If you’ve been following, well, anyone Canadian, you know that the tariffs have been a royal pain. A hamfisted implementation. A logistics nightmare. And thus, we have been under stress.

Follow along, dear reader, as I explain my extremely responsible, adult, and valid coping mechanism with all the elegance and grace of which I’m capable.

I went to the local grocery store. I got a birthday cake. I don’t mean a fancy cake. I mean a shitty sheet cake with icing roses in a colour nature never intended. I bought that cake… and I had it made out “To me”. Buying my own birthday cake, on not-my-birthday is a habit of mine when things go south. I’m not ashamed to say that it’s been a two-birthday-cake month around here.

I used to have them made out to “Ralph”. Eventually I gave up hiding my true intentions. But up to that point, Ralph’s of the world, I had your back. (That, incidentally, was the origin of naming the entity in my studio who controls kiln firings and humidity levels “Ralph”).

It’s ok to cry while you eat the cake. It’s encouraged, actually, nothing adds flavour to cheap icing like the tears of the despairing. I spent the pandemic haunting my studio alone, slowly losing at McDonalds box jenga. But I digress.

Here’s the other reason to buy yourself cake; I read an article recently titled “the benefits of getting old” or some such. There were several bullet points, but they all added up to one thing:

Older folks just don’t have as many fucks to give.

The article tried to vary it up. They really did.
“You have greater emotional intelligence”.
“You have more life experience to draw from”.
“You are less likely to be reactive”.

They really could have just summed it up though, thusly:
You no longer give a fuck when you don’t have to.

Back to the cake. When I went to the cashier, she looked askance at my cake (this is not my first time having an odd interaction with a grocery store cashier, scroll to the bottom).

Her: “Birthday?”.
Me: No.
Her: Special occasion?
Me: No. 
Her: Ok then… *goes on to pointedly do Other Things*
Me: The cake is for me. I’m going to eat it myself.
Her: …
Me: You may not know this yet, but when you’re in your 40’s, you can purchase, and consume, your own birthday cake any time you like. No one can stop you. Depending on how you feel about your glucose levels, you could even start now.

She gave me an admirably level look. Then she said
“When I get there, I will think of you. You fucking legend”.

Goddamn right I am.

= = = = 

Many moons ago, in the footsteps of the Great Dyers, I decided to try dyeing yarn with Kool Aide. I had never dyed yarn before and had no idea what to do. So I started by going to the grocery store and buying up every single serve package of Kool Aide I could find, in as many flavours as possible. 

I dumped my findings (40 or so packages) unceremoniously onto the conveyor belt.

A cute guy was standing just ahead of me, and he kept looking back at my unseemly pile.

“I’m Dyeing!” I volunteered.

“You’re WHAT?!” He exclaimed in horror.

“Yes! Tonight!” And, as an afterthought,
“Did you know you could use Kool Aide?”.

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And yes, for my pedantic readers: While use of the phrase dates back to 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and the saying “drinking the Kool aide” has entered our common vernacular, in the case of Jonestown it was Flavor Aid,  laced with cyanide and other horrid things. :)