Wrapping it up

Pineapple upside-down pumpkin gingerbread

If you haven't guessed yet, I am quite enamored with this month's issue of "Bon Appetit."

I used to bake on a regular basis.* My junior year of college, I would get up each Saturday morning and bake baguettes. And there was usually some sort of pie or cake around as well. I think my roommates loved me.

In law school it usually happened on Thursday. I started to notice that I ended up throwing out part of the baked goods each week because I just couldn't eat it all fast enough. So I gave some to a friend. And then someone else learned of the gift. So I added another person to the list. By the end of that school year, I was making deliveries every Thursday evening to about seven or eight friends on my way out to the delis. Because everyone went to the delis on Thursday night.

Then I dropped out of law school and moved back to California. Once I got my first real job and my own apartment, I resumed baking. Not on a regular schedule but when the mood hit. And I would bring whatever I had baked into the office. Coworkers would exclaim, "I can't believe you went home and baked after working all day!" But remember? It relaxes me. Plus for the first time ever, I didn't need to jockey with anyone else for use of the kitchen.

That's where I'd like to be. At that place in my mind where I can come home after working all day and suddenly feel like baking. And actually have the energy. Because I must admit that if I hadn't mentioned the possibility of the cake to coworkers, I may not have actually baked it. One day, though, it will be different. Hopefully soon. In the meantime, I'm off to plan this weekend's menu.

* A confession. I keep reading about how baking is an exact science. Here's the thing. I stopped being real regular with my measurements many years ago. Yes, my grandmother taught me about leveling stuff off and all that. She was also big on sifting. I almost never do either these days. But I also have a pretty good eye for measurements. Little extra flour in that first cup? Well, a little less in the next then.

Even worse is when I make dumplings. Look at the chicken in the pot. Then dump enough flour in a bowl to go with said chicken. Eyeball the flour and add some baking powder based upon how much flour is in the bowl...

What I'm trying to tell y'all is to not be afraid of baking. Sure you may have some disasters along the way -- like any time I try to use a box cake mix -- but pretty soon you'll get the hang of it and know where the margins of error lie.

The interview

Monday night I was kind of bad. I skipped my Portuguese class. Because I was busy with my interview to become a mentor.

It was time to fill in those gaps from my application. I went in knowing that I should mention that I am a Bay Area native. I've learned over the years that we are not as common as I had thought previously.

I talked about the things many of us take for granted -- applying for college or finding a job and an apartment. If you've never had a support system, do you really know how to do these things?

And college? Well, we all know that the SAT and other standardized tests can be culturally biased. If one has never been exposed to these things, then how can one answer questions on these topics?

The last part of the interview was answering questions about certain scenarios. The first was one in which the young woman was involved in risky behavior -- sex, drugs, or some combination of the two -- and how you would respond. And so I was honest. "I am not necessarily trained to deal with these kinds of situations but there are lots of people out there who are." I then went on to say that I would tell the young woman how her behavior is jeopardizing her future and that I can help her find someone to talk to. The program director loved how I said, "We can go and make an appointment." She said that her experience has taught her that while these young women will say that they will do whatever it is that you have asked of them, they rarely follow through with the actions. Just by my saying "we," I was holding this fictional young woman accountable.

The next step is to go through training. Part of this training is setting boundaries. Funny, but during the interview, I mentioned how there is often a lack of boundaries in these young women's lives. I gave a concrete example from my teaching years of how to be supportive yet set firm boundaries at the same time.

Basically I totally rocked the interview process. But from y'alls comments, I think you already expected that. I just wanted to let y'all know that I lived up to your expectations. And now I'm totally excited about getting my match.

And no, I don't see any problem with this post as a follow-up to yesterday's. Because I'm all multi-faceted and shit.

Reclamation

Over the weekend I had thought about writing a whole post about the events of Saturday. They can be summed up in a paragraph though. I went to the library and put my car in the shop. The car needs to go back this Saturday so that they can finish the work since they had to order a part. Grrrr. Then I will be already to start taking road trips. Saturday was also my aunt's birthday. After the errands, I went to a brunch that one of her friends was having to celebrate her life. Then I went out to dinner with family to do the same. My stepmother is still the same. Her birthday is later this week.

Now onto the real subject here. A few weeks ago I was talking about reclaiming my life -- and my sanity along the way. Tonight I took yet another step in that direction. I am once more enrolled in a Portuguese class. The surprising thing is that the instructor remembered me from before. It's been three years since I've taken a Portuguese class. It's slowly starting to come back.

Of course, I still could not escape death. We had to pair up with a classmate to do introductions. The woman with whom I was paired said that she was taking the class because her sister-in-law who passed away in June was Brazilian. And now this woman is raising her twin three-year-old nieces. She is taking Portuguese because she doesn't want them to lose their mother's language. I don't know about you but I wanted to cry. But then we got to hear from the one guy in the class who said that he wanted to learn Portuguese so that he could meet more women the next time he goes to Brazil. And so we got to laugh. All in all, it seems like a fun group of folks. When I had to describe myself later in the class, I said that I was faladora. That would be talkative. Because I figured that I should be honest.

Tomorrow night and Thursday night I am going to try to enroll in a couple of dance classes. I would have tried for one on Wednesday as well but I tutor on Wednesday nights.

I'm nowhere near done in reclaiming my life though. There is still at least a couple more pieces to the puzzle.

Why bother?

I'm starting to wonder why I bother to write the endless lists. Like my list for Saturday. OK. I did accomplish the majority of the list actually. It's just that things got changed up and the items that should have been then completed on Sunday are still waiting to be done.

Saturday was filled with numerous errands. I left home around 10 a.m. and returned around 3 p.m. The first stop, after checking on mom's house and then making the dreaded phone call, was to Sears. Because I needed more of the cute cabinets. Well, I was going to buy another quad unit and two of cubes with doors. But they only had one of the cubes with doors. And since it was about the same price as the two-cube unit I wanted anyway, I decided to get that instead. I'll find the other cube with door later.

And then I "wasted" time in the store when I ran into old family friends. These are people who went to church with my family when I was growing up. And even though I had my horrid "I'm running errands" look -- that may be why the husband hesitated when he saw me -- I did chat with them. We talked about where various family members are currently (Their daughter is two years older than I.) and how various family members are doing with their illnesses. The wife is a retired RN from Thrive! and is also a cancer survivor.

Next on the list was some grocery shopping -- a little more sane than going to the mall. And I don't know about you, but if there's a line at the grocery store, I will usually end up in a conversation with someone in line next to me. Like last week when I was in Andronico's and the older guy with the accent in line behind me started up a conversation. I kind of cut him off after he said, "You have a beautiful smile." So similar happened at Trader Joe's. Except it was an older woman and we were talking about kids and education. And then she asked where I went to school since I said that I had attended local schools. And then she asked my name and said, "Of course," when I answered. Because once she told me her name, I knew her instantly. She had been my English teacher my junior year of high school. And she's still teaching. And at Lucky, I discussed cheesecake recipes with the woman in line in front of me.


Once home, I made the above Beef Stroganoff. And another pot of cioppino. And was all set to rest and maybe do some cleaning when there was a knock at the door. The guys in the apartment behind me were having a party to celebrate the end of exams and were hand-delivering the invite.

Isn't this the cutest card ever?

So I took a power nap and headed on over the party. And got home around 4:00 a.m. Now you can see why Sunday was pretty shot. But I wouldn't have missed the party. Because no one parties like some engineering grad students. There were festive green and red Jell-O shots. And someone made a comment about, "There's always room for Jell-O." And there was a fridge full of beer -- really quite literally. And Belvedere and Jack. And there was music and engineers trying to dance. And then there was some beat boxing. Basically it had that kind of vibe if the guys at the Buy More threw a party. (Now if they had hopped into a car to drive to a field to bash some office machinery to the dulcet tones of rap music...) Oh, and the women there? Cute. Because as discussed elsewhere in the PRB, women with taste like their men kind of geeky.


Thankfully I had done all that cooking on Saturday because I only had the energy to make this on Sunday. My only splurge while shopping hungry on Saturday -- the mozzarella. Because who can really say no to cheese?

And I'm afraid of what could be in store for this week. Because on Monday, someone at work told me that I might want to wear loose pants all week...



And I guess I still haven't gotten over the music thing. So I leave you with another classic gem. In the meantime, I'm going to sit here at work and try to be pleasant to people while I'm waiting for the 800 mg of ibuprofen to kick in.

On a fence

So many of you have asked me about my feelings toward Underwear Guy. Well, I hope the title of this post helps to clarify it.

When we parted ways last on Tuesday, he said, "Call me the next time you are in San Francisco."

And I guess I fibbed. If he was truly the perfect gentleman, he would have walked me all the way home. Instead, we parted ways at the last entrance to BART on the way home for me. Might be why I offered a cheek for the kiss instead of my lips.

My friends at work who are around my age question my exclusion of men my age or older as far as dating is concerned. These are women who still dream of having the happy marriage with kids. I tried to tell them that my doctor had helped solve part of this problem years ago. I still remember being about 30 or 31 and my gynecolygist proclaiming that I was "hormonally fragile." She then went on to explain that the only way that I would have children completely naturally would be by age 35. At 40, I have done the math. Even if by some miracle (Because in vitro? Way too expensive for words.), I actually give birth to a child in the next year or later, I will be heading into my 60s when this child heads to college. I don't think so. I am too selfish to allow this. By my 60s, I want to be in a posision to be truly enjoying life. This means the children have finished college and have started their careers. My mother's solution to this is that I adopt.

So one of the things that Underwear Guy has in his favor is his desire to not have children of his own. We had a whole conversation about his love of other people's children. Apparently he now has a namesake who is showing signs of becoming a rampant Republican -- a regular Alex P. Keeton. Fortunately he sees this as a slap in the face. Underwear Guy even agreed to speak to my kids about his job.

Hmm. That last sentence seemed like a total non-sequitar to me. But I'm going to ignore that. Instead I'm going to try to put down in words all the things swimmming around in my head since my class on Saturday morning.

My class was part of a part of "Teaching American History." My old landlord in SF would ask whose history are you teaching. And this would answer many of the questions in my family. One of the teachers present asked how to deal with the lack of information on certain groups in history texts. Did this make a difference in where the student was from? The facillitator told her that a lot depended on the child's teacher. At the break, I told her that it also depended on the child's parents. My parents? They regularly supplameneted my history lessons with oral histories from our family as well as books from Marcus Books.

Eck! I've just realized that I have strayed from the post title. Or have I? My favorite Southern author has always been Faulkner. On Saturday we were asked to read a number of quotes and to write a response to one that reverberated for us personally. Me? I chose Faulkner. Over Martin Luther King. Over Albert Einstein. Over Frederick Douglass.

"The past is not dead; it's not even past."

Bottom line? I have all these wonderful ideas for my classroom but still have not made up my mind about Underwear Guy. My coworker Queenie (I finally remembered the name I was going to give her.) and I are going out in SF tomorrow night since we don't have to work on Wednesday. She says that I should call him. I don't know though. What if there's someone even more interesting in the place?

Expanding horizons

I thought I'd jot down a few thoughts before heading off to work. Yes, you read it correctly. It's Sunday and I have to go to work. Did I mention that I have to go to work tomorrow too?

Just like Gloria, I have a list of things that I'd like things I'd like to do some day. Well, I haven't really put them in a list. I just let them float around in my head.

The item at the top of my list was to find an apartment that I like in Berkeley. Done that. Now it's time to try to take care of some of the other things. I've always been fascinated by language and have wanted to learn more.

I was checking on my mom's house when I came across the catalog for Adult Education. It dawned on me that I should check Berkeley Unified to see if they offered something similar. They do. I thought to myself, "Now I can sign up for a Portuguese class." Then they burst my bubble. Apparently they offered Portuguese in the Spring but will not be offering it in the Summer. I really do not feel like taking another class in Spanish or Italian; I could use the refresher though. I started looking through the list to see if there was something else. Unfortunately ballroom dance does not fit into my work schedule. Same goes for ice skating and the intermediate hand knitting classes. So what have I decided? I'm thinking Arabic. It fits into my schedule and when my relatives come to visit this summer, I'll actually have someone to practice with. (Don't ask. That's another story.)

I guess if I actually go through with it, then in the fall I'll have to start planning that trip to New Zealand -- something else I've wanted to do for years. If not, I guess I'll just make do with the books I purchased years ago when I briefly thought of trying to learn Russian. Hey! And I have someone with whom I could practice at work. So what if he has this creepy sex maniac air about him? Scratch that thought. Guess it's Arabic or wait until Fall when they hopefully offer Portuguese again.