birthday cakes for diabetics

...Someone just called me and now I'm all fidgety and my mouth is quirking itself into funny little expressions. Fidgety fidgety gonna fidget till Friday, dios mio.

My buddy Brandon told me last night that all he wanted for his birthday was a birthday cake, and no one got him one. I'll hook you up I said, what do you want? Yellow cake, chocolate frosting. So tonight I'm calling my mom for the yellow cake recipe I like best, the 1234 cake from Joy (one of the many things left in Boston). I think I'm going to make american buttercream for the frosting, because I think the unfussy sweetness would be right for him. I kind of want to decorate it with rolled fondant diamonds, hearts, spades and clubs, cause he's a gambler, but I kind of want to try preserving nasturtium blossoms in egg whites and sugar, like violets are treated. I've got a couple weeks to figure it out. And it might just get some royal icing writing like a true birthday cake should.

Tonight I'm going to try making the ice cream base for the caramel THING-filled ice cream.

Trawl down Mission and back up the hill after a couple of drinks with your friend, the bartender, who orders you fancy cocktails because he'd prefer you drink something fussier than a beer. Enjoy the smiles and stares of the girl in short shorts who finds you something you don't find yourself. Discuss your industry, from your various points of reference. You landed here on flight from the nine to five world, and to give safe haven to your creativity. He landed here on a plan to get back to that world and put himself through college. Discuss what you want, what you really want, and how you've always thought you'd do more than what you have done thus far {but also, how you haven't rested, how you've always been fighting your way forward}. When he opens up to you about things you have not yet heard, you keep the information like you keep all your secrets. But you're also a storyteller. Bits and pieces of the private stories find their way into textual longings.

In college I always used to ask my favorite professor how I'd still write after school. How to get published and how to be a better writer. I wanted him to tell me what to do. The five-point step to be the next Jhumpa Lahiri {Amy Bloom. Michael Cunningham. Carole Maso.} All he'd ever tell me was that the fact I was asking these questions was the evidence that I would do it. This is what I've been repeating to myself these days as I focus so much energy on other things. The fact that I'm still here spending so much time and energy on the page is the proof that I'm for real. I'm going to spend more time focusing on how to get my words out there.

This week at Frog Hollow the nectarine cake should be making her debut, if all goes well. I've tried so many peaches lately but they just don't do it for me the way the nectarine does.