"It sounds nothing like the Marx Brothers, that’s for sure.” The hours were ticking by and Sweet Cakes was lying by the radio, checking out the late night tunes on direct assignment from The Editor. She had landed on 91.1 FM, WTJU, which calls itself the “sound choice.” But seriously, Sweet was starting to wonder […]
Is there anything money can’t buy? This is the question that consumes Sweet Cakes at the moment. And it is not, dearest dear ones, because she has been on a big shopping spree and she’s excited about all the portable gadgetry and synthetic fabrics that the Western World spawns like so much pacifying political propaganda. […]
Sometimes you have to start in the middle. And so dearest reader, that is just what Sweet Cakes is doing. She simply draws a blank on how to introduce this topic, to wit, Crying at Work. There are two varieties of CAW; La Cake will address them both. First up: tears you shed when the […]
“Past season” read the markdown tag on the flouncy linen skirt that Sweet Cakes was trying on at her favorite bargain retailer. “Harrumph,” Sweet sweetly harrumphed to herself. With a new belt (something bold and scarf-y) and a boat-neck tee, what was past will be new again. An intuitive shopper with innate fashion flair knows […]
It’s not that math in and of itself causes Sweet Cakes’ nerves to palpate with anxiety. Math—what is it? A bunch of dress sizes and inseam measurements thrown together in a big heap! Please. Sweet is not l’imbecile! She can handle math. But taxes. That, dearest darlings, is another calculation entirely. And with the season […]
As a young cupcake, Sweet rarely looked to storybooks to fill her imagination. She was more likely to find inspiration in The Bangles than Sleeping Beauty. Somehow the bridge between Sweetling’s reality and Susanna Hoff’s seemed easier to travel than the space between Sweetie and Aurora. Maybe it was the fact that guitar lessons were […]
Some girls go for a flim-flam man. Some want a right-hand man. Sweet, she likes herself a song-and-dance man. A well-dressed, snap-heeled happy hoofer who can carry a tune and turn on a dime.
There are certain moments in life when a girl has to search her heart and define the essence of what she wants to say, Sweet reasoned. She has to straighten out her message like so many Betty Grable stocking seams. La Cake speaks, of course, of Valentine’s Day. When Sweetie says she loves her friends, […]
As far as real-life modern romances go, few top the story of Rob Sheffield and his wife, Renée Crist, who lived in Charlottesville in the ’90s when they were young marrieds. Their story nearly swamped Sweet with emotion when she was reading Sheffield’s new book, Love is a Mix Tape
“Eighty-five is an unnatural num-ber.” Sweet was thinking about weights and measures. She wasn’t in the kitchen at the time (and though it will pain a culinary talent like Mama Cakes to hear this, her little Sweetikins is more a take-out kind of girl, anyway). Still, food was very much on Sweet’s mind. Of course, […]