hm...I can't seem to find the title of this post...maybe I forgot it somewhere.

I blame the sunflowers. Actually, no. I blame autumn in general. Fall is the time for extremely complicated orders of wedding cupcakes. In summer, most people are content with pink icing and some glitter. Throw on a small gumpaste daisy that you punched out with a cookie cutter in 20 minutes the day before, and their minds are blown. But in fall, a simple request such as "can you make the icing colour to match my tablecloths" is replaced by something more along the lines of "can each cupcake have a detailed hand-sculpted depiction of a bountiful harvest on it...that matches my tablecloths?" while these sorts of orders are more exciting, they tend to sap my mental capacity more than a little.

I got up at 4 o'clock this morning to help make every bountiful-harvest bride's wishes come true. The first thing I noticed when I got up was that my one pair of jeans not only has a hole in the crotch (which I already knew about) but also a hole in the bum as well. I was going to be at work for the next 9 hours, during which time I was sure no one would notice my unfortunate choice of pants. But after that, I would be going to class, and I had already spent an afternoon earlier that week traipsing around the university in a see-through skirt and wedge shoes filled with my own blood, and I wanted to maintain my dignity somewhat. I decided to bring along a nice long shirt to change into, one that would cover up my shame.

I spent the next 9 hours at work, making burnt-orange creamcheese icing to go with "fall red" velvet cake with plum coloured accents, all the time waiting for my coworker to relinquish his grasp on his masterpiece of marbled cupcakes, at which point I had to affix oreo cookies to the top of each one with green icing and dab on sunshine-yellow icing petals, to produce 150 sunflower wedding cupcakes. I hope at least one guest took theirs home to frame it instead of dismantling it and eating it in 2 bites, like I would have.

Those gorgeous sunflowers must have sapped more of my strength for logical thought than I had expected. My troubles began when I zipped merrily from work to school, rifled through my backpack to find my hole-hiding tunic top, to discover that I had managed to lose my change of clothes somewhere between home and work. I ended up sitting through a 3-hour lecture in a sweat-soaked t-shirt, sugar-covered jeans, running shoes stained with lime-green icing, and several sizeable holes in my pants. I sat next to a girl who was convinced that she smelled strongly of salmon. I was convinced that I smelled like vanilla icing mixed with the musky scent of my own armpits, so I felt I was in good company.

After class, I made a quick stop at a news stand to get several copies of the school paper, since my first article is in there and I knew two of my interviewees needed copies. Then I went to the bookstore to squander my money on textbooks. At the bookstore, I realized I had lost my purse. I put down my backpack to dig through it, just in case my purse was somehow shoved inside it. No good.

I ran back up to the university classroom. No purse there. Maybe my prof took it back to her office to hold onto it for me. I went to her office. No purse. On the way back I realized I had lost track of my newspapers. I grabbed one more--surely they could share. I went from the news stand to the lost and found to the second floor where I heard someone calling my name and found that a helpful classmate had found my purse and was carrying it for me. At this point I had disoriented myself so much that I had lost the powers of social interaction, grabbed the purse, probably said thankyou, and then headed back to the bookstore.

On the way to the bookstore I re-thought my mizerly ways and grabbed 2 more copies of the newspaper. Then I got to the bookstore and realized I had left my other copies of the newspaper on the bookstore desk. Now I had 6 copies of the Uniter and my purse. I spent 3 minutes on the ground digging through my purse for my wallet. Now I had a purse, 6 copies of the Uniter, and no wallet. I emptied the entire contents of my purse and my backpack onto the bookstore floor, and there, at the bottom of my backpack was the wallet. So I bought my books, managing to leave several forms of ID and my credit card on the bookstore counter, as I did so, and was unchaining my bike when I realized that now I had my wallet, purse, and six copies of the uniter, but no ID or money. Back to the bookstore for me.

When I got home, I found that I had managed to open up my phone in my backpack, and was composing the following message to my boyfriend:

"WUppp ?l,okmijuy"

That just about says it.