Christmas Cake

One of the things that I enjoy about the holidays is spending time with people that I care about.  I am not the sort of person that enjoys sitting around, but rather having a project or purpose. This year my mother in law and I took on a challenge of making a special cake for Christmas. 

The cake covered all the family favorites, and stretched the comfort zone of my baking skills. (Anytime I have to use a spring form pan, I get a little nervous.)The delectable delight that was on the menu was a moist carrot cake with a rich and creamy cheesecake center covered in sweet buttercream icing and sprinkled with chopped nuts.  The cake could have turned out terrible, and it wouldn't have mattered.  I had fun hanging out with my mother in law while we caught up on family events. It also didn't hurt that we had to lick the beaters for the butter cream icing. 

Many cups of tea and several ounces of cream cheese later, we had a beautiful and delicious cake. I have come to the conclusion that baking is alway more enjoyable when you have good company.  Everything is sweeter with family.
                                           
If you are interested in making your own carrot cake with cheesecake filling,  check out this recipe  by wickedgoodkitchen,  it is similar to the one that we made. 

Celebrate the Small Victories!

I am celebrating a victory.   It is a small victory, but even a small victory is a victory.

Short story:

My car head light was out. It has been out for a couple of days, and with the sort of luck that I have I would get pulled over for being a menace to society and a safety violation, before I was going to be able to get to my mechanic to have the bulb changed.  I really don't have the time or  desire to be pulled over for something rather trivial.  I needed to bulb changed.   Today was the day.

I had some spare time in the afternoon, since the cake adventure took less time than anticipated. (I'll tell you about the cake later.)  With a quick stop to the local auto parts shop, I procured my light bulb.  It is probably the most expensive single bulb I have ever purchased. ($15 for one bulb)

With the car parked safely in the drive way, I embarked on this adventure. No adventure is complete with out a companion, so my brother dialed in for moral support and advice, since he is the mechanical one in the family.   Twenty minutes of muttering about rubber,  trying to pinch things that wanted pulled and discovering that my hand can fit in weirds spots in my car, I had successfully removed the rubber cap that protected the plug for the light. Ten minutes after that I actually got the rubber cap back on, since I wasn't supposed to take that off. The move I was supposed to do was more of a squeeze two little indents that you can't feel through the rubber and then pull to release the light plug. I did get the light bulb out, and then it was two minutes to the finish line from there.

 

 

Once I had the lid down and turned the car on to test the light, I was feeling pretty awesome.  My brother was highly amused  and extremely patient during the whole process.  I think he hung in there to find out which inventive and unique combo of words were going to spew from my mouth as I questioned if was humanly possible to change the light bulb and if my hand were abnormally large.  The whole process took about a half an hour, one phone call, eight pictures, two YouTube videos, one stubborn person and one really really patient person, oh and one light bulb.

Changing the light bulb was a victory.  I am going to celebrate it. I am proud of myself.


Thank you Mike for your moral support and YouTube narration of instructions!

Dreams of Work

Last night I had a dream that I was at work.  Dreams like that normally leave me feeling unrested and normally running my tongue across my teeth to make sure they are still in my mouth.(I once read if you dream about teeth, you are anxious) The dream I had last night left me feeling happy when I woke up. 

The dream started out sad.  It started out with being notified that my favorite customer from when I worked at the bookstore had passed away.  I haven’t worked at the bookstore for little over half a decade, but I can still remember my favorite customers. 

This particular customer liked to come at the end of the night. He had long dark hair, a small smile and walked with a limp and a cane.  He like to come at the end of the night, because it was less crowded and he was less self conscious of his limp and sometimes it would take him all day to get his limbs to work.  I remember him telling me once that he was once in service and things didn’t go well.  He loved music, and when he was in pain and couldn’t go anywhere, he was able to escape into music. If it was slow , we would chat for a bit about music as I applied every coupon he had to the latest additions to his already extensive music collection. 

In my dream, my favorite customer had died.  It was sad and I was shocked. I was even more shocked to find out that he had left me an inheritance to the amount of double the value of my home, so that I could pay my house off and still be comfortable. I had no idea.  The solicitor handed me a note and a check.  I opened the note (and listened to it being narrated by the recently deceased,) that stated they had included me in their will, because I had always been nice to them and treated them with respect and kindness and those were rare qualities to find in a person.

I woke up feeling really good about myself. If I could be remembered for anything, I think I would want to be remembered like that. I would want to be remembered as a person that treats other people with respect and kindness.   It doesn’t matter what you do or where you work, it matters how you treat people. 

Today when I went to work, I tried to be a little nicer and chat with my coworkers a little more. I want my dream self to be just as nice as my awake self.