The Great Cupcake Search -- A Slice of Heaven

As you may have guessed from earlier posts, Oklahoma liquor laws are weird.

Liquor stores can sell beer and wine and the like—but they can’t sell it cold.

Grocery stores can sell cold beer—no wine or liquor—but only if it’s 3.2% alcohol instead of the standard 5.5 or above.

Which may not seem relevant to The Great Cupcake Search…unless, of course, you realize that Opie and I recently took the search on the road to Sarasota, Florida when we visited my parents for a few days.

A search that was hindered by the following 3 things:

     Sarasota liquor laws are much more lenient than Oklahoma’s.

     My father shows fellowship and camaraderie by offering Opie beer at random yet not at all    infrequent intervals.

     Opie is diametrically opposed to ever turning down a beer offered to him on the grounds that doing so is anti-social and wasteful.

This means that after an afternoon in my dad’s company, Opie cared even less about the Great Cupcake Search than he does about the chemical composition of ear wax.

In fact, when I suggested that we meander down to A Slice of Heaven and sample a few cupcakes, he stared at me like I’d grown a second head.

This meant that my mom and I had to venture out on our own.

Which probably doesn’t seem like that big of a deal; I mean, we are grown adults. The problem is that my mom is really good at directions. And since she’s really good at directions, she often forgets that I am NOT good at directions.

At all.

So we get in the car, she drives and I navigate with the GPS on my phone, which leads to conversations in which I shout "Left! Go left here! LEFT!!"

And my mom responds with "I'm already in the LEFT LANE!"

Which is when I yell "Right! Go right here! RIGHT!"

And we both start secretly wishing for a glass of wine the size of a human head.

However, against all odds, we found the shop.

And it was totally NOT worth the trip.

First of all, they had almost no selection.

Chocolate or vanilla with Bailey’s cream filling.

Which would have been fabulous if the filling had actually tasted like Bailey’s.

It didn’t.

It tasted like the filling you get in a Hostess cupcake…so it didn’t taste bad, it just didn’t taste like the sweet deliciousness that is Bailey’s Irish Cream.

The whole cupcake was like that…not bad, just nothing special.

  

So, final verdict:

Size: Average

Cost: Good ($6.00 for a 4 pack)

Cake: Ok

Icing & Filling: Misrepresented

 I’d eat them in a cupcake related emergency but not worth the headache of a drive through unknown territory.

Mole Control

While I can certainly appreciate the damage moles do the lawn, I can’t help but feel Bub’s constant efforts to keep their population under control are slightly less than helpful.

If I could get him to dig like this in the garden, planting would be a lot easier.

Whining About Wine

After all, I got my new laptop after the horrible computer crash earlier this week,  final exams are over, and even though I still have essays to grade, summer has officially begun! On top of that, we may actually have sold the house in St. Louis (for more details on that drama, click here) and Princess Snowflake Sassypants is finally recovering from what can only be called the WORST HAIRCUT EVER.

Before:

Now:

Clearly, a day to celebrate.

So, ever the optimist, I once again went to the largest liquor store in the area armed with my latest issue of Food & Wine. "Any of these," I told the lady, showing her the editors' picks."I'll take any one you have."

"We don't have any," she said, just like she does every time.

Unwilling to admit defeat, I decided to try a different tactic. "I'm not married to the year," I told her. "We're not purists--just give me something by the same winery. That'll do."

"Honey," she said, just like she always does. "You're in OKLAHOMA."

"Fine," I said. "What do YOU recommend?"

Which might make you suspicious that this clerk is playing me for a sucker, that she's a scam artist just trying to upsell me on the latest, most expensive wine in the shop.

But, as she said, this is Oklahoma.

"I like this one," she said.

(Yes, as a matter of fact, that is a 

donkey with a band-aid on the label)

And you know what? It's not bad.

It's terrible.

But life is still good here in Oklahoma. Happy summer, everyone!

A Serial Squirderer

You know what’s more upsetting than coming out to your newly planted garden and realizing that squirrels or other vermin are chomping it down to the roots?

When your loveable, over-loyal dog decides that he should fix this situation by indulging in wholesale squirrel slaughter.

It’s even worse when your loveable, over-loyal dog decides to shield you from his wholesale squirrel slaughter by burying the evidence in the aforementioned garden.

That’s right. Bubba killed ANOTHER squirrel and buried it in the garden.

Which I didn’t realize until I was out weeding and I hit the squirrel with the tiller.

And if you think that was upsetting for me, imagine how poor Opie felt when I ran into the house screaming.

Apparently, shrieks about murder and death and bodies in the garden do not make for a peaceful morning.

It is interesting to note that following this up with the instruction “Check the tiller for blood!” is not the best way to ease the tension.

In any case, you would think that this would be enough squirrel slaughter for one week but noooooooo! 

Today, Bubba got another one.

He didn’t bury this one in the garden, though, probably because I caught him while he was still deep in the “dead things make the best toys” phase and happened upon him while he was still running around the yard, flinging it in the air.

I did NOT take this well.

I also didn’t take it well when Bubba saw me and decided that I, too, would love nothing more than gallivanting around the yard with a dead squirrel and he came charging up to the porch to share his prize with me.

I won’t detail my inappropriate language and reaction to this situation but suffice it to say that it is something of a miracle that the neighbors didn’t call the police.

Oddly, though, when I finally got Bub to drop the squirrel and come in the house then texted Opie at work about what should obviously be considered an emergency, he did NOT offer to come home and immediately begin carcass removal.

Seriously, some people are so self-involved.

Luckily, there was just enough vodka in the freezer to get me through the intervening hours.

So, to recap, Bubba is a serial squirderer, Opie doesn’t understand what constitutes a real emergency, and vodka is awesome.

 

Wanted for Serial Squirder