At the bagel place yesterday, there were monstrous Mother’s Day cupcake-muffin hybrids taking over much of the counter. They must have been corn muffins, the kind that are so dense they can do real damage to anything they’re thrown at. In general, eating them is not the greatest idea, but these ones were practically pulsing with brightness: Topped with about an inch-and a-half of bright pink frosting and even brighter pink sprinkles, with a big chalky candy heart (also pink, of course) stuck into the glop, crowned by a piece of gold foil that spelled out “Mother,” and a red and white plastic heart stuck into the whole thing that said, in gold script, something unintelligible and vaguely threatening like “Love the Mother.” Judging by the full tray, no one had bought one yet.

This is the same bagel place where women regularly ask for their bagels “scooped out,” and the guys behind the counter act like this is a normal request: for them to take an ice cream scoop and literally scoop out the bread part of the bagel, leaving a seeded shell that can be filled with low-fat cream cheese and whatever else. I’m sure this doesn’t only happen at this place; I bet “scooping out” (which sounds really gross, sort of accidentally sexual and also reminding me of Heidi Montag’s grotesque “back scooping” surgery) is some kind of newish bagel trend for women who can’t let themselves eat bagels but want to eat them anyway, sort of, and justify it by telling themselves they’re getting rid of the insidiously bagel-y part of the bagel. But watching them order it makes me feel a little uncomfortable, and sorry for them that they don’t seem to know their order makes them sound disordered rather than disciplined.

On Friday night Emily and Meredith and I looked for a semi-quiet bar for about an hour before settling on  a slightly glorified West Village diner—the bar there was curved and columned, and surfaced with fake marble. The pastry case was glowing behind Emily as she talked, and the guy sitting next to me but just out of view seemed to be ordering a weird parade of dishes: some kind of ill-advised seafood entrée followed by pancakes, by the smell of it.  There was something weirdly great about resigning ourselves to this place, choosing quiet and vodka tonics that would go on a check as $6.95 each over the bars we’d rather go on almost any other night.