misdialed my own extension.

But the best was this morning. See, I use a headset, but the battery dies really quickly, so if the phone's not ringing, I leave the headset plugged in. If I'm busy doing work on the computer, though, I might leave the headset on so I don't have to pause to answer the phone. This morning I was working on a directory for one of the other buildings when the phone rang. Without looking, I pressed the button to pick up the call, and started my customary greeting... when I realized the headset was plugged in, not on my head. I was talking to thin air.

Yeah, coffee's sounding better and better all the time.