By Bethany Jean Clement
From The Seattle Times
Seattle—I was making my own birthday cake. Why was this happening?! It was so very clearly wrong. One should never make one’s own birthday cake; it should arrive by the magic that is love, floating through the air with candles glowing, accompanied by a song sung in one’s honor. This was axiomatic. Also, it was hot—my birthday is in August—and the apartment was getting even hotter, despite all the windows thrown wide open, as the ancient Magic Chef electric stove cranked up.
All I wanted to do was go to the lake and fling myself in; this was my clearly stated birthday wish. Not only was this not happening, but the traditional celebratory dessert was clearly not going to materialize, either. Thus, I had begun making my own birthday cake in a spirit that would rightly be called spite-baking. This was a fine way to occupy my time … fine. A part of me wanted more misery, to be sure: Baking a cake is the opposite of jumping in a lake, in August, especially. It was not the best of times in my life….