Fancy Smancy Cupcake Date

We had experienced the Balloon Race... location.

Then, we explored the Loop's... one restaurant we got an urge to check out.

Finally, we were back in the car and driving out of the city. Dating, we're back! And we went big! We had a lot of day already - don't forget we'd also run a bunch of errands earlier in the morning.

I had a vague recollection of seeing a cupcake place once while the hubby was driving me around. Of course, he's driven me all over the place, and this was however long ago. I did, however, start saying around the time we headed into The Loop that if we passed a cupcake place, we would be stopping. I love cake. I even tried to watch the DC Cupcake show... But even cake couldn't save that mind-numbing masterpiece of a program.

I was pretty sure it was on our way back home after we left The Loop the last time... So, as you can imagine, there wasn't a lot of happy going on in the car then. Because I was too stubborn to even get out of the vehicle and take two steps into The Loop. Ooooo. I was too scared of all the arty people. Which was entirely my fault and completely ridiculous, especially when you consider I used to be all open-poetry-mic-night girl and straight-out-of-grandma's-coolest-closet clad chick. But I was not so disturbed by the experience that I did not notice cupcakes. I could have sworn...

As we drove through one neighborhood after another, I kept expecting it to pop out. We were getting closer to the highway. My husband, humoring me as always, assured me it could emerge from the horizon at any second. We were both full anyway from the mac and cheese. It was fine. We'd find a cupcake place someday.

"It'll happen," I said to him.

He nodded, knowing I meant if we ever passed one ever, we would be having a cupcake.

I was too far to see the sign. It was a simple white building with several little businesses in it. But I knew immediately. I started yelling, "There it is! Is that it? Is there a cupcake place there! PULL OVER!"

And wha-la, my cupcake GPS opened like a flower to the sun. We pulled right in, and I clapped with glee.

I told my hubby, "Get excited! We're getting a couple to take home! CUPCAKES!"

Again, I am reminded how lucky I am to have found this man. He just took my hand and we headed into the cupcake shop. I was nervous, as I am when I go anywhere new (the hubby tried to open the door for me at Cheese-ology and I said, "No, you're going in first" because I was afraid of where to go and what to do and being the first one inside). The second we opened the door, a glass case of large, elaborately decorated cupcakes lay before us, and I forgot my nerves. Cure for my nervousness? Found. Check that off the list. Just have cupcakes waiting for me and I am ready to go. Happy perky party Happy Wife has arrived!

We picked out four (two each, no overlap allowed) after much discussion. We knew we'd split each one in half when we'd have them at home, so that we could both try all the ones we were getting. The 4 cost what a psychic reading would have cost the two of us. So, again, it was a good thing we didn't do that. Although, maybe the psychic would have warned me...

Anyway, we headed out, and I asked the hubby to pose in front of the shop. He started to do so, then insisted he take a picture of me there instead, since I was the one initiating all things cupcake in our lives forevermore.

Just as he was about to take the photo, a very nice woman who had also just bought some cupcakes was opening the door to her car to leave. She turned and said she'd be happy to take our picture for us. The genuineness in her voice was sort of staggering. It was very kind of her and unexpected. I have had too many cringe-worthy, lose-all-faith-in-humanity encounters at, for example, The Walmart, so this little interaction blatantly took me off guard.

In other words, this pic is courtesy of someone who made our day.

We came home and split one cupcake before going out again to run more errands. It was the "RazMaTazz" and was a chocolate cake with raspberry filling and a raspberry buttercream icing with chocolate ganache. Not bad, not bad at all.

After supper, we split the "Penguin" because... I like penguins. You got me. I admit that is why I was drawn to that cupcake. Still, chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting, chocolate sprinkles, and white chocolate ganache. That's no poor man's cupcake. For some reason, though, I could only eat half of my half, if that. But it was tasty! I don't know. I felt a little off but shrugged it away and continued with my evening.

I had visions of us having some cuddle time in front of the tv, or playing a board game, getting out the puzzle... Starting up the ole wii... Then adding the last 2 cupcakes to that activity would be like a little sweet at-home date! Oooooo. How smart I am! Tomorrow, maybe the next day, I thought...

About 4 hours after my 4 bites of the Penguin cupcake, and I'm not blaming the cupcake here, I got massively, horribly ill. I get migraines, and this was the worst one I have ever had. It came on like a flash of lightening, which is weird for me, but that wasn't my issue. My problem was the nausea that grabbed me with both hands by my face and proceeded to antagonize me for the next 2 hours. I was so sick that my husband asked if he could take me to the hospital... Yeah. Not good.

I want to make it clear that I have no idea why I felt the way I did. There were several possible causes. Easiest guess is sometimes I get nausea with my migraines. End of story.

Of course, this nausea made anything I felt in the past feel weak and puny.

It could have been that I still have the bug my husband had, the one that plagued him for weeks and that only moderately kicked my butt in comparison. He still has a weird cough. Maybe I never got over it and it's still playing a random game of tag in my body. You're it, stomach! No, you are, throat! How about sinuses! Boo-yah!

I can't forget also that still, I'm not good when we eat out. It nags me in the back of my mind. And all I could think about while I was in agony was those cupcakes and that made everything so much worse. I had to yell for my husband to bring me the wastebasket because when I tried to get up to get it myself, I couldn't. Then, I was in so much pain that I asked him to just sit with me and talk to me. Distract me from feeling like I was about to lose my ability to breathe. My whole head was one big "You're going to vomit up your organs! Ha! Ha!" evil, sadistic monstrosity and I felt like any second, I was going to lose it. My husband, he calmly rubbed my temples to abate my migraine, and he told me stories about when he was in high school orchestra. He did his very best to soothe my weary, weary soul. It was still horrible but he made it less so.

I ended up in bed for an hour, then on the floor of the bathroom for another hour. Finally, my migraine medicine kicked in and there was some relief. It was a wonderful day and a terrible evening.

We still have 2 beautiful cupcakes to try in the fridge, but there is no way I am going to take a bite of either of them. It is frustrating. The thought right now of the fact that there are still in there actually make my cheeks immediately all vomit-tingly even though I've been okay all day. I'll be sad to send them to work with the husband. But, at least now I can take upscale cupcake establishment off my bucket list.

So my cupcake-framed at-home date will have to be augmented with other snacks. That I can do. And today, taking it easy and just being at home with the hubby, watching a movie that should have been horrible but ended up making us laugh like crazy (She's Out Of My League), was so much better than anything I could have come up with for us to do. I am still the luckiest girl in the world.

The Forest Park Balloon Race Date

Every year, St. Louis has a weekend event with giant, colorful, hot air balloons. To see photos from 2009, click 2009 Balloon Race and then forget what you have seen, please. Those photos are not the date that we had.

We decided to go check it out. Looked fun. We've never seen hot air balloons up close before. Could be interesting. Although we ran many errands this morning (groceries! Hubby's hair cut! Mailing back some internet returns!), we were on our way to Forest Park by 11:30 am.

Friday night, the balloons were grounded but lit up and people could walk around them. Supposedly this is very beautiful and very crowded. We were glad we waited to go and missed that because this morning's radio shows were all a-twitter about how terrible the parking and crowds were. At the same time, we knew the actual race wouldn't start today until almost 5 pm, but the event started at noon.

We found a parking place near the Muny. The Muny is an open air theater in the middle of the park, and although we haven't been, we hope to remedy that next summer. Their season just closed, and none of their shows were quite what we wanted to see. Here is a pic of us in front of the Muny.

We reached the large, open balloon area fairly quickly. The walk there was full of very steep hills and very serious Balloon Festival patrons. There were tents. Grills. More tents. There was massive preparation and set up for a day of waiting on the balloon race. I say waiting because these families were just settled into close-by areas of the park and were not in the actual walking around and activity area.

If you have ever heard the song Joy Ride by Roxette, then you were in my head this afternoon. "She's tellin' all her secrets, in a wonderful balloon!" On repeat. I kept it deep, deep inside, which ended up not being that difficult due to...

The first thing we noticed was the distinct lack of balloons. I guess the balloons are not there for the first 2 hours of the balloon event. Which was really kind of disappointing. Look, here's the field where the balloons were last night and would later come back to!

Invisible Balloons!

We took it in stride. It was hot, sunny, and we hadn't been out in over a month. We walked all around the field to see the different... Sights? There were pony rides!

Ponies!

I definitely had a childhood full of this exact scene. And while I may not have outgrown my love of ponies, what's a girl to do? There were no adult horse rides. Which is good. I mean, what would they be? This set up only with full size horses? No one would do that.

Okay, I would have still probably done that. But it would have been less than fulfilling. I would have felt silly. Still. Where's my purdy horse?

There were tons of fair food booths and beer tents. I said "funnel cake" in the car about 9 times on the way there, but we weren't really that hungry when we were actually presented with it. Besides, 7 bucks for one funnel cake was a little too pricey for me.

There were a line of bouncy houses (again, for kids). There were balloon souvenirs! If I try really hard, I can pretend they're real!

Balloons! Kind of!

There was also this lonely balloon.

It was next to a line of new cars that were for sale. Who is impulse buying these?

Someone must have too much money. Walking around an empty field, waiting for balloons, then, bam! I could use a vehicle! That is on my to-do list! Won't my spouse be thrilled!

There was a highly advertised human chess board.

This made me think two things. Number one, maybe the car-buying money people could give some dinero to this little group. Number two, does this mean I'm a giant?

My husband got the most excited at this next... thing. He knew immediately what it was and got excited. He was the only one. Out of everyone at the fair. Every. One. 

 It's a longitude marker. Yeah.

It did not help that I said, "Touch it and smile!" in a weird, demanding voice while taking the picture. It felt dirty. Not good to be around the face painting booth and start diving headfirst into the brain gutter.

We collected ourselves and walked towards the area in the background of that picture. There was a dog show going on to the left, with a large crowd of people. We stood for a couple minutes, but people kept literally walking right in front of us and standing so that they were completely blocking our view. It was an exercise in super rudeness. But, it was also, gasp, a dog chasing and catching a Frisbee. Even my Mav could do that in her younger days. Shrug-able.

Suddenly, behind us, in the area fenced in white in the photo, we saw what was supposed to happen in that agility course. We had assumed dogs run through it doing great feats... Then, we saw a dog with a trainer, and the dog was low to the ground.

"He's scared," I said. Awww. Poor guy. That's when we saw the ducks. Holy sh*t.

At first, we thought maybe the ducks had just landed nearby and were about to fly away. Nooooo. These were FOR the show. The dog herds the crazy ducks and makes THEM go through the obstacles.

He made them go up stairs and then slide down the slide into the pool!



If my Mav had been released in there, I know with 100% certainty that the only place those ducks are going is over the fence and back into the wild. We bow to you, Dog-With-Divine-Restraint.

They stopped the interesting dog stuff almost immediately, I assume so that we could go back and attempt to watch dogs chase and catch tennis balls or something. So, we walked around some more. Passed up a psychic reading. But then again, don't they know we wouldn't spend 10 bucks on that? They didn't even have a tent. Just a folding tray table and a very cheap set of plastic lawn chairs. I was tempted, since there was so little else for us to do. And, more Joy Ride lyrics danced through my head.

"Don't need no fortune teller to tell where my lucky love belongs! Oh no... She says, hello, you fool, I love you! C'mon join the joyride, join the joy ride, love..." *Head bangs.

We decided then to call an end to our festival time. The hours before the balloons were just too many and our desires too few.

Besides, something was interrupting my private Roxette concert in my head. All anyone could hear, and IT IS A SHAME you missed out on this, was live music of such magnitude and magnificence that it couldn't be completely taken all in. It was too much. Too much awesome.

I honestly have no idea what his real name was, but I christen him "The Justin Bieber of Rap" and my cup was not only full. It runneth over.

"I can run a marathon, you can't even run on a treadmill!" Such rap lyrics will surely replace Yo Mama's putdowns. Something, something, something "Star Wars Spaceship". Mmmm-hmmmm. I couldn't make this up if I tried.

I should try to be a more positive person. Okay!

Chorus of cheerleader voices respond "Okay!" I can feel the pep and hear the rustling of pompoms. I can do it. I can be positive!

The 12 year old white rapper was very enthusiastic!

The end.

The hubby and I then went to find the venue where we're seeing Daniel Tosh in a couple weeks. I am both scared and excited. I just want him to NOT notice us and we'll be good. Love him but do not want to be any source for his funny. Might possibly die. This led us on more date, which I will talk about in the next post! The dating, it is back, and we're blowing it up! It was a date explosion! A date A-bomb! So much date! All in one day!

Oh, and on our drive to get working phones from Sprint, we passed a pizza place. I yelled, "It counts!"

And the great love of my life proved why he is the great love of my life. Without missing a beat, at the red light, he immediately said, "Do you still have the camera! GET A PICTURE!"

This was our balloon festival. We're lucky we didn't turn around and pose with it.

*Bangs head on desk.

*Starts hearing "In the wonderful balloon" and suddenly, all is right with the world. Happy sigh.