Expanding my Resume…Part Two

In my last post I promised sto­ries of fame and fishermen.

I deliv­ered on the fish­er­men, but not the fame.

As many of you know, every three weeks I dri­ve up to Philadel­phia for speech and vocal ther­a­py, as well as for var­i­ous appoint­ments that typ­i­cal­ly involve nee­dles in my neck, tubes down my nose and var­i­ous instru­ments of the record­ing nature shoved down my throat to cap­ture my bobo lar­ynx in all of its glory.

In short, it’s a par­ty. Olé.

Now despite the fact that I could recite every rest stop and con­struc­tion zone between Wash­ing­ton DC and Philadel­phia, and despite the fact that gas is not exact­ly cheap these days…these trips aren’t all that bad.

You see, I grew up in Philadel­phia. It was my first home and my first city love. So despite my rapid­ly increas­ing BFF sta­tus with I‑95, I get to spend time with my par­ents and two of my best friends, at least once a month. Not too shabby.

It also helps that I have a new love.

The name is Sweet Free­dom Bakery.

Or just Sweet Free­dom, ya know, if you are real close.

And friends, let me just tell you. This love is real. I am smitten.

Every­thing (yes, every­thing) in the bak­ery is delicious…oh, and also kosher, veg­an, and gluten, wheat, soy, dairy, corn, peanut, egg, casein, and refined sug­ar free.

Ladies and gen­tle­men, I can walk into this bak­ery and choose a treat from 95% of the options.

NINETY-FIVE PERCENT!

Just in case you are a new­com­er to this blog (in which case, wel­come!) it has been YEARS since I have been able to go any­where and choose from 95% of the options. At a typ­i­cal restau­rant I am usu­al­ly look­ing at 0–3% of the options being Lydia-friendly.

Frankly, I’m not even sure 95% of my own kitchen is Lydia-friend­ly? Hmm.

Sweet Free­dom was start­ed by a woman who grad­u­at­ed from the same school where I am cur­rent­ly a stu­dent (Insti­tute for Inte­gra­tive Nutri­tion) and is con­ve­nient­ly (dan­ger­ous­ly??) only a few blocks from the hos­pi­tal. After I fin­ish my appoint­ments for the day, I meet my friends at SFB and we enjoy a treat…or two…or ten?

(Ok fine, maybe not ten. My stom­ach is par­a­lyzed after all.)

In short, I get to enjoy time with my friends, while eat­ing a tasty treat and for­get­ting about what­ev­er non­sense occurred at the hos­pi­tal that day.

See why I’m in love?

Dur­ing one of my trips a month or so ago, I noticed a stack of papers with a blank cup­cake and a pile of mark­ers. Now, let me be clear. It is basi­cal­ly a law of physics that I can­not sit next to a pile of mark­ers and not use them. I mean, I’m fair­ly cer­tain it would be a crime against human­i­ty. Or something.

The papers were there for Sweet Free­dom’s “Cre­ate Your Own Cup­cake” con­test. The idea was to design a new cup­cake that they would fea­ture at the bak­ery if you won. So of course I entered. Again, I real­ly had no choice.
Obvi­ous­ly I went with s’mores. Come on peo­ple, I’ve been a camp girl since 1994.

After I fin­ished my cup­cake design (with much dis­cus­sion and reflec­tion from my cook­ie-eat­ing part­ners in crime), my entry was added to the wall with the oth­ers. There was some seri­ous com­pe­ti­tion — black rasp­ber­ry chip…mint choco­late chip…black for­est!? The wall was rich with deli­cious pos­si­bil­i­ty. My friends and I went along our mer­ry way and I resist­ed the urge to take out an ad in the Inquir­er ask­ing peo­ple to go vote for my cup­cake before I head­ed back to Virginia.

Ok fine. I “strong­ly encour­aged” my par­ents to go vote. But I mean, they’re my par­ents! They are con­trac­tu­al­ly oblig­at­ed to cov­et my mag­ic mark­er creations…right??

There it is! The real thing

It was a big day. I added a col­or­ful scarf to my yoga pants and T‑shirt uni­form. Ya know, just in case the paparazzi showed up.