Let Us Eat Cake

Cake served to Presbyterians

 Jan 5, 2017 dinner conversation

Husband:  I take it you didn’t make any cake.

Me:  No, I told you I wasn’t going to make cake.  Until tomorrow.

Son:  You’re making a cake tomorrow?!

Me:  The main part I want to get across is that I wasn’t going to make a cake.

But if I did make a cake, what kind of cake would you want?

Husband:    Large.

Younger Daughter:  What kind of candy do you want on it?

Husband:   None.

Son:    Do you want a moist cake?

Husband:    Yes.

Son (looking up a recipe):  Dad, what do you think of this “All You Can Eat Cake”?

Husband:    Is it all I can eat?

* * * * * *

 

Cake that looks like a hamburger

Feb 2, 2017 dinner conversation

Me:  Tomorrow I’m talking to a friend.  One of the topics is, what issues are we passionate about.

Husband:  I am passionate about chocolate cake.  I want to know if the other side approves or disapproves of chocolate cake.  … We all have our issues.

Younger Daughter:  Not everybody shares your views.

Husband:  I don’t want to share my cake.

(This was followed by a long dispute between Husband and Younger Daughter about whether the chocolate cake should have a layer of custard in it.)

* * * * * *

Gigi's cupcake
(but not the one mentioned below).
In my opinion the cupcake pictured here has
just way too much icing.  But the gluten-free
cupcakes are to die for.  So is the price.
Meaning you will have a heart attack when you
see how much these cupcakes cost.

Feb 26, 2017 dessert conversation

We were enjoying a special treat – dark chocolate gluten-free cupcakes from Gigi’s Cupcakes.  These are cupcakes which, when heated in the microwave for about 10 seconds, greatly resemble chocolate lava cake.

Husband, pleading:  For Purim, could you make chocolate lava cakes instead of hamentaschen?

Me:  What do lava cakes have to do with Purim?  Tell us what the ancient sages said about lava cakes.

Husband:  Chocolate lava cakes remind us that Esther’s accusations against Haman rose up and SPEWED out, spreading across Persia, changing the landscape for all Jews over the millennia.

Younger Daughter: Since the beginning of Jewish history, there has been cake.

Me, to Husband:  Well, since your mother started cooking, there has been cake.  And that’s practically since the beginning of Jewish history.

(The conversation then included a discussion of the similarities between elephants and cupcakes.  “You like elephants, don’t you?  And you like cupcakes?”)

Cake served to Jews
(It should say L'Shana Tova)

* * * * * *

I STILL have not made a cake.  This does not mean that Husband did not get to eat cake, although he might tell you otherwise. 

And now it is almost Passover.  Those Ancient Sages have decreed that I should make a cake without using any leavening.  But what kind of cake should I make?  Nine-egg sponge cake, ten-egg sponge cake, or twelve-egg sponge cake?

A pause in the conversation

A family dinner-time conversation.  

Me:  Finish off the juice.

Son:  The Jews?!

Younger Daughter:  Finish off the Jews?!

Husband, in a somber voice:  It’s been tried before….

* * * * *

Husband:  A man was in a restaurant and ordered sheep’s head.  He told the waiter, “Leave the eyes in, because it has to see us through the week.”

Kids: [groan] 

Me (thinking of the “Survivors of Dad Jokes”video):  That was a great joke…. DAD.

YD (reading my mind): We never should have shown you guys that video about Dad jokes.  … How do you measure different pauses in conversation?

Me: That was a comedic pause.

YD: But there are different lengths of comedic pauses.

Son:  There’s a comedic pause, and a pregnant pause.  There’s an awkward pause.

YD:  There’s dog paws, there’s menopause.

Husband: Santa Pause.

Me:   The pregnant pause and the menopause can only be done by certain kinds of people.

Son:  But not at the same time.

I think we are training them pretty well to take over the Dad jokes responsibility.

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Go and Do Likewise

My father, portraying Galileo, in a short play he wrote
as part of the science curriculum for the
Baltimore School for the Arts

Four years ago today, my father died.  In actuality, his personality and physicality were lost to us for several years before that, to Parkinson’s with Lewy body dementia. 

I mourn my father today especially because he would know What To Do.  He would be able to face the future with integrity, with intelligence, with strategy, and with humor.  He had done so many times in his life. 

Throughout his life, he stood up for what is right.  He paid for that – at one point, because of his honesty, his army superiors punished him by sending him away from his stateside army post to an overseas post. In the 1960s he and my mother were in the thick of the civil rights movement. They both paid for that by being harassed by members of their own church.  My father paid for it by being forced out of his job.  As a result he found another job in another city.  

When we were moving (I was about 4 years old) my parents sold their house to the first African-American family to move to the neighborhood.  The neighbors offered him a bribe to not sell the house.  He refused.  The payment for that was that the neighbors put up confederate flags in their yards.  The neighborhood children also bullied his son, my older brother.  We moved to Baltimore and my parents moved to a neighborhood consisting of Orthodox Jews, African-Americans, and us. He was our neighborhood’s Shabbas goy.  Years later he worked on a process to safely destroy chemical weapons.   In the midst of all that, he worked a full-time job as a chemical engineer managing chemical plants.  He served his church and the broader church extensively.  He raised three children and was a loyal husband.

Throughout his life he remained intellectually curious and always wanting to learn more.  He would take a decisive stand on issues, but was not afraid to revise his opinion if he learned something to change his mind.

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If he were alive and well today he would be joyful, argumentative, optimistic, funny, and active as much as is possible for any citizen.

Go and do likewise.

The Do-Nothing Society

Danger.  Sheer Cliff.  Stay back.
Where I feel the election is heading.  

Last Saturday I did something.  Something I have never done before in my life.  I donated to a political party, the Democratic party (DNC), to be precise. 

I deplore that money seems to be so important in elections, but here we are in the real world. (The real world is seeming quite bizarre and alarming these days.)  In the real world, money can make a lot of difference in many arenas.

I donated money because I felt it was important to me to make a concrete statement about who I am firmly backing in the upcoming elections.  I am in favor of Mrs. Clinton for president, and now I have backed it up with my pocketbook.  I donated to the party because I also believe that the congressional elections are very important.

Others have presented the case for Mrs. Clinton far more eloquently than I can.  I simply believe that a vote for Mrs. Clinton is a vote for decency, stability, compassion, intelligence, and strength.

If you wish to argue against my choice, please make your argument on your own blog, not on this one.

Perhaps you are opposed to the DNC.   Instead, please consider the DNS – the Do-Nothing Society.  I have this proposal, written by my father in 2007.  I guess I am not eligible for membership.  Because I did something.

The Do-Nothing Society

If you desire freedom from work, this is for you. A group of men, content with languor, have formed The Do-Nothing Society [DNS].  If you are satisfied with inactivity of any kind you may be received into its fellowship.  All who sit on the porch just rocking and thinking are Do-Nothing eligible, more so if you just rock.  Energy conservation is a big thing now, and we think it our civic duty to cut back on work, all the way back.

The Do-Nothing-Society is not gender specific, though only males have joined so far.  Apparently the supply of good-for-nothing women is inadequate to meet the need.  The DNS is environmentally friendly, resolved never to scrub, wash, sweep, dry mop, wet mop, dust, or otherwise alter the natural order. All who abandon work, foreign or domestic, are welcome.  Do Nothing is committed to Equal Unemployment Opportunity (EUO), and is not sexist in the least.  We are interested in anyone who yearns for worklessness.

We have no card-carrying members.  Actually, none of us carries anything. In physics, work is mass times the distance through which it acts.  For example, if you have a fifty-pound sack on your shoulder, no work is performed unless you move.  Even Einstein agreed to this tenet of classical physics.  Albert Einstein daily trudged from his home on Mercer Street across campus to his Princeton University office.  Once, pausing to talk to a student, he forgot his direction and walked home.  Mrs. Einstein turned him around and sent him forth again.  Great minds think great thoughts, and are not stuck with petty details.

The Do-Nothing Society has developed a hypothesis more basic than Einstein's Relativity.  This teaches  (a) mass even if it doesn't move is work, and (b) motion even without mass is work. Thus, never joining mass with motion or motion with mass will eliminate work.  How to accomplish this is a detail, since the hypothesis is established.  The DNS thinks only great thoughts like Einstein.  This is a great thought.

Nothing in the DNS is organized.  It is purely a do-nothing happening: no dues, no dress-up, no committees, no speaker, no program, no bylaws, no planning and no purpose.  If you are of like mind or of no mind, or have nothing better to do, think about joining DNS.

I took a brave new step towards DNS when we came to [the retirement home].  Here, our meals are prepared for us, the lawn is mowed, snow is removed, and you don't need a driver's license.  A barber shop, bank, massage parlor, and movie theater are all on the premises.  To hear intelligent speakers on controversial subjects one need only walk to the auditorium; one need not get involved in the controversies.    To vote one need only don bedroom slippers on election day and a bathrobe and schlep to the room where they have brought all the voting machines.  [Partisan statement removed by the Common Household Mom.]

{written by my father on Oct 12, 2007}

Responses from the family:

Dear Dad,

Get off your lazy butt and get to work.  Be of use.

Please write a book, or at least a paper, or a letter to the editor of the NY Times, explaining our Founding Fathers’ take on religion.

- {my brother}

P.S. Where do I sign up for this Do-Nothing Society?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Dear Dad,

It must have taken you a lot of work to put together your proposal for The Do-Nothing Society.  Doesn't that make you ineligible for membership?

Love,

Carolyn

P.S.  I'd like to suggest this song for your Society Anthem:

TITLE: The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything

ARTIST: Mike Nawrocki

 [Veggie Tales]

{Refrain}

We are the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything

We just stay home and lie around

And if you ask us to do anything

We'll just tell you, we don't do anything

{etc.}

Liberty and reason are threatened

The world seems bizarre.
This is the "bizarre" setting on my camera.

A different bizarre camera setting.