Ladies, Frost Yourselves

You gays.
Guess what.

No really, guess.

I'm waiting.

Come on.

Seriously, just guess.

I don't know, any guess.

Say it out loud.

Say it.

You're not saying it.

I can hear you not saying it.

Come on.

Just fucking do it.

Seriously?

You know, this is exactly why I don't talk to you at parties.

On the off-chance that you did guess: ERRR you're wrong except-there's-a-distinct-possibility-that-you-may-be-right.

I GOT THE JOB AT THE BAKERY

 

Whoops, how did this get in here?

Yessir, almost immediately after I had shit all over the bakery for not calling me back and gone into the "empowered by embitterment ex-girlfriend" mentality, they called me up and asked if I could come in.

"...Oh."

So here we are! I am now officially working as a full-time cake decorator. I love it so far. It is a lot of work-- that is, they have me coming in virtually every day of the week-- but there are a zillion and one people of all ages and backgrounds who work there, and every one that I've talked to so far has been incredibly friendly and welcoming which makes the work incredibly enjoyable. I mostly work out front decorating cakes with a girl around my age and an older guy who can be seen wearing a Dodger's cap on any given day; he's one of my favorites so far. The two of us speak in Spanglish that's about 70% Spanish, since he doesn't know much English and I look for any opportunity to practicar mi Espanol. I think I'm the only white person who works there, and one of a very select few who isn't bi- or tri-lingual. Dodger's cap man-- let's call him Rudolph, 'cause he's got red hair and his real name starts with 'R'-- told me that I'd soon pick up some Chinese in addition to Spanish, since a lot of people who do the baking in the back almost exclusively speak Chinese. So I'm very excited about all of this. I love speaking and learning new languages, and I get the sense that the other people at the bakery can tell, because they've all been so inviting, helpful, and friendly. Even those who I talk with in English have been nice. Everyone's just... really nice. It's amazing. It's wonderful. Until I started working for TLG I never really knew what it meant to work with/for nice people... only crazy people, and more so the ornery kind of crazy than the pleasantly amusing kind of crazy.

Oh yeah, and also I decorate cakes. That's been pretty cool. My supervisor started me off with a tray and a big cone of whipped cream icing, and I practiced making a whole variety of different styled borders on the tray. Day 2 I attempted to take on the frosting rose, which proved to be a lot harder and a lot easier than it looks. On the one hand, the other girl who decorates cakes (who went to culinary school and has been here for two years, mind you) can bust out a gorgeous frosting rose in ten seconds or less, and do that time and time again. I've been working on my rose since yesterday, just making and tossing them back in the frosting tub over and over, and only today did my flowers start to look a little less like cabbage heads.

Or this.

The frosting can be difficult to work with because it's whipped, which means it isn't as stiff and it gets melt-y a lot quicker than something like fondant or that gum stuff, but it still holds its shape and can be used to make a lot of different things.

"Like tacos? And three-armed baboons? And penises?"

Sure, why not. I would get the okay to draw a penis on a 9-year-old's cake sooner than I would the Power Rangers, 'cause a penis ain't copyrighted material.

So... yeah, welcome to that new thing that will probably be talked about in this blog a lot now. P.S. this blog may or may not just turn into a bunch of pictures of cakes and selfies of me in a hairnet. Does anyone have a problem with that? I thought not.

In other related news, I have had a couple recent revelations:

Recent Revelations 

(and other potential titles for my collection of original poems about leaves)

1. I currently have about 6-7 jobs. Literally. What the figurative fuck. Not that I necessarily have 6-7 jobs' worth of hours, but G. Hossafat-- how on Earth did this happen?! I'm supposed to be a yuppie! But I guess I'm a working yuppie, because after a recent mental tally I realized I'm tutoring through two different agencies (in addition to some independent private tutoring), teaching at TLG, proctoring with Princeton, cake decorating, internshipping, and I recently agreed to be Production Designer for another Chapman thesis film in November. I don't know how this is all going to work, but so far it's quite wonderful because...

2. For the first time ever I have achieved a state of financial semi-independence. You remember how much I was whining about this?! Or, maybe I just kept ranting about it in my blogs and then hitting 'backspace' by the end because it sounded as loserish as thinking about it made me feel. But yeah, with all the odds-and-ends work that I've been picking up over the past couple months I didn't realize that I've actually been coming fairly close to my target monthly income, and now with a full-time job lining the cage I discovered that I'm doing all right. Even in the least lenient itemization of monthly expenses that I gave myself, I have a decent little pool for the category of "leisure" (booze, prostitutes) and possibly some left over. This is, as you can imagine, the best combination of surprising and exciting. I haven't felt this way about money since my first summer job. Not the car services one-- that never happened, no matter what I might blurt out during hypno-therapy sessions. The first summer job I consider "real" in some capacity was working at a panini/smoothie/salad franchise called Blendz the summer before my junior year of college. That was all right I guess, but I worked with crazy people.

3. I have like, no time to write anymore :(. That's the one (anticipated) downside of all of this, but I'm determined to make time. It may mean my writing process will slow down a bit-- or it might not, who knows-- but god help me if it stops. It won't. It can't. I must write! Insert pretentious writer bumper sticker conviction!

4. Quick, easy, low-fat, homemade Thai curry is, like, a real thing. I made it for the first time last night on an inkling and all I can say is, thank god for inklings. See, I have this little jar of Thai curry paste, and I've been sauteeing vegetables and such in it, but it never tasted that good because it's aromatic but bitter. The recipe for Thai curry says to mix curry paste with coconut paste or condensed milk or something, which is way too fatty/unnecessary/probably expensive for me to ever want to purchase. But, what's this? There's an entire carton of vanilla almond milk in my refrigerator? Why, that's the same exact freaking concept as coconut milk, isn't it? ...It worked. Oh boy, did it work. It was curry THAT TASTED LIKE CURRY, and I got to put all the veggies and such that I wanted into it! The veggies and tofu took the most amount of time because I baked the potatoes and tofu in the oven, but once everything was in the pan it only took about five minutes. This is next level. You don't understand. Thai curry is literally my favorite food, and I just figured out how to incorporate it into my catalog of dinner staples. STAPLE ALL THE CURRY.

5. My hands may smell like cake but the rest of me smells like absolute shit. I really had better shower before my internship tomorrow morning. Ciao, dahlkink!