35) Financial Fiasco

I am in the process of organizing my brother's bachelor party weekend. I have many thoughts on bachelor parties and on my brother's impending marriage that I would like address further at a later date, but for now I would like to stick with one aspect of my preparation: The Bachelor Party Cake.

I do not think I have been to a bachelor party where there was a cake, but I decided to make one for the upcoming lakehouse trip. Basically I want to bake a cake where I draw a large and graphic picture of a vagina out of icing and sprinkles. I want the picture to be grotesque. I am going for shock value. And I think my attempt to do this using basic icing drawing will be just as funny as the idea itself (which may not be that funny at all). The main reason I came up with this idea is through some of the information I heard that came from the bachelorette party. The girls had fun with their penis theme, so I want to try and give Stephen a memory as well. A giant Vagina cake is all I could come up with.

Saturday night I realized how soon the party is coming up and decided I would figure out how I wanted to draw a vagina using as few lines as possible so that I could translate it to a cake sometime this week. I brought out my sketch pad and made a few ragged attempts. I have no experience with this sort of drawing and as you can imagine the result looked terrible and hilarious. I made myself laugh at how bad it was coming out and was in the process of abandoning the entire thing, which is probably the right move to make. L. glanced over my shoulder at my sketch pad and slowly shook her head. She said, "You got it all wrong. You are trying too hard."

She grabbed a loose piece of paper from the coffee table and with 6 basic lines drew a hairy vagina with a giant penis aimed right for it. She said, "This is basically what you need." And she was right. She stayed simple and she got the result from me I was hoping to get from Stephen. I said, "That is gigantic and awesome! That is what I want on his Bachelor Cake!" I will send a follow up of how the cake looks and how it is received at the Bachelor Party. I may even include a picture.

On Sunday, we had a meeting with a financial planner. This is the second of 4 meetings in which we are gathering information about how we would like to proceed with our future finances. It is somewhat stressful and has required us gathering a lot of information and truly looking deep into our behavior as it relates to our spending habits. It has also forced us to look to the future, in ways I have not done before. Having a integrated and diversified plan in order to have retirement properly saved is an arduous task, and one I have not been enjoying.

Armed with a binder full of statements, bills, mortgage documents, bank account info and many pay stubs we drove to Addison to meet with our financial planner. We explained how new we are to all of this and how we want to be smart without sacrificing our current life experience. She assured us we will look at the situation thoroughly and make choices that will make us happy as well as benefit us long term. She said it would take some time and patience, but if we stay focused with her we would learn much and begin making good financial decisions from here on out.

She began with our liabilities. She thumbed through all the credit card statements we had gathered and our mortgage documents we brought, all the while me feeling vulnerable and embarrassed at some of the purchases I've made in the past 6 months. Next, she went through our student loans. L. has some major loans, while I have one that should be paid off within the next 6 months. The interest rates are reasonable, but still as she added the monthly numbers up I could see that our ability to save dwindled with each statement she looked through.

And then she grabbed my pay stub. She looked at my 401K contribution and my monthly net figures, and that is when I noticed a gigantic vagina with a gigantic penis aimed directly for it on the back of the page she held in her hand. I said, "oh no." L. heard me and asked what was wrong. She thought someone had texted me the Mavericks score to the game I DVRed. I pointed to the back of the page and she blurted out, "Oh shit!" Our planner asked what was wrong.

I asked if I could see the pages in her hand, to make sure what she was looking at was indeed the correct document I meant to print out. She said, "Are you afraid I might see that drawing?"

"Yes," I said.

She said, "It's too late. I already saw it."

I said, "I am so sorry. There is a reason for the drawing, albeit not a good reason, but my brother has a bachelor party coming up and I am organizing lame games for us to play."

She laughed and said, "Boys will be boys." And then she continued to say, "It is strange that you chose your financial documents to do these drawings."

I agreed with her. It was strange. And I feel like it was completely inappropriate. We'll see if she calls us back for our 3rd meeting out of 4, or if we will have to find another financial planner.