A Thousand Cupcakes

There's a news story around that someone ordered a thousand cupcakes from a small Los Angeles bakery, paid for them in advance ($7,500), but it turns out the whole thing was a scam. After the check was deposited, the baker bought all the ingredients and began working... then the "buyer" wanted to cut the order in half and get a refund for $3,750. The baker said no, but the bank gave the refund anyway ~ the original check was fake, so the baker was out half the money from her own account. Apparently, the criminal had gone on a spree of defrauding local businesses with stolen checks. What I don't understand is why the bank gave out money from a customer's account without their permission. It's not like there was a court order! The bank should make the baker whole, imo.

This reminds me of my scam story from 2016 when a debt collector convinced the sheriff to put a lien on my checking account for $4,000. He told the sheriff I was still married to my ex-husband and was responsible for his debt ~ our divorce had been finalized over 5 years prior however. My bank, being idiots, went along with this scam, and the ONLY reason I ended up whole is because my brilliant boss, an attorney, helped me figure out what was happening and put a stop to it. Otherwise, I would have had no idea why the money was missing because my bank hadn't disclosed the details of the lien! I ended up wasting a shitload of time to deal with this, had to email my divorce decree to this fucking criminal in Van Nuys so he would agree to redact the lien, and basically be completely freaked out by stress for an entire week. My bank apologized and flagged my account for anything to do with my ex, and everything has been fine since, so I guess it worked. 

But that's not what I came here to tell you about today (she says to her non-existent audience). During this stressful time, a man I had been seeing was a total jerk to me. He wanted nothing to do with my problems and cancelled our date because he said I wouldn't be thinking about him enough until this was straightened out. I mean, what the fuck? I broke up with him that weekend and moved on to other men. Back then, when I was in my mid-50s, it was relatively easy to find a man to go out with, so why would I want to continue with such a self-centered ahole? The fact that he even admitted out loud that he needed his dates to be entirely focused on him with nothing else cluttering their thoughts but his awesomeness was truly mind-boggling. 

I was proud of myself... then a few weeks later he apologized. I truly wish I had not accepted it ~ or at least accepted it but still kept him out of my life. But I agreed to go out with him again, and we had this super nice date in Brea, where we ate dinner, saw a movie (The Girl on the Train), and shared a cupcake. (Note the relevancy to the first paragraph.) Then we made a bunch of plans for more dates, including getting together over Thanksgiving week and possibly even taking a train trip to Santa Barbara. Then he ghosted me two days before Thanksgiving. I was devastated ~ and TG my sweet little daughter was able to change her plans and hang out with me (my older daughter lived up north). When the jerk finally communicated again, he declared he wasn't ready for a relationship, and whined that I hadn't "chased" him enough besides. The WTF is strong with this guy, isn't it? Rhetorical. Later he badgered me by text about stuff I'd written in my (old deleted WP) blog and went into a litany of complaints about how I wasn't right for him, hadn't baked cookies, was too old (a 3-year age difference, which he had known since the beginning), blah blah blah. I shouldn't have let it get to me, but I had allowed myself to be vulnerable because I don't know how you can find love at all if you don't let down your guard, so that's what I had done.

Huge mistake. Or was it? I don't know. Because of this horrible situation, I became closer to my friends and family and had the epiphany that I'd been surrounded by love all along; I didn't need some weirdo narcissist from a dating site to pretend to care about me. It took a long time though ~ I drifted in and out of depression for around 18 months until I finally was OK again. During those months, I wrote a lot of poetry (some of it actually good) and my novel Ghosted, some of which was semi-inspired by his cruelty. In the Spring of 2017, after meeting a few more meh men (or maybe I'd become meh), I decided to give up dating completely. It was the best decision I've ever made (besides having children, of course)! I finally grokked how imprisoned I had been in the addictive mindset of wanting to please some random stranger before myself. It colored everything I did, from spending money on clothes I didn't need, to avoiding making plans on the weekend "just in case," and even influencing where I lived. And this was for a HYPOTHETICAL boyfriend! So crazy.

The cupcake article reminded me of all that. Just recently I threw all my baking supplies in the trash (not the pans) because it dawned on me that in the back of my mind the idea still lingered that I needed to have stuff on hand in case Mr. Right showed up, so I kept replenishing my stock after I baked for a game night or whatever. As if we can't buy cookies at the store! LOL. People are too fussy to cook/bake for nowadays anyway with everyone having some kind of dietary restriction, so I say good riddance. I am thrilled in hindsight that I never baked anything for the narcissist, even though I had planned to and purchased all the ingredients, because his whining about it simply highlighted what was wrong with him. How does a grown man in his 50s come to believe that he's entitled to be worshipped by someone he's just begin dating like we're living in Stepford or something? 

WEIRD. 

I wrote about all this on my old blog when it happened, but I wasn't objective enough, and it was too upsetting to discuss in comments, so I deleted the post. Then I deleted ALL my dating stories, even the good and funny ones, because I just didn't want them out there. I wish I hadn't now... maybe I'll see if any of them were preserved on the Wayback Machine. But whatever, who cares? I can write them all again, if I am so inclined, so it's not that big of a deal. I've probably forgotten many details, but again, so what? I am a fiction writer after all, and poetry is also fiction (I actually wrote a poem with that title for my new collection). The emotion is what’s important in a personal story, not the exact details.

Speaking of cupcakes, I was going to order the mango flash flavor at Sprinkles last week but I got the lazies, so I didn't. It's OK. Another fun flavor will be around soon, I'm sure. I bought healthy food at the grocery store today, so we shall see how that goes, plus I am determined to exercise. A little. It's beastly hot out, so that means my aerobics video will get a workout.

Funny, I created the label "scams" for this post, and I realized that dating is also a scam. More about that next time, or not.