Post by paradigmshift on Jan 18, 2009 17:35:31 GMT 10
It's the end of the world as we know it
and I feel fine
[/right][/size][/font]For some reason, it just felt good to slave over a hot stove like an old maid, and Izzy didn't know why. Maybe it was just the hangover sapping her of any feminist inhibitions--hell, if drugs could make men sing about being walruses and egg men, surely getting totally wasted could deprive her of her sanity (though usually alcohol wasn't the trigger)--because she felt like doing something that she had never done before: make cupcakes. And so she wasn't really slaving, per se. She had already finished with the mixing and the beating and was now just watching the stove tick down the minutes until they were ready. Which was still something, since usually she pushed all the girly tasks onto her effeminate dance partner, who willfully fed her and picked out her clothes and did her laundry so she wouldn't have to worry her "pretty little pinhead." Yeah, now her mind was freed up to think about all the important things in life, like, "How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop?" or, "Why does our house mother look like she's wearing a toupee?" or, "Why do I have such an aversion to medical facilities?"
Oh, life's unanswerable questions. How predictably unpredictable. Like the relationship between Ron and Hermione.
Jesus H. Christ. Was she still drunk or something? Her musings had never ventured into the realms of tween-age pop culture before. She didn't even want to ask herself what she'd been doing nights. What she'd been doing days was bad enough. Not to mention all the time she had to spend getting ready for the Halloween dance exhibition. Inspiration just hadn't struck her yet. Thank god her professor liked her, or she would probably be kicked out of the program by now--he'd never granted so many extensions before--and if she didn't come up with something ingenious soon she'd have his wrath down on her shoulders. But hey, at least that weight would be offset by the loss of his trust. Ugh. She couldn't help feeling like shit free falling after it hit the fan. She couldn't help not having a burst of creativity that sent her mind soaring to the heavens, or even to more cliche poetic niceties...
So she masticated her gum thoughtfully, her elbows on the counter to prop up her heavy head, and tried really really hard to will the situation to remedy itself. After all, didn't miracles happen occasionally? And though she probably couldn't bribe god with a promise to believe if he/she/it made the world correct itself for her, it was okay to dream, wasn't it? After all, dreaming made reality bearable, right? Because if all she had to make life better were crappy MTV reality TV shows, she might as well shoot herself now. For a moment she considered rifling through a few of her fellow Delta sisters' drawers, because she had a hunch that at least one of them kept a handgun. The world was cruel to women these days... particularly to the pretty ones--the ones weak and easy to take advantage of. Which was why girls needed to stick together. Like that saying went... chicks before dicks, or sisters before misters, or fetuses before penises--yeah... that last one sure wasn't right. Where the hell her train of thought was stopping these days... Hmm. Must run on ethanol.
Speaking of sisters, she wondered vaguely what the rest of the delta girls were doing. Usually at this time the house wasn't very full, and since the sorority was pretty exclusive there weren't that many people in to begin with. But waiting for artificially sweetened, no-eggs-added, dairy-free baked goods to rise allowed time for thoughtful ruses. Maybe that was why Izzy wanted to bake something. She just needed a purpose, something to do, to keep her occupied when what she normally threw herself into wasn't cooperating with her creative ability. But she had to admit, thinking was kind of strange. As was being unoccupied. Which struck a chord of irony. As a child she had wrapped herself up in daydreams and thoughtful musings so much that her father had come up with nicknames like "space cadet," and "cosmic girl," because her thoughts had always taken her "so far away." Morning, starshine. Time to wake up and face reality. Funny how life changes people. She went from a scrawny, flat-chested idealist little kid to a scrawny, only slightly less flat-chested, really tall adult much too cynical for her age. So some things stayed the same, (unfortunately) and some things changed (verdict undecided). Point was, in life one had to roll with the punches.
Now Izzy could only hope that growing up had changed her cooking ability as well, because she would not be able to roll with the punch of a bad vegan cupcake. It was her own recipe. Granted, she'd never tried it before, and granted, she didn't bake at all, but Izzy wasn't the type who failed. At least, not the type who admits she failed. So when the oven dinged she (rather over-zealously) flung open the stove, burned her hand on the hot muffin tin (in her eagerness she had forgotten about oven mitts), let out a startled yelp, ran her hand under cold water, finally got the pan out of the oven, and set it on the counter to cool. She watched the steam rise off the unfinished cupcakes for a moment, nursing her painfully burned fingers, before retrieving the icing from the refrigerator. Her hands lingered in the cool box for an unnecessarily long amount of time; for once she relished the cold. Spreading the icing was clumsy work with her unburned right hand, but she managed to not screw up too much. When she stepped back, she had to admit that the cupcakes looked a little sad... they were rather flat and just a little bit strangely colored, but that didn't stop her from yelling into the living room, "WHO WANTS FAT-FREE CUPCAKES?"
Now she just prayed the sweets wouldn't induce vomiting, miscarriage, or outbursts of "Motherchucker!"
Status: finished and open
Word Count: thousand something
Notes: I'm feeling funny right now... Maybe that's why this post is so goddamn strange.
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