Strawberry Shortcake

It's strawberry season here in the North Country, and Saturday night, we went to a strawberry shortcake dinner at the nearby church.

The summer menu of potato salad, macaroni salad, cole slaw, and cold ham was just a prelude to the main attraction: a layered shortcake with strawberries and whipped cream between the layers and dolloped generously on top.

Tables of 8 were served family-style with a platter of strawberry layered-shortcake. The server cut the confection into 8 pieces before our eyes, while an electric beater whirring in the background whipped up more cream for the next strawberry construction that would go to some other table of 8.

Strawberries: pleasant
Whipped cream: pleasant
Shortcake: pleasant (Believe you me, the church women have this recipe perfected!)

Savoring each pleasant bite and pouring leftover strawberry juice from the empty platter on top of my shortcake, i soaked it from its buttercream color to pink-red.

Pleasant. Pleasant. Pleasant.
And then, even though more remained on my plate: unpleasant.

I picked out the 3 remaining strawberries and popped them in my mouth: pleasant to the tongue, but unpleasant to the stomach.
A soggy pink tennis-ball-sized piece of shortcake remained on my plate: unpleasant.

Pleasant becomes unpleasant. Amazing, isn't it?

5 minutes ago, we thought our happiness depended on strawberry shortcake. Now that self-same dessert makes us unhappy.

Where DOES happiness truly reside?

Maybe we'll go pick a flat of strawberries this afternoon :)