Prologue To a Busy Day

Greetings at the beginning of a very full day.  This morning: finishing off a going-away gift for my good friend who is leaving for college next week, baking a batch of croissants as a thank-you gift for a certain very generous favor (and, incidentally, for breakfast tomorrow), getting a decent start on the next chapter of my novel so that tomorrow when I have more time and concentration I can delve directly into the next tragedy which will propel the plot forward and in which I shall not have any sentences this long or confusing.  This afternoon: demonstrating for a ballet class full of brand new adorable urchins, helping my mom set up her Etsy shop, going back for my own ballet class and staying late for photos, after which I shall come home and gratefully fall into bed.


At least I'm hoping to get all of that done today.  I make no promises.  The novel is coming along nicely these days, and I think my new-found dedication is starting to pay off.  There are still some days where I write only very little, don't like that very little and delete it the next day, but I try to tell myself that those days are as much a part of the process as the productive ones.


Lately I've taken to reading Robin McKinley's blog.  Check it out at www.robinmckinley.com if you're interested.  I've always loved her writing, whether it's her YA work (Beauty, Dragonhaven) or her more adult stuff (the wonderful and unsettling Deerskin, or Sunshine).  It's fantasy with real literary merit.  In any case, she blogs daily -- which in itself is impressive to me -- about life in general, which for her often involves raising hounds, ringing handbells, gardening, chasing bats out of her attic, and writing of course.  I find it delightful.


Just to let everybody know, I have changed my settings to allow for comments from readers who are not officially followers of my blog.  I didn't do this at first because I was trying to avoid spam, but I do enjoy comments and I like feedback, so I changed the settings so that anybody can leave a comment but I have to approve it before it posts.  Hopefully this will help.


Cheers!

People vs. Confectionary

With Valentine's Day looming on the horizon, as I am constantly reminded every time I walk through the grocery store, I thought I would write a post concerning my thoughts on that particular over-hyped Hallmark Holiday of paramount guilt and anxiety.


In case anyone was left in doubt of my feelings toward the holiday by that last sentence, let me be clear -- I do not care for Valentine's Day in general.  It is, or at least has become, merely an excuse to collect candy, flowers, and an array of useless objects in pink or red which are usually found in other colors.  How many Pepto-Bismol-colored teddy bears does one girl need?  Personally I'm under the impression that one is too many.  To my shame, this trend seems to be perpetuated primarily by women, resulting in frequent February sightings of distressed men and boys wandering about the mall laden with various bits of bric-a-brac and expressions of anxiety and gloom.


Now, just so I'm not misunderstood, I am a woman, also a bit of a romantic, believe it or not.  I like chocolate, and I adore getting flowers... pink or red stuffed animals not so much.  But I would rather get them from my husband spontaneously, because he thought of me and wanted to, than on a specific day because he felt compelled.  I'd also rather be taken out to eat on a random weekday evening at a quiet restaurant than have to make reservations a month ahead and spend the meal having to shout in order to be heard.  On our first Valentine's Day together, my now-husband presented me with a machete.  I like to think that's when I knew we had something special.


To continue in a similar vein, I also don't understand the urge (prevalent among the romantically attached) of referring to each other as pieces of confectionary.  I clearly remember nearly taking an ex's head off for referring to me as "cupcake".  Once again, I like eating cupcakes as much as the next girl, but I have a distinct aversion to being compared to one.  Wrong shape, and not even edible except to cannibals, which I hope you are not, thank you very much. 

Baking

My bread dough is rising on the counter, filling the house with its warm, yeasty smell.  I love making bread -- kneading it, watching it grow, cutting into the fresh loaves and watching them steam.  People always seem surprised to learn that I still bake at home after baking at work every day, but it's really a very different thing.  At work I always bake the same thing, or at least a variation of the same thing, in a designated amount in a certain way.  Even though I enjoy it, the creative aspect is almost completely lost.  Besides, I am at heart a flinger.  I rarely measure things, and like deciding to change things at the last minute.  Like Aaron's birthday cake.  I knew I wanted cream cheese frosting, then at the last minute discovered a mini Bailey's in the liquor cabinet.  Turns out cream cheese frosting is tasty but cream cheese frosting with Bailey's is fantastic.  My last-minute ideas don't always work so well, and I have had to throw things out before, but it's all part of the fun of the thing.  I went through a childhood faze when I would get up very early in the morning before anyone else and go into the kitchen to "experiment".  I think I did it early in the morning at least partly because if my parents knew what I was going to do they would stop me.  Also, I always had a grand sort of notion that I was going to create a masterpiece and surprise everyone. My mother never tried to put an end to this that I can remember, I think because she is herself a very creative person, and she didn't know how to put an halt to my culinary escapades without also squashing my creativity. So I would tiptoe into the kitchen nearly every morning and play with ingredients.  Sometimes the things were palatable, and sometimes I was forced to try to dispose of them before anyone found out.  On one particularly memorable occasion I recall having just heard that putting apple sauce in cake would make it moist.  Therefore, feeling that I could not possibly go wrong, I proceeded to bake a large cake that was approximately half apple sauce, with a very minimal amount of flour.  My long-suffering family, after this, suggested that perhaps I limit the size of my "experiments" in future.