Me n' Bob

     Many years ago, my fourth grade teacher lived across the alley from us.  She had lost her husband and later suffered from illness. When she was able to return to school, it was my job, at nine years of age, to go over each morning and help her get dressed.  I would go in through the side porch, open the door and announce, "It's me."  

     Being a teacher of all subjects, she was a stickler for grammar.  It wasn't long before I had to announce myself with "It is I", which I thought sounded dumber than dirt, but I did it anyway.  She had a reputation of being a teacher that you never wanted to cross.  Since I had known her seven of my nine years I rarely was witness to her wrath.  She didn't scare me and I spent many an hour in her home. Mother would call out the back door, "Ruth, where are you?" 

     I would answer, "I know where I am."  This usually did not end well.

     Anyway, so the title should be Bob and I, but not today.

     Today is my youngest grandson's 7th birthday.  Last Friday his mother, our youngest, sent me a text wanting to know if we could make his cake instead of her buying him one.  This instantly brought back memories of my cake decorating days and I responded with a "I don't see why we couldn't."

     I have some kind of brain malfunction that makes it impossible for me to gauge how much time has past since I last did something. Hopefully I will not be trying any cartwheels soon.

     Friday was also the day I had started to get caught up with my work.  I had the entire weekend planned and after all, his birthday was four days away.

     My daughter and I, (proper grammar), continued to text about what ingredients she would need.  About two hours later she showed up loaded down with construction materials for cake and icing.  I was sitting in the kitchen, waiting for the finish on some beads to dry, and I thought it was odd that she had bought everything so soon.  She immediately set out to whip up the cake batter.

     "Why are you doing that now?", I asked.  I knew why she wanted to do it at my house, so he wouldn't see it, but I'm thinking the cake is going to be a bit dry by next Tuesday.

     She responded with, "Well Mom, his party is tomorrow!"

     Being unaware of this fact,  I watched as she put all the ingredients together before I had to tell her we had another problem.  I still haven't fixed my oven.  My reasoning for this is, if it doesn't work, I don't have to use it. Sounds good to me.

     We loaded the batter filled pans back into her car and off she went to bake them at her house.  When her son looked at them he declared it looked like mustard and she played along with that, so he was none the wiser.

     She brought the freshly baked cakes back to me and I flipped them onto the cooling racks.  By this time, I'm beginning to remember what it takes to decorate a cake.  When they were cooled, I covered them and tossed them in the frig.  The icing could wait for the next day, after all, I had things to get caught up on.

     I shall not bore you with the details of what it takes to make buttercream icing.  The one thing I did remember was to not put the 4 pounds of sifted powdered sugar into the whipped shortening while the beaters are still running on high.  Not that it would have mattered, I already had powdered sugar everywhere.

    For some insane reason, I feel I should always do things on a grand scale and this usually creates a grand mess.  This was no exception.  I wrestled Sponge Bob all over the kitchen.  I had decided to put him in underpants which was a good idea, it's really difficult to make brown icing.

     Sponge Bob had no arms or legs, but in the end, no one cared.  It was seven o'clock that evening before I was able to clean up the aftermath of icing warfare.