The Honeycakes Diaries Sept 04

Well, kinda. . . we actually met in June, 1991. The thing is, I don't remember meeting him. I was visiting Kristin and Andy Looney's house, Wunderland, for the first time. While my jaw was on the floor touring around all the cool stuff, apparently Keith was sitting in the corner trying to work up the nerve to talk to me. . . and failing.

It September, 1991. We were both playing a LARP (Live-Action Role Playing Game) called Cafe Casablanca in which participants played a variety of 1940's movie characters (the link is to a page from a running of the same game in 2000 in England). I was playing a hard-boiled, tough, man-hating American reporter--the character is Constance Porter from the Hitchcock film "Lifeboat."

Keith was playing Gilbert Wynant, a character from the original Thin Man movie. The character is a would-be psychiatrist, very much in everyone's face trying to analyze them. And since my character hated men, as amusing he was, I didn't crack a smile.

So poor Keith was convinced I didn't like him. First I had ignored him, now I wasn't responding to his humor!

Finally, we met as "ourselves" on Thanksgiving Day at Wunderland, 2 months later.

Although due to shyness and living in 2 different cities, it took us 7 more months to actually go on a date.

After circling each other at a distance every time Keith came to Washington to visit, he finally asked for my address during the 4th International Icehouse Tournament (the link is worth checking out if you want an example of how Keith's fiendishness goes back to a very young age!)

So even though I am not the rabid gamer that Keith is, I definitely give games a lot of the credit for bringing us together, and for showing me just how talented and clever Keith is when he is in his element.

Keith and I got married in November 1993. At that point we owned ABSOLUTELY NO COW-RELATED ITEMS.

It started innocently enough. My sister decided to get us a cow creamer and sugar bowl set for a wedding gift.

She thought that was so cool, she got us a cow tea kettle (or "Tea Cattle" as it said on the box). Then Keith's sister saw the stuff in our kitchen and decided to not be outdone. She got us a cow flag that we hung on the wall.

At that point things just sort of snowballed. I can't remember who gave us the next gift, or even what it was. At some point, the cow mugs came. Then the cow t-shirts. Someone gave Keith a really cute pair of cow-spotted boxer shorts.

Bossy was our 1995 Christmas gift from Keith's mom. She is a Folkmanis hand puppet. (This version was actually discontinued by Folkmanis a while back--the new version looks TOTALLY different).

So--although Keith and I have different memories of how Bossy got her name, she immediately had an attitude. And a Brooklyn accent. And a tendency to call everyone "kid."

She pretty much took over the household on the spot. It seemed that as soon as she came out of the box our wish was to serve her.

Over the years, before Folkmanis discontinued the model, we acquired several "backup" cows in case something happened to Bossy, but it's funny--none of them look like her. For example:

This is Bossy

This is one of our "backup" cows

See the difference? Bossy is smiling, and she is wonderfully symmetrical. Our backup is scowling and jowly. Everything is sticking out at weird angles. And ALL of the backup cows we have look strange (we've had 5 over the years--some have been given away as gifts).

That's her artistic likeness up at the top of site by the way (in guess you hadn't already guessed).

But anyway, over the years the cows kept coming. . . our friends have tried to outdo each other by getting us bigger and more outrageous cows. We have a life-size wooden one on our porch (our friends the Looneys brought it on a plane from DC and it came out in the "oversized baggage" area usually used for skis)

So the domain name bossythecow is the one of the few times we've actually paid money for something cow-related.

Funny how sometimes of the coolest things about us are sometimes totally decided by other people, don't you think?

Well--it started in June, right after the Campaign Setting was released and the message boards at WotC exploded.

Some guy named "Mad Miso" posted a little vision of what life must be life in the Baker household.

In the post I'm kind of a scary, Lady MacBeth type, ordering Keith to stop posting on the boards and get back to work on the Eberron novels. I'm only referred to as "Mrs. Baker." At one point I offer to make cookies if Keith cooperates.

(I haven't made cookies since the late 1990's, although when younger I did used to have a fondness for making chocolate chip cookies the size of small pies. KEITH is actually the one who bakes cookies on a regular basis around here.)

So in the post, Keith comes out with "But Honeycakes! The fans need to know about Eberron! I can't abandon them!"

And I decided that post just couldn't go unanswered. . . and that "Honeycakes" might make a good screen name--kind of embracing the absurdity of it all.

So I started posting stuff on the "Ask Keith" thread like: "Can you bring home bread and milk tonight?"

By the way, the intent of the above is not to slam Mad Miso--I'm sure he is great, and it was nice to have him take an interest in me--he was the first person on the boards to mention that Keith had a wife, after all. And that gave me the courage to start posting, even though, umm, I hadn't really read the Campaign Setting yet. If you want to read his original post, you can go to Page 7 of the Ask Keith Baker Thread.

(And yes, Mad Miso, it was a crazy time, and more than once I came home to find Keith quite disheveled and glassy-eyed from staring at the screen and answering questions all day. And I worried about him just a little bit. . . but mostly I could tell he was having the time of his life.)

So by now I've been called H.Cakes, Mizz Cakes, Madame Cakes, HC, and even the Lovely Lady Honeycakes. And it's fun having an alias--I had no idea how much fun it would be, or how quickly it would catch on. And no, Honeycakes doesn't do anything that Ellen wouldn't, really. Although when I go to work I do have to arrange my hair so the pointy ears don't show.

At Gencon, I met several folks who lurk on the boards, but never post. And they turned to me and asked excitedly, "Is this Honeycakes??"

One thing's for sure--don't expect me to start posting cookie recipes any time soon.

And by the way--I'm really pleased by all the emails I've received in response to my first entry. Please keep writing to me!

Last night Keith and I were lying awake at 2:00 a.m. and we suddenly decided that I would do this. I was--as is often the case these days--whining about how nobody seems to know my first name anymore.

"I'm just Mrs. Baker to everybody now!" (whine, whine, whine)

Even before Eberron came out, during the time he was working on the campaign setting book, I could feel the Mrs. Baker thing setting in when we went to a wedding last summer. We'd been invited because the groom was a former co-worker of mine. The groom happened to play D&D, and yes, I had bragged to him about Keith. So I'm getting introduced to the bride by her new husband:

And she looks at me, slightly puzzled, cocks her head, and replies, "I know who Keith Baker is. . . "

. . .So last night, Keith threw me a challenge: "Why don't you take a page on the web site and SHOW everybody who you are! People want to know about you!"

Umm--they do? Well, I guess that's the good thing about a blog. You can just kind of show yourself, and see who is interested. But maybe this is healthier than just bitching about how I'm going to always be in my husband's shadow. Because that seems to be a sure-fire way to assure that it stays that way.

So first off, my name is Ellen. I'm a licensed clinical social worker and I work full-time as an administrator at a psychiatric hospital. I'm 3 years older than Keith. I love games, but even more than that, I love gamers (yes, it's true!). I also love bargains, working on this website, and playing Scrabble while cheating by looking through the dictionary. Keith and I will celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary in November.

And yes, I'd like to think I've had something to do with Keith's success. Although I can't take the credit for his amazing brain.

My therapist said recently that I could maybe think of myself in sort of an Eleanor Roosevelt role.

"There's a lot of pleasure by association, being the spouse of someone famous. There's also a lot of opportunity for you."

His idea was that I could use Keith's sudden fame to do great things! (hmm, maybe I could continue Eleanor's efforts to promote world peace. . .)

So I guess I will start this page and see who comes to visit. And maybe do something about this "Mrs. Baker" problem, instead of just fussing about it to my friends. So welcome! Feel free to email me with any comments or questions (and yes, it's cool if the question is "What does Keith like to eat for breakfast?")