Lori Duff Writes

In case you have been living under that proverbial rock and are unaware of the fact that I have been shouting from every available rooftop, virtual and otherwise, that I have had a book come out recently, I will restate the fact. My new book, “The Armadillo, the Pickaxe, and the Laundry Basket” is available from most book-friendly online stores, as well as from the trunk of my car and other fine retailers. In order to celebrate the release, I had a party and invited everyone on the internet.

The theme of the party was, naturally, Armadillos and Laundry Baskets. I left the pickaxes out of my decorating schemes since I wanted people to come close, not worry that there was a serial killer in the room. I filled a laundry basket with towels, a bottle of Tide, and many many copies of the book. My daughter made me the following promotional picture, which I posted everywhere.

photo credit Marin Duff

Marin, who is eleven years old and in 6th grade, and therefore an expert in all things humiliating, was horrified. She thought she’d made the picture as a joke. “Mom!” She said. “I can’t believe you posted that picture in public! That’s the kind of thing that OTHER people post to make fun of you.”

Maybe for most people. But me? I have zero shame, and get my greatest belly laughs laughing at myself. Why should I deprive others of the privilege?

I tried to find cupcake toppers with armadillos on them, or some kind of armadillo shaped candy, but came up short unless I wanted to spend $11.00 PER CUPCAKE TOPPER. Excuse me. No. For $11.00 I can get two whole pizzas at Little Ceasar’s. I eventually landed on getting custom made buttons for twenty cents each which I placed on top of store bought cupcakes. Of course, on my computer screen the image filled the screen. I found a great armadillo picture and put the title of the book in an obnoxious colored font so it would stand out. I knew in theory that the diameter was one inch, but, well, I’ve never been a good independent judge of measurement. The tiny little buttons looked like weird brown smudges with some kind of neon green cuneiform print. Many of my middle aged friends brought out the reading glasses and still couldn’t read it.

I wanted cupcakes that were obviously armadillo themed. So, I went to that friend I love to hate, Pinterest. I found these:

Cute, right? And seemingly easy. Regular cupcakes with broken up Nutter Butters and cut up circus peanuts. (And aside, who actually buys circus peanuts because they like to eat them? Blech.) While buying the supplies, I found that Publix was out of circus peanuts (Seriously? Who bought them?) so I bought orange candy slices and Bugles as a substitute. I told my kids we were going to have fun watching me try to be a “Pinterest Mom.”

I have to say that my armadillo looked more realistic than the Pinterest cupcakes, in that most of the armadillos I’ve seen in person are some variation of roadkill. Our Nutter Butters wouldn’t stand up straight. Our black-dot-eyes looked like hollow, haunted, empty sockets. The shiny sides of the cut up orange slices looked vaguely like exposed brain matter, and the Bugles like exposed bone. (But be honest here: how many of you, at least once in your life, have put Bugles over the tips of your fingers in order to make your hands look like witches’ hands?)

Our cupcakes looked like this:

 We only made those four, and then we gave up, resigning ourselves to the fact that we were not a successful Pinterest family and would just have to eat all the Nutter Butters sans cupcake.

Still, the party was fun, even if a few people accidentally pierced their tongues trying to lick the frosting off the armadillo buttons I stuck on the top of the non-roadkill cupcakes. I guess the moral of this story is therefore two-fold: a) know your artistic limitations; and b) don’t lick anything with a pin on the back.
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Lori Duff

Lori B. Duff is an award-winning author who practices law on the side.  Her latest book, “If You Did What I Asked in the First Place” was awarded the Gold Medal for humor in the Foreword INDIES awards in 2019. You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook. For more blogs written by Lori, click here. For more information about Lori in general, click here. If you want Lori to do your writing for you, click here. If you want Lori to help you market your book, click here.