Bad Birthday Cake Karma |

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My oldest is about to be 9….

While I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the fact that I’m going to have a 9-year-old, I’m also trying to plan his birthday party. As everyone knows, one of the most important parts about being a kid, is desert, and so birthday cake is a big part of the whole birthday party spectacle.

This scares me.

Frightens me to my very core.

I have Bad Birthday Cake Karma.

It all started back when my oldest turned 1. Although I do like to bake, I wouldn’t have even attempted to make a cake for the 1st birthday of my 1st child. Way too much pressure. So I instead did what every overwhelmed parent of a 1-year-old does… I went to the supermarket and ordered the coolest and prettiest cake I could find. It was this three-tiered job that looked like The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party had mated with Joseph’s Technicolor Dreamcoat. We ordered it in advance and when the day of the party came around, hubby and I were way too busy finishing up the house for all our guests. So we sent a relative to pick it up. When they arrived back at the house I attempted to pay the relative for the cake…

“You don’t owe me anything.”

Of course I do, it’s for the cake.

“I didn’t pay for the cake.”

You what? You didn’t pay for it?

“I thought you had already paid, so I just picked it up and left.”

I looked at the beautiful, AND STOLEN, cake. The one that I picked out to celebrate the birth of my wonderful son. “Shit, I’ll go back and pay for it tomorrow”.

Months later my hubby and I joked about the cake…. and I couldn’t recall if I ever did pay for it. I still can’t recall.

This was the beginning of my Bad Birthday Cake Karma.

Fast forward to this past December. My middle child was turning 3 and I, once again, ordered a cake from the same store. By now we’ve gotten a bit older, and wiser, and lazier, and decided to have the party at an indoor play-place. I went to set up the venue and sent hubby to pick up the cake.

An hour later he walks into the party empty-handed.

As I looked at him with complete disdain….

Really dude? You had one job???

“There was an accident.”

Are you okay? The car?

“The cake.”

Oy Vey, Bad Cake Karma strikes again…

It seems the bakery only had VERY LARGE boxes. So large, in fact that the box couldn’t fit in the shopping cart and had to be rested on the top. As my hubby walked to the checkout another shopper accidentally rammed him with her cart. The cake fell to the floor in a mangled, sugary heap… leaving hubby and the other shopper to stand over it in wonder. As he scooped up the now, totally unrecognizable cake and brought it back to the bakery department to be fixed, he was told the cake decorator was on lunch break and they “might” have a new cake ready in an hour. Of course, the party was starting in 12 1/2 minutes. Isn’t that always how it goes? So hubby ran back to the party and once again we sent a family member to pick up the cake.

This time when I went to pay for the cake…

“No, the receipt said, no charge.”

What do you mean, “no charge”? This is getting ridiculous… We don’t take things without paying for them. We aren’t fucking thieves.

And there it was in black and white, “No charge”.

This time I was going to investigate…

When I went back to the market on Monday, receipt in hand and story in mouth, the cashier looked it up for me in the computer… it seems the stranger involved in the cake-tastrophe had PAID FOR OUR CAKE. A simple accident and she took responsibility that wasn’t hers to take. It was a lovely gesture. But I still get a bad taste in my mouth when I think of cake. Actually, just the words “Birthday Cake” make my hairs stand on end and I break out in hives.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Fingers crossed that my Bad Birthday Cake Karma comes to an end this year. Cause I can’t take this shit 3 times a year for the next 20 years.

Cake Karma Update…