The agony and the ecstasy

It's been an interesting week and weekend. The agony: I had a severe, stabbing sideache start at 10:30 p.m. last Friday (2 days ago). By 12:30 a.m., I thought we should head to the ER to find out for sure if it was what I suspected: a ruptured cyst, as I had never had that happen before. Sure enough, after 4 hours at the ER, which included the most thorough ultrasound of my entire life, it was discovered that indeed, I had a ruptured cyst. They sent us home, with me walking like an old lady out the hospital door, and that was that. So we got home from our medical adventure at 5:30 a.m.

But the ecstasy was intermingled with the agony:  During the course of last week, I had pre-baked a couple cakes for my friend Cristeen's baby shower, which was yesterday (Saturday). I had spent an entire month planning and ordering tools and supplies for this cake, which was pushing the boundaries of what I'd learned in the cake decorating classes past the limits. But I was determined to "make it so." While I usually do my own designs, I'd found a baby shower cake online that I had immediately fell in love with. So after I'd basically spent all day decorating this full-tilt 3D bear cake on Friday, the ER event described occurred. So I got about an hour and a half of sleep and forced myself out to the dining area to finish the cake on Saturday morning. I still had 2 or 3 more hours of work to put in, and I was determined the pain wasn't going to stop me. If you've known someone who has had a cyst burst, sharp, stabbing pain can be severe, and for me was worst when I was standing up or walking -- or lying down. So at least I could sit down while finishing the cake. To make a long story short, a couple more hours and the cake was fait accompli! Jon drove me to the baby shower so that I could cradle the cake as it was transported. I didn't want the bear to roll off the cake or any other damage to ensue. I'm sure it was indeed a tender mercy from diety that I was able to feel relatively well on Saturday -- at least while I finished decorating the cake and while I was at the baby shower and really felt like I reconnected with several people there. Those things were sooo important to me.

But today, back to the pain.

Thus, I'm not feeling very quippy or like using too many writing conventions in this entry. Anyway, here are a couple photos. The bear cake is chocolate, and the mattress cake is strawberry. Fondant was used on the mobile, crib junctures, flowers, and blanket. The rest of the decorating was done using vanilla buttercream.