Traveling Marshalls and the Case of the One Eyed Monkey

So in the words of one of my greatest friends, I've been Michaeled.

being michaeled  \ˈbē(-i)ŋ ˈmī-kəl-ed'\
The act of being swindled by the many beautiful craft ideas that Michael's has to offer, believing that you can in fact complete those crafts, and then failing.  Miserably.

I had it in my heart that I would make Potato's birthday cake.  Like actually bake -- a thing that no self-respecting Jewish princess should do.  But I was going to do it, and I was going to succeed.

I went to Michael's and bought a great monkey cake pan and several varieties of icings.  The cake pan came with instructions, fool-proof I believed, for decorating the monkey to look cute and cuddly.  I had high hopes of decorating the cake to resemble Potato's favorite monkey, the orange and yellow monstrosity (not in a naturally-occuring color palette) created by Fisher Price.  It would have been a great cake.

The day I decided to test out my cake making skills, I got everything ready in our closet of a kitchen.  I baked the cake to the specifications, gently carved off the top layer so that it would lay flat, and ever so gingerly turned it over on to the baking sheet where I would be doing my decorating.  As I removed the pan, I noticed that the monkey's head and neck had separated.  I thought I could fix it in the decoration.  So soon enough, I had the icing tubes whipping around that thing like a kid emptying toothpaste all over the floor. 

I looked down at my creation.

What I saw before me was one of the ugliest monkeys I have ever seen.  One eye was black whereas, in the other eye, the white and black icings had mixed to make a sort of purple blob.  According to the directions, if I wanted to smooth out the icing, I could dip my finger in cornstarch.  So dip I did. 

Except for the fact that as I stuck my cornstarched pinky onto the icing to smooth it, the entire purple eyeball blob affixed itself to my finger and came loose from it's rightful place.  I tried to ever-so-gently return the eye to the face and it wound up closer to where the uterus would be.  If it was a female monkey.

It was all over by this point.  I stood back and surveyed the cake, a one-eyed monkey with a gaping neck wound, and I thanked Michael's for helping me come to the realization that I should have just ordered a cake in the first place.  And that is exactly what I did.

This is my submission to this week's MamaKat Writing Workshop.  Click to see who else has participated.