Sunday, February 6, 2011

Your Mother's Daughter

It's often said that people take after their parents.  I don't think I ever really understood that statement while growing up.  I assumed that theory was probably in reference to how you pick up another person's habits if you're around them enough. 

Then I hit my twenties.

This morning, I found myself looking up the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers logos online, so I could pipe 6 different colors of frosting onto two football-shaped cakes for a Superbowl party.  Why, you ask?  Because even though I work at a bar, where I know that no one will eat cake today (beer and sweets don't mix, ask anyone), when asked to "bring a dish" to any event, anywhere, anytime, my first instinct is to bake something. 

It goes farther.  After creating two less-than-perfect (my mother's would be magazine-worthy) logo cakes, my next instinct was to take pictures and post them online for all to see.  If any of you (if anyone is even reading this) happen to be "friends" on Facebook with my mother, you know that she does this almost daily.  "Food Porn" (a term invented by Mom and despised by my older sister) is all over her page, and including dinner on Thursday, my own now has three similar photos. 



As previously mentioned, I can't bring myself to vacuum (ever), I think framing photos, painting my furniture and re-potting my plants are higher priorities than cleaning the bathroom, and the last time I went to the grocery store with a friend, she rolled her eyes and walked away after the third time I tried to lecture her about the importance of "price per unit".  (Incidentally, price per unit is an extremely important thing to know about.  The smaller, usually orange price tag in the top corner of an item's price label tells you how much your product costs in units.  i.e. sure, the 4-pack of Charmin toilet paper seems cheap, but each roll only has 400 sheets - Scott has 1,000, making the "price per unit" significantly lower.  See, here I go, trying to educate the "masses" about the importance of saving 6 cents on your toilet paper.  Oh, God.)

The only conclusion to be drawn is that yes, what they say is indeed true:  we do turn into our parents.  However, I can also conclude that this isn't always a bad thing.  Sure, my house will never be clean, but it will likely always be creatively decorated.  And I may slowly fatten my friends with baked goodies, but at least I can take solace in the fact that I will always, always have plenty of cheap toilet paper.