TWD: Mango Cake (or Pineapple Upside-Down, Inside Out Cake)

There are times when you have to just wake up and face reality. And deal with reality. And spend the entire day wondering why the heck you woke up.

This happens to all of us at some point, no matter who we are, what we do, increasingly so with age. You may trust karma, Mother Nature, the stars to align and help keep you on the path, but really you're just waiting for that one big BANG moment when you are forced to reconcile with thoughts and events you had originally considered archaic and irrelevant.

This happened to me very recently, when I was forced to deal with the fact that I have started to date a man who voted for John McCain. Nothing against ol' Cranky Pants McCain, honestly. But when I thought all the Nation had come to its senses back in November, that we were all on the Right Track with the Right Guy, it turns out that the special batch of Kool Aid only reached some of us. In the bluest state in the country (I believe we can take that away from you now, California), I found a man with a Red Voting Record.


It creeps up on you quickly, it does. I believe it's a tricky concoction of female hormones and the vast assumption that everyone agrees with you (i.e. is sane) flowing through your veins, and before you know it, you've become emotionally invested in someone who may or may not believe in evolution. You start wondering if you're always going to be attracted to the Bad Boy, the Conservative, the man who spent November 4th watching Fox News and reconsidering the Vancouver option while you did Jagerbombs with your friends every time another state clicked to blue.

It's a hard reality to wake up to.

But even a harsh reality is better than the facade that is superior intellectualism. If that is even a word. So you listen to his reasons for voting for McCain, and you realize that they don't make you break out in hives, as everyone told you would happen. He sounds quite reasonable when he talks about financial responsibility, his main reason for voting Red, and you realize that you did, indeed, actually vote for Hilary during the primary, which he doesn't need to know at this point, considering how well dinner is finally going now that you've stopped gagging. You make sure that he has no bumper stickers that read "NOBAMA" on his motorcycle, and check his reading selection to make sure it's not full of Bill Bennett propaganda (Alan Greenspan doesn't really count...Scott McClelland's book? Well, that's going to have to be a conversation for another night. But did he cry at the end of it?).

And just when you begin to think that perhaps you can successfully deal with this, that you can get through this (I mean, it's not like he voted to keep the dog tracks open...OH WAIT HE DID??? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME ON THAT ONE), that political ideologies aside, he might be worth it because he's so damn cute when he smiles, and you're getting used to your eggs sunny side up, you start to look at your own personal "voting record." All those little things that you think make you so sophisticated and cultured are, kind of, well, not so enticing. He doesn't need to know that you registered as a Socialist when you lived in Ann Arbor (oh come on, everyone's a Socialist in Ann Arbor). He doesn't need to know that you're a member of the Hugo Chavez Fan Club on Facebook. He doesn't need to know that last year you gave 7% of your annual salary to the ASPCA.


He doesn't need to know that you're a member of an online baking community when you are the world's absolute worst baker. There's plenty of time for all the dirty secrets to come out.