You Can’t Drink All Day if You Don’t Start in the Morning by Celia Rivenbark Page A

moist and soft, so just don’t.
    Pour batter into two greased and floured 9-inchcake pans and bake for about 35 minutes at 350 degrees. (Use a cake tester to make sure it’s done.) Cool the layers on a wire rack and frost with classic cream cheese frosting made by mixing together these ingredients ’til fluffy:
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
½ stick butter, softened
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 cups confectioner’s sugar
    This recipe makes enough to frost one fabulous cake. When you get really expert at red velvet cake, you might want to try your hand at making one in the shape of an armadillo like they did for the groom’s cake in
Steel Magnolias.

14
Chances of Getting in the Hall of Fame? Very Rare
    Duh-hubby looked at me with loving eyes as he gently held out my coat and waited for me to slip into it.
    “What’s up?”
    “I’m taking you to the Outback,” he said.
    While more monied folks might think this meant that he was spontaneously whisking his bride of nearly twenty years away on an Australian adventure, I knew better.
    We are attentive Kmart shoppers, after all. People in our income bracket don’t just jump on a plane and fly eighteen hours on a romantic whim. He meant the Outback Steakhouse, which was fine with me. I’m a big enough redneck to believe that going to Epcot is almost as good as crossing the pond. It-lee and a whole bunch of other countries and you never even have to leave Orlando! Suh-weet!
    The truth was, I knew why Duh had selected Outback, but he felt the need to explain anyway.
    “The winner of the Duplin County Hall of Fame always gets the award at a fancy steak dinner,” he said. Did his voice just catch a bit? He cleared his throat and continued.
    “And, although they didn’t pick you again this year, I just want you to know that you’ll always be in
my
hall of fame.”
    “Honey, that’s real sweet,” I said. And it was. It was almost enough to make me forgive him for nominating me for ten years in a row in the first place.
    “Ridiculous!” I had huffed a decade ago. “Why, there are many more deserving natives than I. This will just be embarrassing!”
    Even as I was saying it, though, I figured I might have a smallish shot at it. But that last flicker of hope had been snuffed out seven years earlier when I heard a rumor that they might give the award to a native whose “fame” had apparently included working on a movie one time as a stand-in for Henry Winkler.
    “Heeeeeyyyyy.”
    I knew that the trip to Outback was because the rejection letter had arrived the day before. For the tenth year in a row, I wasn’t a winner. Which made me a loser. Again.
    Since y’all know a little about my home county now, perhaps you should also know that the population is so small that they’re going to run out of people and have to start giving the award to farm animals. So, at this rate, I stand a fairlygood chance of losing out to a chicken. And if that happens, somebody’s gonna die. I’m not kidding.
    The rejection letter always says the same thing: “All nominees are deserving of the honor and recognition of receiving the award, for they have contributed in a significant manner to the growth, development, and well-being of Duplin County, North Carolina, the United States, and/or the world and its people.”
    OK, maybe I’m not deserving of being considered. After all, I can’t honestly say that writing a few books and a humor column that runs in a few newspapers has exactly helped the well-being of “the world and its people.”
    After ten years of rejection, I’m feeling like a younger, fatter Susan Lucci, although even she eventually got her Daytime Emmy.
    Because there are actually two Hall of Fame recipients announced each year—one living and one deceased—I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to have to die to win this thing. I’ve got my pride, hons. If they pick me posthumously, I won’t show up to accept it or to enjoy the much ballyhooed “nice steak