Some photos require more explanation than others, as do some marriages. Last Spring, my husband and I discovered that we were both trying to get a baker to make a “Happy Anniversary/Birthday, Asshole” cake for each other, to no avail. It is this stupid in-joke we have, that originated with freaking out over our Christmas cards one year, and now shows up randomly on holidays that are especially stressful, a way for one of us to remind the other to stop taking it all so seriously and just relax. Sadly, it turned out that not one baker in this whole town would write the word Asshole on a cake, so we were left cakeless.
My husband never swears, which makes it even funnier for me that he tried to get that iced on pastry. But even though he never curses, he can appreciate a good punchline, which is why he loves The Bloggess’ story about Beyoncé so much. I can’t remember when I read it originally, but I do know when he read it – on my Nook, after a long, irritating day, when I loaded The Bloggess’ site up in my Nook browser and handed it over, to give him the laugh he so desperately needed. That story, about that chicken, is my happy place; the place I go to in my head at the dentist, or when another Mom starts telling me how gifted her kids are. “Knock, knock, motherfucker” is a phrase I hear in the back of my head whenever I am confronted with the absurdity of suburban life.
So now we are here, the part of the story where you are wondering what on earth these two anecdotes have to do with one another. Where might the intersection might be between our troubling attempts to add pastry-based expletives to our marital communication toolkit and the Bloggess’ giant chicken? Well, I tell you … it has been a rough summer, one that culminated in me having to act like an adult, make some hard decisions, give up some dreams, and put my childrens’ needs ahead of my own, and it’s good, I guess, but charting a new course in life is never easy, which is why I was so grateful to see the delivery van for the best bakery in town stop in front of my house one morning, clearly sent by my husband. My husband who finally found a baker who works in expletives, apparently, because in that lovely bakery box was this:
Some days, when it feels like the whole world was designed just to punish you for having the nerve to get out of bed, there isn’t much that another person can do that can comfort you. Except to have delivered to you a delicious cake with a chicken iced onto it, along with the words, “Knock, knock, Motherfucker!” We hid it from the kids, who are learning to sound out words, and it took us a week to eat, and I think it might be the best cake I have ever had. Knock, knock, Motherfucker, indeed.