A Comfort Hobby

After possibly the most bizarre day in recent history (during which my new computer at work not only mysteriously broke itself for three hours but also magically fixed itself), I needed to do something productive, as watching tv, moping or simply complaining about the weirdness of the day do not count as "productive."

So, I decided to bake. I've had a hankering for lemon cake, and I have a long standing love affair with a cake my grandmother called chiffon but is a far cry from the real chiffon cake. For years, I've been trying to recreate whatever it was she put in that slice of heaven. This lemon sponge cake comes pretty close.

I love the comfort I find in baking. The house was relatively quiet. I just let the mixer do its thang and create perfect egg whites. Since childhood, I've been fascinated by the fact that all you have to do is leave egg whites in the mixer long enough, and they magically turn into little puffs of egg white goodness.










I love that the recipe told me to "fold" the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture. I love the picture that pops into my head when I read that I have to "fold" anything in a recipe. I picture a mother in the old west, a French pastry chef, a 1950's housewife, my mother loving making a birthday cake. I love to "fold" the mixture.







I filled up the cake pan with the batter, put it in the oven, baked it for a perfect 55 minutes (the recipe and my oven agreed for the first time in two years). Sponge cakes have to be turned upside down to cool. Apparently, none of the bottles in my house are thin enough to slide through the hole in the center of the pan, but I did happen to have one bottle that was big enough to fit the center of the pan inside of, so all was not lost.



I felt so, well, proud when I found a way to cool the cake, and the cake didn't fall out of the pan. I really needed this cake making to go well, for the baking to work its magic on my nerves.


















Once the cake cooled, I could enjoy the look of it. English major that I am, I still find it amazing that simple things like eggs and vanilla can result in something so yummy and delicious. Plus, sponge cake doesn't require icing, so I don't have to pretend to know what I'm doing with an icing knife. I think that the cake was a success in my house, although any yummy thing at 10 o'clock at night seems rather appealing.

















The baking did what it was supposed to. It calmed my nerves, cleared my mind and made me feel like I do know how to do something other than type e-mails and sometimes break computers.

How Much Do I Love You? I'm Not Allowed to Say.

Yesterday, I started wondering about when we are allowed to tell people that we love them. I'm talking about anyone - friends, family, significant others, pets :). When can we say it? Only at birthdays and on holidays? When a friend is going through a particularly trying period? When a friend helps us through a particularly trying period?

I wondered next if we are ever really "allowed" to say how much we love people. Love can be overwhelming, especially when one person feels it more than another. When I thought about that, particularly in relation to friendships, I decided that love can take on a number of forms and be expressed in a number of ways. Love can be gratitude: "Thank you for all you do in my life. I can't tell you how much it means." Love can be: "I miss talking to something other than your voice mail."

When I thought of gratitude, I also wondered if we're ever really allowed to express how grateful we are to someone. When some of the people I work with thank me for a job well done, I sometimes feel like they've gone overboard. They don't know the complaining, whining and sighing that was involved in my completeing a particular task, but I do, and their gratitude is truly an overestimate. So, I probably don't properly express my appreciation for their gratitude. If a friend helps me by sending a card, and the card happens to arrive on a terrible day, my level of gratitude increases tremendously, but the friend just happened to send a card and might feel my appreciation outweighs a simple card from Hallmark.

I've found one exception to this odd little rule: parents. Or, at least, mothers. Mothers can tell their children how much they love them, and though the children might roll their eyes, they're also not going to stop scheduling lunch with their mothers because they've just said, "I love you." Also, mothers don't mind if you send a Hallmark card every now and then, or cook dinner, or show some other simple sign of appreciation. Of course, even then, I have a feeling that mothers love us to a level even beyond what is capable of being expressed in the human language.

So, with all of the confusion, all I can do is love my friends, love my family and love my pets. I tell them all as often as I can in ways I know how. And they do the same for me. For this, I am grateful beyond measure.

Calming Down and Cheering Up

I think that one of the most interesting and challenging things I've learned how to do since "growing up" a little bit is holding in emotions when it is appropriate to do so.

Most people who've known me even, say a year, have seen me have a bit of a melt-down. It's something that happens to me, and I've learned to accept it. I'm a fairly sane person who is in control of her emotions most of the time, but I do have melt-downs. I'm not gonna lie, and I know one of y'all would call me on it :Þ

So, while I still have melt-downs over major issues, or sometimes over a multitude of minor issues, I've learned when it is and is not appropriate to actually confront someone over something they've said or done. I can take a breath and consider the possibility that what happened had nothing whatsoever to do with me, that it was a careless comment or an action taken while exhausted, that was in no way intended to hurt poor little me.

Of course, what usually ends up happening is that my mom, dad and closest friends have to hear about the non-insult in all of it's ridiculous detail, but at least I don't ruin a perfectly good friendship over nothing. Anymore.

* * *

On another note, I'm still having trouble grasping the concept that I actually deserve to be happy. Yes, I'll whine about not being happy and wonder aloud why I can't be (although, honestly, most of the time I am), but secretly (or not so secretly), what I really wonder is whether I'm even worthy of having happiness. The Bible tells me I am. And six days out of seven, I can tell you that God loves me and wants me to be happy. But man, when those seventh days roll around, sometimes two or three in a row, they're harsh. Quite frankly, they suck.

So, what am I going to do about it? Well, today, I'm going to go home, give my parents big hugs, feed my pets and talk to my best friend on the phone for the first time in months. Then, tomorrow, I'll be all better.

H & M and Being Happy

Sunday brought the opportunity to mingle with Irene...or at least I think it was Irene, after all, she was in a dress. Yep, I'm certain it was Irene. There was plenty of sarcasm, lots of laughter and shopping at H&M. Had to be Irene :Þ. Seriously, Sunday was a blast. I was out in the world (though without my glasses...never a good idea...), talking about all sorts of interesting things with one of my favorite people in the whole world. How could it not be fun?

So, I have nothing philosphical to say. My family is feeling better. People in office no longer glare at me and tell me to go home. I simply had a good weekend, and that makes me happy.

Where are you, fair coz?

Maybe it's because I had a random dream about two of my cousins, and the fun we once had running around the sand and water at the beach, or maybe it's because I WON'T get to see two other cousins when I go visit their hometown, because they'll be in Utah that weekend. But whatever the cause, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be family and cousins and how time passes without us really knowing why we don't speak.

One of my cousins used to spend weeks at a time with us in the summer, and often her entire spring break or part of Christmas break. She practically lived at our house. She basically had her own bedroom, and most importantly, she didn't have to deal with her wild little sister.

And it's been over three years since I talked to her or saw her. I heard through a random second cousin in Michigan that she'll be going to school in San Francisco in the Fall...but that's all the news I've had. My grandmother refuses to gossip; my cousin doesn't return my e-mails. She'll send a very basic thank you card for a birthday or Christmas gift, but nothing like the long letters she used to write, telling me all about her life, her worries, her joy.

I'm not exactly sure where we went wrong. I don't blame either one of us entirely. We're probably both at fault. When I was thirteen, and she was eight, and she stayed at our house for six weeks at a time, I tended to get bossy, and moody and tempermental. In my defense, I am an only child, and having this younger being in the house for extended periods of time was incredibly new to me. I may have been mature in other areas but having to share my parents' affection? Now, that was new and incredibly difficult. Maybe she still thinks of me as the bossy older cousin...who knows? So, I blame myself for liking to be in charge and direct things, even our ridiculous home movies. And I don't so much blame her as the druggie, high-school drop-out boyfriend who took her away from her whole family for a while. I think she returned to the fold of her parents and sister, but she never quite made it back to extended family.

In any case, I miss her in a way that's hard to explain, because she's family, and she's basically my little sister. Or as close as I'll ever have. But I also don't feel compelled to force communication in the same way that I do with other people who I've lost touch with over the years. I still believe that she'll come back, and I'll be bossy (because, hey, I'm still me), and she'll hate it that I call her "Kid," and then we'll laugh till we cry, eat lots of popsicles and videotape ourselves doing things that only make sense to us, in our made-up world.

Oreos!

Through the Smitten blog, I found this recipe for homemade oreos...and I made it today.

First, I made the cookie part of these wonderful little treats:


I iced the bottom layer with the yummy filling - the filling is dead-on for Oreo cookie filling.


I decorated the top layer using a toothpick, and drew a design before I put the cookies in the oven.

My favorite designs, or the ones that turned out best, anyway, were the starfish (above) and the heart (below).
All in all, the experience took about an hour...I made a bit of a mess in the kitchen, but that was all forgotten when the neat row of cookies were all lined up and ready to be eaten...
I think this was quite a success!

High School Crush

The crushes I had in high school were on guys who were vaguely nice to me and then met a litany of random requirements that I thought I needed in my ideal man. Of course, the crushes amounted to nothing much more than nights of hopeful dreaming and lunches spent bugging my friends about whether or not they thought so and so would ever like me too.

That's how I feel with this latest endeavor, that it's really nothing more than a high school crush. I feel so completely involved in it, but it's not real. And in the last two days, I have had some real wake up calls. Not about the guy, no he's not "spoiled" for me or anything. I've had wake up calls about the world.

There are more important things than my ridiculous crush...so I'm going to turn my attention to those and let this odd little notion pass by without further troubling my friends about the meaning of carrying a chair, asking me to lunch, or otherwise actually being nice to me. Some guys just happen to be nice...it doesn't mean he wants to be my one and only.

My real life matters much more than this crush, and I'd rather focus on that.

In that vein, I'm taking a hiatus from talking about guys...on this blog anyway. I'm taking the summer off. I'm not going to whine, wish, or rant about guys until September. And hopefully by then, I won't need to (not because I won't have things to say but because I'll have really accepted the fact that there are much more important things in the world).

Oh, and no more celebrity gossip...I think it's making me stupid.

What Heavy Machinery and Romantic Relationships Have in Common

Okay, after a few days lost in the world of a foggy mind and a stuffy nose, I feel much better and am back on track (of course, I still need to get to bed early to make up for some random late nights over the past few weeks).

I also blame my recent wackyness over a certain boy on the quantities of cold medicine I consumed in the past few days. Yeah, no one should be allowed to make any decisions when on cold medication, not only does it bring about some seriously bizarre dreams (breaking my mom out of an insane asylum and escaping in an old Volvo with people who were apparently my husband and children as we raced through the streets of some combination of downtown London and Berkeley), but it absolutely breaks down my defenses, and I'm completely raw and weak.

I've (mostly) come out of the fog now, and I can see things a lot more clearly and make much more rational steps. Luckily, I was able to confine the crazy to my family and poor Irene, who had to deal with a freakin-out-for-no-reason-me (thanks to all of you by the way), and I've returned to the land of the (sort-of) sane.

Cold medicine should come with this warning: Do not attempt to operate romantic relationships while taking this medication.

Amazing

Saturday was perfect.

I have to say that I haven't been that happy in a very long time.

There were several moments when I sat in the family room, next to someone quite unexpected, and just listened to the conversation buzz around me, the Beatles or whomever playing on the stereo behind me. People who'd never met before were having happy little conversations.

Two people who I'd never have pegged as hitting it off now are making plans to hang out.

The laughter, the smiles, the fact that people stayed longer than they intended.

It was the best graduation present I could have possibly imagined.

Thank you.

Daddy Will Always Be My Hero

I wasn't even paying attention. I was focused on getting to the vet and picking up the dog, who had been there all day, having his teeth cleaned (you don't even know how we came to find out that the dog NEEDED a deep cleaning). After my long day at work yesterday, I just wanted to pick him up, go home, and bake some cookies for Hayley & Ryan's get together tonight.

And then.

"Sarah! GET DOWN!"

We were at a light, waiting to turn on the street that would eventually lead us to our dog, and

POP POP POP

People were running in slow motion, but according to Daddy, they were moving too quickly for those who have done nothing wrong.

POP POP

"SARAH! STAY DOWN!"

Tires squealed. The light turned green but we didn't move.

"They're all gone now."

We turned onto the street, and I tried to process what happened.

My dad called 911 on his cell phone and got put on hold.

We called my mom, and gave her all the details. She got off the phone and called the police.

We discussed whether it was firecrackers or what we knew it was...gunfire.

"I saw smoke, and those people were moving way to fast for it to be firecrackers"

Later, Mommy said, "If Daddy thought it was gunfire. It was gunfire." Because he would know, considering what he does for a living.

He just knows stuff like that.

And he DOES pay attention when it's most important.

And he told me to get down.

Daddy will always be my hero.

I'd always rather be Jennifer Aniston

I just saw The Break-Up with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn, and I have to say that it was a great movie. I laughed, I got that little pain in my chest when Brooke stares at Gary in just the most painful way, and it all felt very real. Of course, it's much more realistic than Brad and Angelina's Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but then, anything where the couple isn't comprised of two spies for opposing teams is going to be more realistic.

The movie made me think more about why and when couples split. I think that sometimes, regardless of what anyone says or does, a single catalyst can end things. It could be the guy forgetting to take out the trash one too many times, it could be the infamous cheese question, or it could be something bigger that signals deeper problems in the relationship. But sometimes, it's the one thing that is just too much for one person to handle, and then the relationship is just done.

As this is also the first Jennifer Aniston movie I've seen in a while, and since Brangelina has been in the news so much of late, and that got me thinking about who celebrities are in the eyes of the public.

Jennifer Aniston, as seen through my eyes, goes shopping, has friends, maybe has a fun relationship with Mr. Vaughn, and otherwise lives a fairly normal life. I'm sure she does nice things, gives to charity, maybe even volunteers somewhere, but she does it without sending out a press release. She has family issues, she faces the same body-image issues as the rest of the female population, and she doesn't use her celebrity to make other people feel guilty or even jealous. She's just who she is, a woman with a pretty cool job that doesn't make up for any other shortcomings in her life.

I'm not going to bad-mouth Angelina Jolie, though I can't imagine that my little blog would ever cross the eyes of her high-powered attorneys, but in any case, I admit to admiring that Angelina uses her celebrity for good instead of for evil, but she also just makes me tired. I do what I can to save the world, but I will not likely adopt a Cambodian child and build a home in Cambodia so that my child can become familiar with his culture. Nor will I become a UN Good Will Ambassador or have a love child with Brat Pitt.

What I will do is worry about silly things like whether or not my jeans fit in quite the same way they did last year, try to get a haircut that flatters my face, and opt for a life of doing good in small ways, even if those ways never make it to the cover of People magazine.

Family Resemblance

I'm working on a collage and needed some family pictures to complete it, and I came across this one...

I, of course, found the ones where I look just like my dad when he was a baby. Put the pictures side by side, and we look the same, trouble-making kid with a lop-sided grin and dirt on our faces. I also found the ones where my mom is young, stunningly beautiful and grinning at the camera.

But this one, I think, is my favorite. It's all three of us and completely unposed. Someone else took the picture - I think you can see their reflection in the window behind my dad. We all just look so...HAPPY.

We look like the family we are, and pictures don't always capture that.

Looking through the old photos, I was transported back to the time, well more to that age. I felt little again, so full of trust and hope. I felt a little pang in my chest as I saw my parents' relationship develop as the photos progressed. They REALLY love each other, and that makes me feel so safe in this world.

If nothing else, a trip down memory lane always makes me feel safe and loved. A perfect way to spend a hot, Saturday afternoon.