I am obsessive-compulsive, and I become easily obsessed with the most random of things. For example, some of my current obsessions include: the guitar, llamas, jumping out of a plane dressed as a Flying Elvis, learning to play "Push It" on the tuba, and, of course, Geechy Guy (although, I am no longer allowed to come within 6 feet of him).
I once became obsessed with creating new varieties of cheesecakes. My husband still has nightmares about cheesecakes, and he won't even enter a restaurant where cheesecake is on the menu - I really do miss going to the Cheesecake Factory. I have this cheesecake I make that has an entire pecan pie baked inside of it. My husband, Tony, a brainy rationalist, said, "So, this one dessert has the same calorie count as an entire pecan pie AND an entire cheesecake?" "Well, duh!" I say. "Then," he reasons, "wouldn't it be better if you just made two desserts instead of the one, and I could eat twice as much for the same amount of calories?" Such logic gets me all dazed and confused, and I have no reasonable comeback. This is why I haven't won an argument with him since 1994. I am left mumbling, "But it is my art . . ." and that, friends, has not won an argument since the beginning of time. (This is probably why they wouldn’t let me debate in high school – or college, for that matter).
My husband works with a woman named Heather, whom I've discovered is my soap opera twin. (It has yet to be determined which is the evil twin, though, I suspect it might, in fact, be me). No matter what my current obsession is, Tony will come home and say, "Hey, Heather is collecting Geechy Guy's chest hair to sell on Craig's List, is taking Flying Elvis lessons, AND got her hair cut like a boy, too." (So, sue me about the "boy" haircut – I was trying to look more like Elvis).
I'm not naive enough to think that Tony actually talks about me at work, so Heather & I were obviously separated at birth. Heather's latest hobby is cake making, and let me tell you, there are some crazy cake customers out there. I like to call them cakezillas. I will spare you the details of the Woodbury Baldwin sisters. I've stopped taking their calls, and I will only make them another cake if they offer me their moonshine as payment. Heather actually had a customer complain the other day that her cake was "too moist." Those dang, crazy cakezillas! Such talk is simply sacrilegious to we bakers.
Tony came home and announced, "Heather was trying to put fondant on a cake at work today. She's making a cake & cupcakes covered in fondant for a baby shower." "What the hell kind of sadist would make people eat fondant at a BABY shower?" I asked. For those of you who have never eaten fondant, it is very much like covering your cake in Play-Doh (only, Play-Doh is slightly easier to make and much tastier). Sure, fondant has its purpose; it looks beautiful in a wedding photo, but no one in his or her right mind actually EATS fondant. And, it is IMPOSSIBLE to make. I am not a chemist, so I refuse to make anything that has the word "thermometer" in the recipe. You basically end up with $150 in ingredients for what turns out to be a goopy blob that my dogs won't even eat . . . and they eat cow manure.
Being the wise rationalist that Tony is, he told Heather, "Jenni starts her fondant cakes out at $600 dollars." Heather gasped at this news (we live in the country, and people are accustomed to paying $12 for a cake to feed 150 people). "No, she did a cost analysis on it," he explains. "She has to buy all that fondant, and then she's got to include the labor for the entire day she spends sitting in the middle of the floor sobbing uncontrollably with her hands covering her face every time she does one of those fondant cakes. She can't just sit around crying like that for free. Plus, she has to pay her psychiatrist for all the post-wedding cake therapy sessions - she barely breaks even." Truer words have rarely been spoken.
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