How Laverne helped me to have my cake and eat it, too!

shakeysix

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Just finished off my last piece of birthday cake. It was the best cake I have had in my life--well, since a three layer white on white cake with raspberry jam slathered between the layers, that my Grandmother made for my sixth birthday, but that I may have only dreamed, since no one remembers it but me-- and I came by this wondrous cake thanks to an AW connection.


Earlier this year I was writing a funeral scene and needed a spectacular but portable bereavement food for a character to bring to the family's house. Now, I don't bake, or even cook much beyond grilling a sandwich, and this character is a cook in a local (but semi-fictional) restaurant, so this had to be right. I PMed Laverne and she came right back with a Butter Pecan Rum Cake that is both beautiful and naughty. Being Laverne she also sent the recipe. Since it was fairly complex, using cake mixes and requiring that I melt stuff in a pan on an actual stove, I gave it to my sister. She bakes my birthday cake every year, a special request that usually turns out to be a refrigerated Lime Rickey Cake with Raspberry Sauce. (Recipe upon request.) This year I asked her to make Laverne's Butter Pecan Rum Cake instead and am so glad I did! My sister, BIL and I each ate 2 pieces without even remembering there was vanilla ice cream to go with it. I shared it with my daughter and grand daughter, they loved it. I froze the last six pieces and today I had the last. We are talking about doing this cake for our 4th of July picnic.

Anyway the cake experience got me to thinking about AW. We do our share of scrapping and sniping but there are real friendships here, and we do interact. Bronco once advised me on the difference between the front and back of toddler Huggies. Nymtoc checked in right after Kansas suffered that frightening 0000000.01 earth quake, to see how I was doing. Papers slid off a desk and wineglasses in the kitchen rattled so I was beside myself, practically dithering. Even though I live in a town of less than 1,000 in a county of less than 4,000 I do feel connected to the whole wide world.

Bufty was my fisrt friend. He still checks in from time to time. Night is a funny guy. Marymumsy has a connection to a small town in the next county. We trade tornado news. I have a giant and healthy German Queen tomato started by seed sent by MrsMig. Regdog treated me to a transformers convention. Laverne, shakesbear and others held my e-hand during my decision to retire. macallister lacygne and blackbird have spent time in Ks. and have memories that go beyond dust, flat plains and tumbleweeds. Others have advised me and made me laugh. Helix is always giving me the bird news. Haskins gave me a word of encouragement that I will never forget. I don't want to list any others because I know I am forgetting some but, with the current atmosphere of uncivility and peevishness in the world, let's take a minute to appreciate what we have here!

I can't think of all the interactions because I have been a member for ten years but surely other people have some to share.--s6
 
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regdog

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This is truly a great place to make wonderful friends.
 

Old Hack

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It is. And then there's me.

*glares at everyone*
 

mrsmig

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I'm sorry to disagree, Old Hack, but you were kind enough to advise me when I was weighing two offers from publishers. Your input helped me make the right choice.

:wag:

(shakey, so glad the tomato is thriving!)
 

Maryn

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Poor Mr. Maryn. He simply does not, and cannot, believe I have warm friendships with people I have never met in person. Yet I have several dozen friends here, people I'd invite to use the spare bedroom without hesitation. (And since that involves cleaning, my sincerity is the real deal.) His loss, I guess.

Maryn, warm and fuzzy (also warm and fussy, as she originally typed)
 

cornflake

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Wait, where's the cake?


I was told there'd be cake.


:Shrug:
 

Maggie Maxwell

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Wait, where's the cake?


I was told there'd be cake.


:Shrug:

Here's cake with pie in, for those who can't make up their minds.

piecake_zpsc60ae5c1.png
 

cornflake

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I do not condone turducken cake.

Cannibalism among baked goods... it's wrong.
 

noirdood

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I am about to elucidate you, perhaps. Do you know there are farms where they grow tumbleweeds so Hollywood Moom Piture folks will have a steady supply?
Consider yourself elucidated frum a pal from Ioway via Californer.
 

cornflake

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I am about to elucidate you, perhaps. Do you know there are farms where they grow tumbleweeds so Hollywood Moom Piture folks will have a steady supply?
Consider yourself elucidated frum a pal from Ioway via Californer.

You're going to elucidate me??

*runs to tell an adult*
 

noirdood

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Methinks it might be Holy Toledo to find an adult hereabouts. (Thas' good, adults are no fun at all and wrecked my tree house.)
 

shakeysix

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Almost forgot, Maryn lined out dashes, semi-colons and colons in a piece that I still keep on my desktop. Mrsmig--The German Queen dodged ping pong sized hail last night. I think the cage helped. A Jet Star on her block took a direct hit.

And Noirdood, Kansas has a couple of tumbleweed entrepreneurs. They even wire them together and sell them as Christmas trees. Years ago, during the Southwestern Decorating craze, seeing a painted cow skull at a local craft fair in Dodge City, sent my dad into a hissy fit. Seems he had a whole pile of them damned worthless things in a bone heap on his pasture and what kind of idiot would pay 25$ for one that had 4 dabs of paint and a couple of feathers glued to it? I was used to his rants but he had to unload on a public sidewalk! Fortunately there were other old farmers in the audience. --s6
 
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cornflake

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I saw this earlier this year. It's scary.
 

Lavern08

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DANG - I lurve myself some Shakey too!!! :Hug2:

(I even let her get away with adding that dreaded "e" to the end of my name)

And I agree with Maryn - AW has blessed me with some of my best (cyber) friends EVAH! :heart:
 

shakeysix

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I used to attend faculty meetings in Sublette Kansas. From time to time, the whole western edge of town was choked with them. Not such a problem here as the county has a ditch spraying program for Russian thistle and other weeds. But you know that organic milk and those expensive organic vegetables that people buy to avoid the chemical herbicides and insecticides? Save your $. With the wind like it is out here, everything gets sprayed. --s6
 
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Maryn

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I grew up in Arizona. It amused the everloving snot out of me to see new arrivals spray painting tumble weeds silver or gold and gluing tiny ornaments to them. They only did it their first Christmas in the desert, though.

Maryn, who cuts down her own damned tree like a real Amurcan
 

shakeysix

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Sorry about the dreaded E. Penny Marshall's character had the e in her name and that is where I go wrong. What do the gals at the Schotz Brewery call you?

Flake, that has to be Bovina Tx in that hilarious video. I've been through there. It is almost twice as big as my town. True cautionary tale about Tumbleweed Danger. When I taught in Another County, I had a couple of senior Cowboys who almost didn't graduate because of a tumbleweed attack. They were driving home from a rodeo in the Oklahoma panhandle. It was a Sunday evening. They were tired because they had stayed longer at the rodeo than their parents had authorized. To relieve the monotony they were driving into tumbleweeds. A giant one punched a hole in their pickup's radiator and the truck overheated, in the middle of nowhere, in the dark. Pre cell phone days, so They had to walk for help. Eventually a law enforcement vehicle spotted them. All would have gone well, except that they had taken a couple of six packs of beer, with them. They, of course, blamed their troubles on the tumbleweed. --s6
 
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noirdood

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I think I've been elucidated 'bout tumbleweeds. As to the notion of cutting down your own Christmas tree -- where would you get a great big piece of plastic to start cuttin' on? Makes no sense to me.
 

jennontheisland

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I used to have friends here... went away for so long I don't know where they went. I still have one but he's not on here anymore.