Another Damn Bake Sale! (webisode #2)

It is inevitable, in the normal course of human affairs, that a BAKE SALE will one day find-  you!

Now, this can be quite a pleasant affair. Or, one quite noxious.  Depends on who you are, and how you feel about baking.  Our beloved Celia, well...not so much a baker. Our story begins, one night in late November,

 just about the time the Christmas Craft shows begin all over town, Celia heard the phone ring...
She very clearly heard herself think- "No f#@*ing way am I answering that! I have a night to myself, and that's how it's gonna stay!"  She had visions of curling up on the sofa with a good book
sipping tea and day-dreaming the evening away.

  Her son was off "monitoring" a play date at cousin Jeffrie's house between their dog, Lil' Nippy

and Jeffrey's yappy little chihuahua,  Mister Pickles (a sinister little bastard)
It was an evening out for them all- an evening in for Celia. A Friday evening in. With no obligations for Saturday morning.  Just as her story began to get  good...real good
She was roused by the annoying ring-tone she had promised herself -but forgotten- to change.

But the rag-time music was free...and she was just too cheap to download a better song for like...$1.50. It was one of those moments when you wished you were a psychic,

and didn't even have to get off the sofa, peel yourself out of your snuggly, and go check the 'caller ID', to see if the call was worth it.

So, against her true will, she closed her book- (just as it was getting to an even better part)
and got up, stumbled across the room, and picked up-

"HELLO!" (it was not a question).  A voice curled like smoke through the hearing end of the receiver-
"Hello, Celia?" it faked friendliness the way it faked a British accent- "Helloo, this is Scarlett!"

 Ah-HAH! Scarlett- the Bakin'Bitch! Celia hated Scarlett!

 Oh, she sounded just too nicey-nice! This had to be bad...
"We were just wondering.....(" HAH! "we" meaning "her")..."There's a Bake Sale tomorrow at the school..."  

'AUGH!' thought Celia- 'another damn bake sale!'  Scarlett persisted with her high-falutin English impersonation of some BBC newscaster she admired- 

"And what with the flu going 'round und  ev-er-y thing..."  Scarlett continued...

"Wait for it...wait for it-" Celia thought, bunching her lips into a rectum.

Which is what you naturally do when speaking with an asskisser.

 "Well, you know how it is. Some of the Mothers who were pul-lanning to cun-trib-yute, well they just are-un't well enough to bake. And what with the chil-druns immune systums being so challenged, we thought it best they stay home..."  she paused here, waiting for the inevitable voluntary (from anyone but Celia) cheerful interruption to "Oh of course I'll help!" but from Celia she got a short, dry, terse "Um-hm."
While thinking to herself- "what am I, a walking oven?"
"Well, you cun see our-uh pre-dic-a-ment...do be a dahling and help us out?"(it was a southern-British accent now, apparently). Celia took a deep breath- held it in, then forced herself to sound more agreeable-
"Of course I'll help out. Anything for the kids-"
"Oh Wun-der-ful!" she was cut off, "We need cupcakes well youjust know how Trish and Cindy Miller makethebest cupcakes they alwayssell out and it is a fund-rais-or afterall so could you please bring by a little tray of those?" Scarlett could push out more words in a single sentence than wind from an F5 hurricane!


"Well okay" Celia grimaced..."I think I've got some gluten-free cake mix in the pantry-"

"Oh those..." Scarlett could be heard to grimace on the other end of the line. "Well, they are-un't as popular as those other cupcakes... but I guess they'll do. Some of the mums still do the 'diet'."  

It pissed Celia off that most of the other 'mums' didn't 'bother' with the gluten-free, dairy-free diet. Just too much trouble for them. They didn't seem to think it important to read up on what this shit was doing to their kids guts,

 and that she thought it was cruel. Maybe even a form of Munchhausen's-by-proxy, to poison your child with foods they were allergic to.  If she could find the time to bake shit, ANYONE could.  When she hung up the phone, her night BLOWN now, she felt like this-



"Cupcakes!" she shrieked, "What am I, the frickin' cupcake Fairy!?"
But instead, only saw this-

Gluten-free brownie mix, by Her Majesty, Betty Crocker. A life-saver to crappy cooks everywhere. Though Celia baked a lot, because she had to, she would be the first to admit, she sucked at this. What she needed, was what some celebrities need when they try to write a book, but suck at it. Yes, Celia believed, deep in her heart, that she deserved a good Ghost Baker.

Ghost Bakers were not found in the Yellow pages under "domestic services'. She knew this for certain. She had looked.  So Celia yanked her favorite bowl down from the shelf- the green and white ceramic, depression era one from her grandmother...

got two eggs...a half cup of dairy free, Earth Balance butter...and approached her mysterious stove- the one with the poltergeist living in it-

No one would judge her for that. Or expect anything different. She had all their money anyway. If she chose to spend $26.00 on a box of bakery brownies that would only sell for $1.25 each, well, that was certainly her prerogative. The pressure was building...


All the while thinking, if just one of these bitches even looks at me the wrong way!.. 
By whom she meant Miss Scarlett, the Bakin'Bitch...why, she'd..she'd just have to-

go all Mel Gibson on her ass! And if that meant

staying late to help scrub up after the Bake Sale....well, that was alright by Celia.  After she pulled the brownies from the oven,

she thought, 'well perhaps I should frost these in a most extra-ornery way!' meaning she aimed for:

a dairy-free two-toned swirl, with both chocolate AND vanilla icing-haHAH! That'll show them! But alas, she re-checked the cupboard....

just Duncan Hines Classic Chocolate. And...hmmm...one little package of honey left in there

from the handful she had swiped from WaWa last month

 for her at-home-tea marathons. Oh, well. So, she popped that into her purse ( for she'd had an idea!) frosted her damn brownies,

But what she got was...
actually, not half-bad.  So, she wrapped the shit up, left it on the counter, fell asleep finishing her book, woke up on the sofa the next morning, VERY LATE! and had to drop the brownies off at the school on her way over to cousin Jeffrey's to pick up her son. So she drove -respectful of all laws- over to the school-

  and skidded to a dangerous stop in front of the cafeteria,

 parked

in a handi-capped space, made a mad dash for the cafeteria- located Scarlett at the door, dropped the tray of brownies in her arms, panted,"SORRY- can't stay! I got the flu!",

 wiped the honey that was dripping from her nose, turned quickly and ran all the way home! She actually forgot to get her car out of handicap parking, and later that day, when she finally remembered- wellll...
this guy had already showed up.  Gave her one of these...

and because she had a dozen or so unpaid parking tickets, he had already called...
Which wasn't the worst of it- the tow-truck-driver had to add insult to injury-

So now the whole neighborhood knew!!!
But worst of all, her son informed her that, the night before, as usual, Mister Pickles had been a bad influence on Lil' Nippy.

                                                                          The End