It seems impossible that July is halfway gone.  You know what that means, right?  August is looming, and what a wretched thought that is.  I really hate August. The only good thing about this upcoming August is that my family will be visiting for the first bit of it.  I enjoy having house guests, especially the familial sort.

These guys are all great, but the real highlight of their visit is going to be my fat little nephew (not pictured {he was baking in my sister’s oven at the time this photograph was taken}).

Oh wait, there he is.  Dang, he’s cute.

After August comes September, of course.  That means school will start and mercy, won’t that be like biting into a cupcake filled with rancid dog crap and fermenting maggots.  With a cherry on top.

Can you tell I’m a bit depressed to see summer coming to an end?  Poor Kyle thinks it’s crazy that August is so life-sucking to me, but he comes from a place where school doesn’t start until September.  He’s never known the two-ton dread of back-to-school sorrows that native Arizonans do.

My back-to-school sorrows feel about like this.  Image from here.

In honour of the impending doom, I skipped town last week.  I went with Poor Kyle on a business trip to Oregon for a good dose of soul soothing.  I always feel healed after being in Oregon.  It’s like chicken soup for the soul, Oregon is.  That’s what I’ve always said.

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel inspired or motivated to take any photographs on my trip.  I was in a bad way after falling off the detox wagon, and I felt sick to my stomach most of the trip.  I kept eating Butterfingers™, too, which really didn’t help the situation.  And I don’t even like Butterfingers™, because of the mysterious ingredient that never fails to bind my teeth together and give me lock jaw after every chew.  Stupid Butterfingers™.  What a worthless candy bar.  I’m a fool for eating them.

So yeah, I detoxed for three or four days until I became overwhelmed by a few home improvement projects around the house, and then all hell broke loose.  I was eating Subway (the sandwiches, not the establishment) and drinking DDP like the world was going to end.  I didn’t exercise on account of being dead-dog tired every night from hours’ worth of painting.  I didn’t even wash my face for three days in a row.  And yes, more than one pimple reared its ugly head in revolt.

I fully expect to try the detox again someday, though.  Maybe in August.  It’s not like life could get any worse by then, right?  I hate August.

And just to make you smile, here is photographic evidence of my most recent attempt at a lovely layered cake.  Did you know I have a vast collection of ADORABLE cake plates—I mean truly, I own some of the cutest cake stands known to man—and never once have I made a cake worthy of my stands?  And believe you me, it’s not for lack of trying.  I just suck, is all.

I’ve never understood why people say “piece of cake,” if they expect a task to be easy.  It’s like “a walk in the park.”  I don’t LIKE walking in parks—it wears me out, quite frankly.  And creating a lovely, proportioned, not-too-sweet-but-not-too-dense-and-heaven-forbid-not-too-dry PIECE OF CAKE is really no piece of cake at all.  It’s one of my lifelong culinary foes.  Twenty {nearly} three years old, and I can’t bake a nice-looking cake to save my dadgum life.

It was more like a mound of crumbs slathered with frosting (delicious frosting, at least) than an actual cake.  My mother-in-law said, and I quote, “I’ve never seen anything like it.  I’ve never seen a person make such awful cakes.”  It was her birthday cake, so I guess she had a right to say that—anyway, it’s not like I had deceived myself into thinking it looked good.  It was fugly and there’s no denying it.

Sigh. It got to the point where I could either cry or laugh about my epic fail, so I cried and then laughed, and now I’m blogging.  (Those are the three steps to grieving, you know: Cry about it, laugh about it, and finally, blog about it.  Works like a charm.)

At least the cake stand is lovely.  Money can’t buy me cake baking skills, but nineteen dollars and ninety nine cents can score an ultra-sweet cake stand to keep me in denial about it.

Stupid August—it’s looming ahead and throwing off my chi.

I don’t even like cake.

Happy Monday.

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