They did a great job. Hell, *I* did a great job. I made fondant, colored fondant, rolled fondant and successfully covered the cake with the sheet of sugary stuff on my first try. Was it neat? Nope, but I did it! I was a little worried about the fact that the fondant on the sides of the cake were lumpy, but as you can see, that all got covered up.
I also survived eleven children working with with stuff, wanting more colors, competing for cake space and the aftermath of the consumption of some of the decorating medium.
I hadn't colored most of the fondant when the girls arrived, I wanted to ask them what colors they wanted. I'd take votes and go into the kitchen to create red or green or purple or whatever it was they wanted.
When I came back to the table and said 'Green!' eleven girly hands would go up "memememememmeme!"
Really, they were really very well behaved, did a good job sharing and had a lot of fun, which was our goal.
What I was not prepared for, was how heavy this sucker was going to be. I made it three layers tall, so there would be a lot of space for the girls to decorate. Then, a 1/4 inch layer of buttercream frosting is needed underneath the fondant layer, I needed a double batch of buttercream to achieve this. I made three batch of fondant to be sure I had enough on hand to give the girls all the colors they hoped for.
The icing and fondant required eight pounds of powdered sugar to make, eight pounds in sugar alone. When I tried to pick this cake up, my biceps said 'oooohhhhh I dunno'. I didn't trust myself to not drop it or I would have taken it into the bathroom to weigh it, I'm sure it topped 12 pounds.
Our wonderful cake fetched $25 at the silent auction, which excited the girls to no end. The family who had the high bid took home three or four cakes in addition to ours.
When I went up to take one last picture of our leviathan of a baked good, the girl scout of the family said "Look, it's like, four layers of frosting! And it weighs a ton!" I laughed and told her I knew oh so well.
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Before the end of the evening, I had to use the Girls' Room. Grade school bathrooms give me the heebie-jeebies do this day. I don't recall anything good ever happening in the school bathroom and there were certain unspoken rules in high school about what bathroom could be used to actually pee and which ones were reserved for smoking by this or that group.
I finished quickly and when I left the stall there were three eleven (I'm guessing) year old girls standing there in their Junior Girl Scout vests. I walked by them and as I got out the propped open door I heard them all laugh. I turned around and saw one of them peeking around the corner at me with just one eye showing.
And I got pissed. I held my hand up like I was holding a tray and said "What?" she just kept peeking.
I repeated myself "Whaaat?". One of her friends walked out to look at me.
"WHAT!" and they ducked back around the corner.
I went back into the school cafeteria and sat down to have some cake with my daughter and her fellow scouts.
As I was sitting there, I saw two of the girls look into the cafeteria with a very scared looks on their faces, they took a good look around before they went to their respective parents.
I made a decision. I got up and walked over to one of the girls.
"Hi. Um are you the girl from the bathroom?"
She had a small Sonic cup with her and she was chewing on the straw, her eyes wide. She made a noise I couldn't understand so I asked her again.
She nodded. "Can I talk to you for just, one sec?"
She answered in a way I didn't hear so I just charged on.
"Okay, if you're going to laugh at someone. Wait until they can't hear you." At this point, her mom interjected.
"You know what? We just talked about that and how that's not acceptable behavior. Didn't we?" She turned to her daughter and made her take her straw out of her mouth.
"Look, I'm forty so I can hang with it but...... when I was nine and in the school bathroom, girls your age would kick in the stall door while I was using the toilet."
Her face got very concerned "Oh, they did?" she said in a very little voice.
"And when I walked out they would stand so I had to walk through them and laugh at me when I left. So when you and your friends were laughing at me, it almost made me cry because it made me remember all that. "
"I'm sorry" she whispered to me.
Her mom talked to me again, "Oh, I really do apologize, I am so sorry."
I said "Oh, it's okay."
"No, it's really not. Thank you for coming up to talk to her and again I am so sorry."
I left and had to run outside because I thought I was going to cry, I was shaking. Where the hell had that come from? I never do things like that unless it's directed at my child and my mama bear comes out.
Maybe I'm changing in my old age.
Amanda's beauty tip of the day: When you apply lipliner, fill in your lips with the pencil so when you need to reapply lipstick, you won't have the hard outline.
1 comment:
Wow that's pretty cool both about the cake and the mean girl. I don't get what they were laughing about though--a grown woman just using the bathroom? Had they done something to the door? But kudos to you for confronting her. This is how bullying gets started--when adults fail to acknowledge and confront these seemingly minor episodes.
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