Being Grateful and Cookies

I believe my greatest feat in happiness is finding something to be grateful for every single day. Some days I have to paint my own silver lining because I can’t find it, but I’m normally one of those disgustingly optimistic people who can find a (sometimes inappropriate-joke-at-the-right-time) positive light. 

When things got really bad this summer, I had my silver linings and blessings.  The Lady didn’t die in a terrible car crash that, by the looks of it, should have taken her life. My parents came to my aid when things got darkest. I had a friend to call to help me move last minute when I was kicked out. My job was easily transferrable. I had my health, so even without health insurance, I was still in the clear. And my boss from my high school job was kind enough to give me a shift that he didn’t have until I asked for a job.

Even on normal days when I’m just feeling off, I have things for which to be thankful.  One specific thought I have is that I’m not as terrible as I think I am on the bad days because I have four specific people who are still my closest friends despite my horrible communication, hundreds of miles, and terrible decisions.  If they want to stick it out and be my friend, then clearly I can’t be that bad. (I talked about Brenna specifically recently, but there are a few others.)

So when I have something very specific to be thankful for from someone, I want to show them that I honestly am grateful.

Since I moved to the new store, things have been happening that I need to ask people for help.  Without them knowing me, they don’t know how much I try to avoid this.  But when I could see the Lady for the first time in a while, someone switched a shift with me and saved my Thanksgiving. When my great-aunt Gen died, my boss very easily told me to take the time off to take care of my mom. When I excitedly made plans with my niece for a very delayed birthday dinner, someone switched with me so I didn’t have to be the worst aunt in the world to cancel plans.

So to pay those people back (deservedly), I did what I do. I baked cookies and wrote thank you notes.  When I got to thinking about it though, I realized that my boss was this amazing man who took me back, not many questions asked. He is a nosy man, that boss.  But he is a kind hearted and warm guy who makes sure I know he cares. So I baked him the cookies he’s been asking for after the first batch of regular chocolate chip cookies for the ones at Starbucks.

Love Languages: Pear Pie and Adventures to Utah

I rushed a pie. In so many ways.

My pears weren’t perfectly ripe (in the way that avocados are not ripe and very quickly bad, I feel pears are the same way).

I didn’t have enough time to let the crust set perfectly.

I walked very quickly to the grocery store instead of letting my body and mind wander about the pie I was about to bake.

And I usually bake on Fridays before a 4 o’clock shift instead of a Monday before a 1:30 shift.

But I did this for my sanity. A little rushed insanity for six days of slow, heartwarming sanity.

I met Brenna in 2007, my freshman year. She was my residential advisor and we fell in friend love months later when I realized she actually wanted to be my friend and wasn’t around because she had to be. She is not one to waste her time on things she does not want. This idea (that she loves me and doesn’t need to love me) is one that helps me realize I’m not worthless when I feel quite bad about myself.

She moved out west nearly four years ago and I hadn’t seen her.  She picks up her phone when I need someone. When she (rarely) needs someone, I try to be there for her too.  We don’t talk every day (or even every month), but I know that if I were ever to need her, she’d be there (figuratively, seeing as she’s many states away). But I saved some money and flew out to see her.  I expected to spend the weekend and after work hours with her, but in true Brenna fashion, she took two full days off as well. 

We talked and talked and talked. We spread the Gay Agenda.

She baked.

We traveled into the nest of security (the Spanish Fork Canyon) and shared secrets with the Prince of Norway and saw the Delicate Arch and made up stories of the Brenna as the weirdo-introvert petroglyph artist.

We IKEA-dated and ate ice cream and I built a shelf in my love language (Acts of Service).

 She fell asleep on me. I walked around Salt Lake City. I ate churros and wrote post cards and visited new Starbucks because I’m a nerd.

I found a print that I thought she would like and reminded me of her love of life and scribbled a note in a stream of consciousness way to tell her how much I loved and appreciated her and left a tiny elephant in hopes it would remind her of how happy she makes me.

 I left Utah with a sense of calm, a sort-of zen that would be shattered with a new store opening and new baristas and the busiest store I’ve worked in. But I left Utah knowing a lot more about LDS (that’s Latter Day Saints, see?!), Utah, mountains, and knowing I’m loved deeply by someone I love deeply. And nothing can shatter these feelings and memories.

But about that pie: people liked it. One person judged the pears with a true queen-like fashion, and my friend stood up for me and ate two slices. My boss (one of the few people who is totally honest with me about my baking) said the pears weren’t ripe enough. But he ate the whole (large) slice I saved him. 

On Mothers: Jewish Coffee Cake

My parents brought me up in what I refer to as a fairy tale. I was innocent and loved and hugged and kissed and grew up in the right amount of time. I wasn’t afraid of my parents, I was afraid of disappointing them. 

Their own childhoods were wildly different, but clearly their childhoods created them, so we can’t be too upset. 

My grandfathers were both known as good men, marked by the war. My mother describes my grandfather as the best man she’s ever known, followed by my own father. My dad explains his father as a more typical father from the fifties, but close to him. They both died before I was born. My father’s mother was a flawed-but-overly-generous soul who died when I was seven. My mother’s mother is the only grandparent I really grew up with. 

Grandma McAllen was loving and proud of us and proud in general. She gave birth to nine—I repeat, NINE—children. She had seventeen grandchildren, two great grandchildren, and touched hundreds of people as a nurse, a good coworker, and a wonderful neighbor.  She was Irish Catholic, strict, and loud. She liked her SoCo&limes, black tea, cookies, and reading the newspaper. She was honest, blunt, and a terrible cook. My mother says she disappointed my grandmother a lot growing up, but in the past few years, my mother has been the primary care giver for her.  In her hospice bed, my grandmother abdicated (or I suppose forgave) my mother of all the sins she has ever committed and anxiety she gave my grandmother. 

 

 

One thing I learned from my grandmother is that you can hate the sin, but love the sinner. My grandma and I didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of social issues. But we didn’t discuss those. I didn’t introduce the Lady as my Lady because I didn’t want to be the cause of my grandmother’s heart stopping. We didn’t talk about Obama or different religions. We didn’t talk about my Holocaust and Genocide Studies concentration in college. But what my grandmother was, who she was, was someone who loved. Unendingly. She showed me what a mother’s love could be, and what a daughter’s love could be. I hope to love my children in the same ways she did, though maybe with a little less yelling and a little more patience. But I think fewer than nine children might help that situation.

My grandmother passed this June, around the time I really needed my own mother. It worked out well, though we’re working on the boundaries of what I need now (like not being taken care of). But when I asked my mom what I should bake this week, her response was “Jewish Coffee Cake” because it reminded her of Grandma. Okay. 

Also, a regular at the bar asked for apple crisp. I asked him to pay for ingredients. He told me he could tell it was baked with love. Gramma’s legacy lives on.

To Set A Goal: Whoopie Pies

I was walking to the only grocery store in town to buy the few ingredients I needed wearing a sweatshirt I frequently wear to bed (but not that night!), loose men’s sweatpants, and a clearly tired, unwashed face. I assuaged my fears of running into too many people I knew by telling myself at least it was a Friday morning—Saturday would have been a mistake.  And at least I brushed my teeth.

But what I realized was that this is what goals are.  I have to set a goal and continue to try for it. When I first started this blog, I woke up early on Saturday mornings, no matter how late I stayed out the night before or how late I planned on staying out. So I want to try to make sure I do that. And this week, I wanted to make something I hadn’t made before and make something for my mom to bring to work (and compare recipes).  

I decided on Whoopie Pies because I normally hear good things about them and I found a cute Martha recipe that said “Halloween” without too many complications or absurd ingredients.  Then my mom said she wanted to bring something in to work for Halloween that had pumpkin because she’s a basic white woman and I found another Martha recipe that had pumpkin filling.  So I buckled down Friday morning and decided to bake. 

One think I like about Martha is that because I don’t know how interesting I’d find her*, but she writes little comments in recipes to increase understanding.  There was a little comment on the normal Whoopie Pies that said applesauce was added for moisture and texture. I then decided this was the recipe I needed to make. 

So I made a batter that was stickier than I expected and a filling that was less than I expected and made these whoopie pies.  Tiny nonpareils are hard to get to stick exactly where you want, but I busted out two (for the IG, of course) and decided boys didn’t care about the rest. 

I then set up two cell phones! And I’m an adult and sort of paying for it by myself! #goals to be an adult!? 

Then I put together my mom’s recipe and heard that they were okay. But for future reference, you can do what you want with the filling, but the original recipe for the cookie part was so. much. better. Applesauce for the soft, moist cookie?! Yes, please. But all together, the goal was achieved for the week.

And then when your mom asks for fresh whipped cream, you do it...

 

*I’d like to clarify this point. I think that most people are good (naïve though it may be) and I think that there are people you can be friends with, people you can work with, people you can do both with, and some people you just will never get along with. Martha and I would probably work well together—but I don’t know if we’d be friends.  I think that she and I would respect each other and I know I’d learn from her, but that friendly connection? I don’t know.

A Decade of Changing Perception: Chocolate Heath Banana Bread

This will be a wandering post, but stay with me because I think there are things everyone feels. But if I’m wrong, please don’t let me know.

I went for a hike by myself. This is something I’ve done a lot this summer. I like the solitude. Correction: I have learned to like the solitude because it started because I didn’t have friends here. I still don’t really, but I also don’t actively invite people because it’s my time to think, to talk to myself in the woods, to laugh at silly things that other people wouldn’t find amusing. 

I did a familiar hike. But this time I took the red trail instead of the blue. I wandered around the same Black Rock that I have hiked many times before, but I saw a (literal) different side to it. I saw rocks that made me feel small, without telling me I’m small. I had nature show me that I’m less significant in the world without making me feel insignificant. It was like nature was being a true friend. 

When I got on top of the hill-mountain, I sat there looking at the beauty that New England has to offer in mid-October. The greens, reds, yellows, oranges, browns. I feel like no other place in the world can look like this, though I know I’m wrong. But I do know no other place in the world can make me feel at peace the way this one can. 

I looked down at the park that my high school cross country team runs at and saw flags. I realized NINE years ago, I was falling in love at the Berkshire League Tournament in Cross Country and changing my life. It was the first time in my life that I said, “I want this” and went after it (spoiler alert: it was a boy). I put my heart out and said I liked him and wanted to go to Homecoming with him. He displayed passion and focus in ways I was enthralled by, he showed his feelings in a way I didn’t know a man could. He said he wanted to go. We fell in love. We dated and kissed and went through firsts and lasts and made my senior year something of a fairy tale.  

This is also the period in my life that I realized that you aren’t the same to people as they are to you. I consider him my first love. My first awful, soul crushing heart break. Eight years ago, I tried to end it (badly, horribly, terribly), and he had to break it off and I cried and the world spun and it was awful. But when I think of my first love, it’s him. Not the two and a half year relationship before him. It’s him because I wanted to spend forever with him. I wanted to travel to South Korea with him. I wanted to have mixed-race babies and hold his hand forever. And that changed, obviously.

Things change. And your perception of things is different than other peoples. The way you feel about Connecticut, “home,” your first “real” relationship, Heath Bars, bananas… these feelings can change. 

And that’s my segue to my recipe.  I made a Heath Bar Chocolate Chip Banana Bread.  I’m sure there’s a more concise way to say it, but those are the major flavors, man. And you don’t want to leave any of them out, I don’t think. My feelings about bananas still haven’t changed, so I didn’t eat this. But I really like Heath Bars and toffee now, unlike 9 years ago. And I make baked goods because I want other people to enjoy them, instead of eating as many as I can, unlike 9 years ago.

A Step Back: Olaf Cupcake Cake

It’s been an eventful year. To say the least.

I have used baking as a method of self preservation when things get very, very messy.

But when things got the messiest, I curled up, ugly cried, and soothed my soul in a myriad of ways before going back to baking.

I spend time writing, knitting, walking, running, driving, crying, sleeping, eating, dieting, and so many other attempts at soothing my soul that I enjoyed and learned from. What I learned, mostly through walking and running, is that bettering my being will better others.  When I’m happy, I can make other people happy. And what makes me happy is sharing things I love. I love to teach people things and show them things I like. So I’ve decided to try this again.

I learned how to make a cupcake cake. When my first attempt didn’t fail (with zucchini spiced cupcakes and cream cheese frosting, recipe past the break), I decided to do a few more things. My first cake was for my mother, who during the messiest part of this past year immediately came to my aide and held me.

And she wanted this silly cake.  So I made it.

I know from working on myself that I do best with structure… a lot of structure. I am NOT a spontaneous person and excluding a few mistakes (with names) along the way, I tend to think long and hard about things before making decisions.

I’ve decided to significantly continue this blog to work on myself. I miss writing, but it hurts my hand. I miss being creative, but I don’t have much time. This allows me to do some critical thinking (what does one write about when they have this self-doubt that they can’t stop?) and be creative AND bake. 

I went back to a recipe I’ve already made once. My sister likes to think that hobbies don’t take time, and once she realizes they do, she frequently considers herself “hobby-less” and thinks that it doesn’t take time (I love her all the same,  I understand what she means).  Baking is a test of patience and endurance and those are both related to time. And I have those, but I don’t have time. So she asked for chocolate and yellow cupcakes for Milo’s second birthday. I didn’t have the time or patience to bust out two kinds of cake. (I am working two jobs again) So I just mixed them together like I did in 2012. And made my favorite frosting. And made this for a boy who loves Frozen. And carrots. And sweets.