The Particular Happiness of Lemon Cake

There is a lemon cake baking in my oven for the first time ever, even though lemon desserts are my favorite kind. I was going to write, “I don’t know why it took me so long to bake a lemon cake,” but actually, I know exactly why. I’m the only one in the house who likes lemon cake, and so it didn’t matter. I don’t even count, right?

Even I rolled my eyes at that. Oh, woe is me. I don’t matter! Blah blah blah.

I was having a shitty, crabby (get it? get it?) day until I said to myself, “Self, you want a lemon cake? Then make yourself a fucking lemon cake, bitch!” I swear a lot more in my own head than in real life.

I was having a shitty day because it’s Father’s Day, and I made the mistake of going on social media where everyone was waxing poetic about their fathers, and I just wanted to shrivel up into a little ball and die.

Instead, I laid (lie? I never know) on my bed like a pathetic sobbing mess until Gregg made me get up (first rule of Depression Club: you are not allowed to lay in bed during the day) and I trudged around the house in a sad haze. I cried and cried and cried for the first time about all this. I cannot believe I’ve never cried about it, but I like to give my husband a particularly shitty Father’s Day, so I let it all out today.

And then, a strange thing happened. I felt better. I felt better? I felt something. I cried, and I felt pathetic and sad, and then I got up, felt better, and made myself a lemon cake like I was in a damned cosmetics commercial saying, “Because I’m worth it.”

But I said it with calories and raw cake batter on my fingertips instead.

*One day I will feel better. I think. I hope. Stay with me until then, okay?