Literally No Idea What I am Doing

 This post is not about marriage. Very few things of the last month have lined up with my expectations for this period of my life. And before the chorus of "well duhs" come in, hold on a sec and listen to my rambling.  I didn't expect to be in my mid-thirties. I didn't expect to meet on an app. I didn't expect to be in Kansas. I didn't expect my dad to be dead. And I didn't expect that my sister would hate me. Hah! You thought this was going to be another post about my dead dad, didn't you? Nope, sucker. It's a totally different emotional and depressing familial scenario. I mean the dead dad thing still sucks, don't get me wrong. Especially at this time of year. But this is a whole separate kettle of onions, can of worms, giant stinky mess. I know that just by writing this (and inevitably posting on my Facebook), there's a chance my sister will see this and get extremely angry and make yet another post of her own on FB talking about how wro...

  My dad is limes. My memory of a perfect Christmas is a recipe for key lime pie. The limes are all gone. For most of the year, I don't really need or crave limes. Sure, there are times when I think limes would be good, or I particularly miss them, but there are so many other things that fill the need for limes. On a day to day basis, a lack of limes does not affect me too much. Christmas though...Christmas was the time for limes. They are, after all, the key ingredient in a key lime pie. How can one have Christmas without them. There is nothing I can do to substitute limes and still come up with a key lime pie. I have all the ingredients in the world, except for the one that makes it work. No matter how hard I try, I will never have key lime pie again. Does that mean I still can't have something tasty? No, of course not. It just won't be key lime pie. It'll never be key lime pie.  It's kind of a hard thing to accept. Every year, without fail, the craving for key li...

Ok, so first of all, no, not all of these posts will be about my dead dad. This is just a special sort of weekend and it coincided with my idea to start blogging more, so here we are. Second of all, yes, this is supposed to be about stuff I cooked and/or baked and I did NOT make ice cream, but hey, my blog my rules. See above for special weekend. This is also a sort of filler post until my next one, as the food I am making for that takes a while and won't be ready until tomorrow at earliest. That out of the way....here is a picture of the completed cinnamon rolls from before that I didn't add to my last post because it ended kinda abruptly: They were as ugly as sin...namon. See what I did there? I will see myself out... Grief is real weird, y'all. Also kinda dumb, if I am honest. Did I say that before? Don't know, and too lazy to re-read what I wrote. But really, it is dumb and weird. Earlier this week, while at work, I became overwhelmingly sad. For no...

Recipes used: Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls from The Perfect Loaf Pumpkin Dog Treats from Spend with Pennies Here we are, one week away from the worst day of the year. Time to distract myself with baking. It's like procrasta-baking, but with more denial. With procrasta-baking (procrastinating by baking, if you didn't know), you are trying to make yourself feel like you accomplished something even though you know you have to do the other thing you are putting off. Distraction baking is all about pretending you DON'T feel what you actually feel and give yourself a false sense of happiness. In this case, I am pretending I don't feel the soul-crushing weight of my dad's death. Why cinnamon rolls and pumpkin dog treats? Well, one I have been experimenting with my lovely sourdough starter that was gifted to me from a coworker. It is from the 1800s and has been passed through her family for generations, so it is pretty fancy. So far I have tried two sourdough bread rec...

As I saw more and more of my friends joining their voices in the "me too" trend, I couldn't help but think back and wonder if I needed to join them. At first, I brushed it off. I'd never been sexually harassed or assaulted. I don't get guys leering at me or catcalling or bugging me online. Sure, I'd had some creeps when I attempted OKCupid, but nothing really that could be considered a personal attack. Just general skeeviness. It kept nagging at me. There was something. Something that I dismissed at first. It wasn't harassment. It wasn't assault. It just wasn't. It wasn't even physical. But it was abuse. It was slow. So gradual that I didn't even realize how bad it was until too late. And although it never felt "innocent," it definitely didn't feel like it was that bad. After all, it was only over text. How could it be bad if it was only in my mind? Furthermore, it was consensual. I agreed, I initiated, I kept coming bac...

It started with four songs. Over the Hills and Far Away, Wanderlust, Nemo, and Sleeping Sun, mistakenly titled “Eclipse” on the file I had. I cannot tell you exactly when I received them, or the name of the person who gave them to me. All I remember is that it was 2005 (possibly 2004), and it was a friend of a friend I met on Neopets. Wanderlust especially intrigued me because I was deeply into Dragonlance and it reminded me of kender. Over the Hills and Far Away was cool. I have always wanted to write a short story about the plot of that song. I want to say my version of Sleeping Sun was the 2005 version, but I am not sure. Either way, I adored it. I still think of it as “Eclipse” sometimes because for the longest time, that is what I thought it was called. But of course, Nemo is what won my heart. How many of us say the same? There is just something about that song that draws you in. You get lost in it, enfolded in its haunting beauty. It is easily Tarja’s best song and one ...

I can't be mad at my dad for choosing to die. My dad was diagnosed in late July with CNS lymphoma. He had a massive tumor in his frontal lobe and surgery was only able to remove part of it. It was the first day of what was supposed to be a vacation in upstate New York. We had noticed him acting a little strangely the week before, but he stubbornly refused to go to a doctor until we were in Syracuse. I remember when they said he had a brain tumor the floor fell from beneath my feet and I felt cold all over. It couldn't be happening. He had his surgery in New York and we left for home (Kansas, driving) a few days later. He was back in the hospital almost as soon as we got home. He had an infection, which necessitated more surgery. But he also had diabetes, so they had to get his blood sugar under control before they could clear the infection. He was in the ICU for almost a week I believe, mostly not responsive. After another week or so he was transferred to a different hos...

How appropriate my last blog post was about my dad as well and what a great father he is… My dad has cancer. My dad has cancer . My dad has cancer. My dad has cancer. I keep repeating it to myself over and over and over again, hoping it’ll help me believe it. It doesn’t. I have told this story a dozen times already, but I want to write it down once more. Two months ago, everything was great. I had a boyfriend whom I loved, I was getting ready to go on a trip to my favorite place (Syracuse, NY) with my family, my sister had just adopted an adorable puppy, and my depression was more under control than it had been my whole life. Things were sailing along. My sister mentioned my dad was acting sort of strange, but we brushed it off because he seemed mostly fine. He had just been told he had a sinus infection, so we figured that was making him a little tired and it explained his memory problems and just slightly off behavior. Four days later, whe...

So Father’s Day is on Sunday, and it is Friday. And here I am, silently panicking about not having anything to give my dad. Last year, the siblings and I joined together and bought him a smoker as a combined Father’s Day/60 th   birthday present. That is a hard thing to beat. My dad is impossible to shop for as it is. He always says he doesn’t need anything, or he has a very short list. Lists are great for giving ideas, but when a list is very short, you run the risk of buying a double present and it doesn’t give you a lot of options. This is why, when I write my list each year, it is long and varied and has many examples. I don’t expect to receive all of the things, but at least you get an idea of the kinds of things I like and have the freedom to either directly shop from the list, or get creative. So every Christmas and birthday for my dad, I have to get creative. Kitchen gadgets are always a safe option; he loves cooking and could always use a new toy. Also safe are c...

This is a sort of follow up to my last post. It's not about writing though. It's about my friends. I am going to tell you about four of my dearest friends. For privacy reasons, I will be referring to them as M, E, A, and L. Which I didn't notice until right now spells MEAL. That was accidental. A couple of them do have an online presence, but since I am not telling them about this post, it is not my place to reveal their identities. If you know me personally, you probably will know to whom I am referring when I start talking about them. I will be talking about them in the order that I met them. This means nothing beyond the fact that I have known M longer than I have known L. M So M is first. I have known M for a very, very long time. We met in middle school. For someone who moved around a lot as a kid, keeping in contact with a friend for that long is nothing short of a miracle for me. When I say that M and I have been friends since the moment we met, I am not ex...

A friend and I were texting each other the other night and I told her how jealous I was that she works as a freelance writer and has written novels (or at least a good chunk of a novel) and that she gets to spend so much time working on her craft. This is nothing unusual for me; I spend a lot of my time marveling and admiring my friends and how awesome they are. I’ve told them this enough to probably make them plenty uncomfortable. Like so many of my feelings, it is perhaps best depicted in this comic from Girls With Slingshots (link) THIS IS HOW I FEEL 80% OF THE TIME ABOUT MY FRIENDS. *cough* ahem But really, they are that amazing. At least in my eyes. I have friends who are writers, voice actors, photographers, doctors, etc. They are doing what they love and they are doing it well. I don’t mind it. I love that they are happy. They’re all beautiful amazing people and I love them so much. But this has nothing to do with writing, except that their wonderful accomplish...

Look, I am going to be blunt here. Blunt and honest and completely frank. I have never, ever, openly talked about this, and honestly it is hard. But I am at a time in my life where I am recognizing the things that need to be changed and implementing plans on how to change them. So, here it goes. I am obese. I have been for as long as I can remember. When I was a teen, I was told I'd grow out of it. But I didn't. It's a problem that has plagued me my whole life. Though it may not have been a primary focus or concern, it was always there, lurking. Silent, but present. I know that I have been incredibly fortunate. I was never, as far as I recall, bullied or teased about my weight in any of the numerous places I lived and attended church. I don't even think my sister teased me about it. I have also never suffered any true adverse effects on my health because of my weight. I do not have diabetes, which I am especially thankful for due to my family history. The worst prob...