Do I look like an Easter superstar or what? Hahahaha you don't have to answer that
I KNOW THE ANSWER.
Okay, now I'm going to tell you a little story about a cake. An Easter birthday cake, to be exact, for my beloved Bonus Mom, whose 70th birthday happened to land on Easter Sunday this year.
I became intent on having a birthday cake made in the shape of an Easter egg. My sister Gina and her wife, Beth, suggested I just come down on Saturday and spent the afternoon at their place baking one in their kitchen myself—I was like, year, that's not in the cards. That said, I stupidly did not start calling around to custom cakeries to inquire about having this done until about two weeks ago, and was basically met with "Yeah, that's Easter weekend. We're all booked up." Dammit!
Now. Shobhit works for Total Wine & More, which provides alcoholic beverages and liquor to a French bakery on 4th Avenue in downtown Seattle called
La Parisienne. Shobhit has an acquaintanceship with the people from the bakery who come in to Total Wine, and evidently he asked them about having the cake I wanted made. They seemed to think maybe they could, and it was suggested I contact them to inquire, so I did.
At first, I had very high hopes, and even sent them photos I found online as examples of what I was looking for. I was thinking a sheet cake carved into the oval shape of an egg, decorated like an Easter Egg with the frosting, and with just HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHERRI written on it. Once they saw my photos, though, the lady I was emailing said they couldn't do cakes like that. What they could do, she said, was a chocolate cake with a chocolate egg on top, which could be decorated. I said okay, even though the cost was comparable to that of the estimates I found at more straightforward custom cakeries—roughly a hundred bucks. Even though the estimated servings for this cake was about ten, and more than 30 were expected. Luckily my sister already planned on getting another, more standard birthday cake from Costco.
I have to admit, when I went to pick up the cake late Saturday morning at La Parisienne, I was a little disappointed. I thought they might still put some kind of icing on the egg to make it look like an Easter egg, and instead they presented me with lettering that looked kind of like someone who was stoned sneezed on it and then used the mucus to spell out
Happy Birthday Sherri in lettering inspired by serial killer handwriting.
The cake otherwise still looked delicious. I brought it home, hoping it was delicious enough to justify the $110 price with tax—something my neighbor Alexia declared "actually not that bad" but was literally exponentially more than I had ever spent on a cake. I decided to spend the money anyway because my Bonus Mom will only turn 70 on Easter Sunday one time in all of history.
My roommate, Ivan, took a bit of an opposite tack from Alexia when he heard how much I spent on it: "It's not a wedding cake, Matthew!" he exclaimed. I double checked in the email thread exactly what kind of cake it was, because Ivan kept asking, based on the price tag. I found the reference in email to what it was: chocolate "feuilletine cake with 3D egg decorated + Happy Birthday Sherri." Now, if it referenced decorated plus the message, naturally I expected more decoration. I'm not crazy!
Anyway I had no idea what feuilletine was. I did some Googling and discovered it to be
crispy crepe flakes, and then we finally realized that this was a very fancy cake indeed. And you should all be relieved to know: the whole cake disappeared by the end of the evening and was a genuine hit. I'm almost bummed I only got one and a half servings of it myself, but it was, in the end, truly spectacular. It actually was worth the price, the horror movie lettering notwithstanding.
My eldest niece, Brandi (who is 37, and having a niece that age makes me want to kill myself, just kidding maybe!), apparently came over to Gina and Beth's last night to do some birthday decorating. The number 70 was hanging in circles all over the place. I was pretty pleased with myself for this nice and artistic angle on one hanging below the front room skylight.
. . . And just a side note: the rest of this post is transposed from the travelogue email I sent out last night for Easter and Sherri's 70th birthday party, but one part I did not include in that, which I do tend to include here on the blog, is:
Easter 2022 Roll Call!
(or: Sherr's 70th Birthday Party Roll Call!)
1. Sherri
2. Dad
3. Angel
4. Brandi
5. Nick
6. Jaycee
7. Gianni
8. Enzo
9. Ricky
10. Rachael [even though she and Ricky split up; she came, with—]
11. Ruby Mae
12. Britni
13. Alex
14. Caitlyn
15. Amira
16. Alaina
17. Gina
18. Beth
19. David
20. Jackie
21. Georgia
22. Christopher
23. Becca
24. Tyler
25. Tristen
26. Christian
27. Braeden
28. Matthew
29. Shobhit
30. Wendy
And, expending on this side note for just a moment, a few notes on this roll call list: there was a time at which we thought there may be as many as 35—and, that Sherri would get her birthday wish to have the entire family together for her birthday. But, although Christopher did manage to make it with the boys from Wallace, Idaho and Spokane; Nikki and TJ were the ones who bailed on their longstanding plan to come with their two kids from Spokane, because it's been unseasonably cold this month, there was snow in the forecast for Snoqualmie Pass, and TJ just got a new job and they said they couldn't "risk getting stuck over there." (According to Christopher the pass was actually fine but whatever.) As it happens, those four were not quite the only ones not to make it, though: Raiden, Ricky's eldest, was apparently at Great Wolf Lodge with some friends, so between him and Nikki's two kids, there were three great-grandkids Sherri did not get at her party. But! Far more notable, I would argue, was the fact that Christopher made it, bringing all four of us siblings together for the first time in ages.
Now that I have 10 nieces and nephews, nearly all of them grown, with another 10 grandnieces and grandnephews among them—and thus, Sherri has 10 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren—old Easter traditions have returned: an egg hunt for plastic eggs filled with candy for the small children in the backyard first; then an egg hunt for plastic eggs filled with money for the adults in the front yard. The only difference this year is the traditional location of these events at my dad and Sherri's house has now shifted to the house of my sister and sister-in-law.
This was my haul after the egg hunt for the adults. I'll try not to spend it all in one place.
A birthday gift from Sherri's best f❤cking granddaughter ever. (It was Brandi.)
I don't know why people are wary of the photos I take.
I take great photos!
(For the record, Sherri deliberately posed like this before cutting her birthday cakes.)
Side note on the egg cake: that surprisingly large chocolate egg was hollow, a relatively thin (and tasty) chocolate shell, which we finally just pulled off once we realized it couldn't easily be sliced through with the serving knife.
My favorite thing about the day: to the rather pleasant surprise of all the rest of us, my brother, Christopher, actually managed to get here for this event, all the way from Wallace, Idaho, where he still lives in the house Mom and Bill had (and Christopher lived with them in for the previous several years) before they died. Christopher's intent to come to these events, especially this far from his home, can not always be relied on. In the end, he made it, and this was the first time all four of us siblings had been together
since 2003 (Easter as well, incidentally). Nineteen years!
When Dad and Sherri got together in 1981, Sherri brought with her Angel and Gina; Dad brought with him Christopher and Matthew. In the above photo, left to right: Matthew (born 1976); Christopher (1972); Gina (1971) and Angel (1969). After September of this year, I will be the only one of us not yet past the age of 50. I do love that I am the youngest and that never changes!
Beth, Gina's wife, was taking the photos with my phone for me, and she suddenly said, "Quick, look up!" And so we all did.
And then of course, we had to get the requisite full family portrait, something we also had not even had an opportunity to do for 19 years.
My brother and the four of his five children who managed to make it were all surrounding the same table on Gina and Beth's back deck, so I asked them to pose for a family portrait. A refusal to smile broadly for the camera would appear to be genetic. I posted this to the Facebook wall of Nikki, my brother's oldest, who lives in Spokane and was the only one of all 10 grandkids who was unable to make it today. I added the caption, "You were missed today, The Dour McQuilkins Band was incomplete without you!"
This photo of my brother and my dad amuses me for some reason. My brother has made the choice to shave all his hair and Dad's hair is unusually unruly. He looks like someone I can't put my finger on, but I feel like it's something along the lines of an old crank seen in movies.
I have to give Sherri credit: she humored me without question when I asked her to look out the front screen door so I could get this iconing birthday shot.
Parting selfie.
When I was in Olympia over Christmas, at Dad and Sherri's house, Sherri asked me if I was still missing my mom a lot, as Mom passed away two years ago. I said in a chipper tone, "Not really, I had a spare!" The impact this woman had on my life, particularly in my coming-out process but also all through my childhood, cannot be overstated. I don't want to diss my mom per se, except to say that my relationship with her had long been complicated in a way my relationship with Sherri never had to be, and in many ways, what my mom could not be for me, Sherri stepped in to fill the void. If only all children could be so lucky.
[posted 12:55 pm]
