Women are from Venus – where there’s cake apparently

Sassy turned eleven over the weekend. I have no idea how this happened. I blame her father.

The kid had a party with about a thousand of her little friends. She and her daddy planned most of the party – the swimming, the piñata, the lunch. I was in charge of the cake.

Of course I was.

I convinced Sassy to let me order the cake – sight unseen – from my favorite bakery. She’s had the cake before so it wasn’t like I was asking her to go forward on total faith. Although, honestly, if you can’t trust me of all people to buy a yummy cake, I don’t know what to tell you. You clearly have no faith in anything.

I ordered the cake from the wholesale bakery Ava and I tracked down when the purveyor of our favorite cake burned down. It turned out they weren’t the original baker of the cake and thus our greatest discovery was made. White cake, white frosting, white sprinkles. A square of heaven.

On Saturday, I got up early and got dressed. “I’m off to pick up the cake,” I told my husband. “It’s across town and they’re only open for a couple of hours on Saturdays.”

“Where the hell did you get this cake from?” Surely he was wondering why I wasn’t going to the grocery store around the corner.

I shrugged.

“Amy,” he said with the shake of his head, “it’s just a cake.”

I know my mouth hung open like my jaw was unhinged. Just cake? JUST CAKE? It’s like he’d never met me.

Just cake?

Why don’t men even bother to understand women? This stuff is so easy.

Just cake? Jesus.