Category Archives: doing what you love

Ahhh….the profanity comes flooding back….

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I don’t have children but my countdown to the beginning of the school season is just as exciting.  There are no giant red X’s on any calendars but the anticipation for the first week of September is palpable.   While the teachers prepare their rooms with the letters of the alphabet strung across the top of the chalk boards, I am only concerned with three of those letters.  N-F-L

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(one of my favorite pics of my dad)

 

My child-like excitement for the sport is well-known throughout my friends and family and especially by many others who are members of my football pool.  My incessant emails begin during pre-season and escalate substantially as the NFL ramps up to the first kick off of the regular season.

I prepare my dog for the blast of profanities (my sports-related Tourette’s syndrome) that will inevitably be passed from my lips only to fall on the deaf ears of the referees.  This is a beloved family tradition passed down from my grandparents and who am I to argue with tradition?  They were masters of the verbal barrage of expletives and were not selective when it came to yelling at referees  – hockey, football, baseball umpires, nobody was safe.  I reserve my assassination of the English language specifically for the line judges, field judges, side judges and back judges of the NFL.  There are also a few well-placed curse words expelled during fumbles, sacks and interceptions.  (I don’t discriminate.)

I have been busy over the last few days preparing my three pages of football sheets for the over 60 participants in my football pool.   Let the games begin and let my grasp of the English language be slightly marred.  Hell hath no fury like a woman watching football!!

The prodigious exultation of being a word-nerd

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Blogging has allowed me to become a true, and very contented, word snob.  I have always loved words.  As a teenager, I kept a duo-tang (who remembers those?) filled with lined paper and would make note of all the unfamiliar words I came across while devouring all the books I used to read.  Those words that eluded my pubescent mind became a staple of my vocabulary once I had defined them and cemented them into the library of my brain.  They circled my imagination and urged my cerebrum to come out to play.  They tickled my tongue and they began to flow like blood in my veins.

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(look at how lovely my penmanship was in high school)

I assiduously began to incorporate those words into as many scenarios as I could.  My teachers were duly impressed.  My fellow students merely looked at me like I had three heads.  My flamboyant wordiness was an ephemeral fantasy and I had to tone down my elevated rhetoric to become a conventional high-school student filled with angst rather than synonyms.

Today I still continue to incorporate those words into my daily conversations, not to sound more intelligent but, because I enjoy the way those words sound when I say them aloud.  I relish being able to use the phrase ‘alarmingly verbose’ instead of just saying “he talked a lot”.  I enjoy describing winter as arduous and not just “shitty”, although shitty can truly encapsulate the past winter months and potentially the ones to come.  And I will forever want to be mystified by language and not speak simply to communicate.  I want to thrive in my love for words.

My enthusiasm for articulate phrases has never waned.  It has followed me throughout my journey.  It has haunted my sleep and clandestinely pursued me during my conscious hours.  May those words forever churn in the maelstrom of my imagination and may I always be able to maintain my romance with the language of expression.

 

What life is really about….

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As the eve of a hectic work day pulls the shade of night down over the day, I am blissfully distracted from the bewilderment of the myriad of events that unfolded to create that hectic day.  I am fortunate to be able to cast those disquieting moments aside and dwell on the touching moment from the previous night.

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Making cakes is a process I enjoy immensely.  It truly allows me to lose myself in the creative process and pour my heart into something I love.  I create with the purpose of wanting to make the occasion that much more special by making a simple birthday cake into a much more personal experience.  Very rarely do I get a glimpse through the eyes of the intended recipient but on Saturday night I was able to see the joy from the other side.

I was the one holding the cake as the birthday song began.  I was the one to present the cake to a very surprised birthday girl.  And I was the one who most appreciated the tears of joy that welled in the corners of her eyes.  It was a truly touching moment for me.

Her reaction made every ounce of my effort worthwhile.  Her heartfelt emotion made every tedious detail on that cake worth each extra moment I took to make them as close to perfect as I could get them.  It may be just a Scrabble cake to some but to her it was the first personalized cake she had ever had and I was moved to tears to be the person that created that memory for her.

That one moment will play over and over in my head as I am laboriously working into the evening hours on my next cake project.  And when my wrists are tired from kneading fondant and my hand is beginning to shake with exhaustion when I am trying to pipe the last details on a cake, I will remember the look on her face and summon that next wind to keep going.

Life is about counting the memories and not the calories.

 

 

 

Ask me in forty years and I’ll tell you what happened

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When I look back at the road behind me, I am content with many of the life altering decisions I have made.  There would be nothing worse than glancing back over the history of my life through the eyes of regret.  But will I be that fortunate in another forty years to feel the same way I do after the first half of my life?  Will I take all of my knowledge, and the lessons I have learned about only living once, and disregard the opportunity to obtain the most happiness I can possibly achieve?

I don’t want to reach my ninetieth year and remember the moment that I let an opportunity for pure bliss pass me by.  I don’t want to have “what if” nagging at the  back of my mind.  I have 46 years of growth and experience under my belt and I can only hope I can wring every ounce of those two things out of me when it comes to pursuing my ultimate happiness.

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Sure, I’ve made my choices and I go through the motions of every day life but how would I feel if there were something out there that was just perfect for me and I let it pass me by?  Whether it be a job, a trip or a new love….opportunities are not presented every day.  Some of those chances are serendipity, a fortunate accident, and some are created through some mystic energy in the universe, perhaps a karma of sorts.

Regardless of the circumstance, I don’t want to regret a moment in my life where I should have taken a chance, but didn’t.   If  you ask me in forty years, I hope I am able to tell you that I followed my heart and made every moment possible by simply taking that chance on something that seemed like it was meant to be just for me.

 

 

 

Thanks WordPress….do you have any tissues?

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My third year anniversary on WordPress is rapidly approaching.  Since my timid foray into blogging, I have truly come into my own and really love this journey I am on.  I have discovered so much about myself and thrown myself into an outlet where I find I can be really honest about my feelings and opinions.

Over the course of my presence here, WordPress has made many changes and upgrades to their program.  The cause for my tears and subsequent request for tissues is the addition of “related posts” at the bottom of our existing posts.  This subtle link at the bottom of my posts has caused me to click on one of my previous posts about my mom and my tears didn’t even have the option of staying or flowing – they started at full force and kept coming.

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Once I cleared the blurry vision and was able to control myself, I realized what a great extension to my blog that this little tear-inducing gem had become.  If readers are interested in the blog post that day, they can click on the links to previous posts they may have missed and be able to follow my earlier thought processes that may have some relevance to the entry I had recently posted.

I appreciate that WordPress is bringing my past into my present.  They are connecting the dots of my artistic as well as my emotional journey and allowing others to participate in the history of my blogging adventure as well as the most recent part of my writing experience.

Tissues are available at the door.

 

 

 

Sweet June and doing small things with great love

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A little less than a year and a half ago my life was irrevocably changed when my mom passed away.  She had been ill for a while but it was still a shock to receive the call on a Friday morning that she was gone.  As fate would have it, a small typo at the funeral home transformed an evening that could have been incredibly morose into a night of bizarre toasts that my mom would have found hilarious.  In the haze of tragedy, my family was able to find laughter.  In the wake of death, my family was still able to breathe some life.

One slight alphabetical error was a domino effect for a myriad number of things that would follow. Had the funeral director not misspelled Jane and typed June, the course of our mourning and subsequent celebration of my mother would have been profoundly altered.  You can read the original story by clicking here.  Since then there have been continual toasts to “June”.   There is a place setting for June at family meals and she is always a part of our celebrations.

Recently, I began to dabble in cake decorating again and decided that I would like to bring the old cake business back to life.  The company name I had used in the past no longer seemed to embody what it was that I was trying to represent and I struggled to come up with a new moniker for my part-time occupation.

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After sifting through photos of cakes I had done in the past, I came across this cake I made for my mom on her 70th birthday.  Without hesitation, I knew the name of my new venture would be “Sweet June”.

“In this life we cannot do great things.  We can only do small things with great love.” ~ Mother Teresa

 These cakes are the small things that I do with great love.  I find peace in the moments of creating special memories that help celebrate milestones.  I find joy in knowing that I was an invisible part of a happy occasion.  And I achieve the most reward, now, by knowing that my mom, Sweet June, will forever be a small part of those moments as well.

What I might be

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“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” ~ Lao Tzu

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I have been so consumed by my job lately that I have begun to redefine myself by my career and not by the person who is performing that job.  I give up small parts of myself to become a larger piece of the work puzzle and, although I thoroughly enjoy my job and the people I interact with on a daily basis, I lose sight of the potential success of my personal goals.

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I saw this quote and the cogs in the wheels of my creativity began to align and click into perfect place.  By allowing myself to become what I might be, I give myself permission to become all of the things I wish for myself.   Work is a means to pay the bills but work will never be the summit of the mountain of my possibility.

Each day I write this blog, each day I allow the words to flow from my brain, is a day I step closer to what I might be.  There is a part of me still lurking in the shadows.  There is a creative mind waiting for the moment that reality does not quell its desire.  When I finally am able to truly let go of what I am, that creative mind will become what it should be.

I followed the crumbs back home

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“A party without cake is just a meeting.” ~  Julia Child

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 I’m not sure how old I was or what passing birthday had just eclipsed my dream of being a child forever but I remember the birthday cake my mom had made.  It was a chocolate cake with homemade buttercream frosting and a bittersweet chocolate ganache.  It was decadent.  It was made with love.  And to a child still in single digits, it was crack cocaine.

Every special occasion I demanded politely requested that my mother painstakingly recreate that masterpiece.  Throughout my childhood, I never deviated from that cake.  It is one of the favorite memories I have of my mother.  I cannot recall whose smile was more prominent when the cake was delivered to the table, hers or mine, but I do know that cake was our moment to share.

Over the years, I lost track of the myriad number of times that cake graced our dining room table but I never lost my love of that cake.  I saw how much effort my mom put into that special treat and, perhaps through osmosis, I garnered the same conviction that cake made people happy.

After being absent for some time, due to unforeseen construction on the path of my life, I am back on the road that leads straight to my oven and my decorating tools.  I missed cakes.  I missed the escape from reality that decorating affords me and I missed the joy in people’s eyes when they had seen what I created for their special occasion.

The piping bags are ready, the cupboards are stocked and the fondant is ready to roll.   Let them eat cake!

You want fries with that?

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When I win the lottery (note the eternal optimism) I dream of having a food truck.  Seeing this burger and New York Fries truck only placed that dream, once again, in the foreground of my reality.  Our lodge was host to a collection of guests who were attending a wedding at the golf club next door to us and this was the midnight snack truck the bride and groom arranged for their wedding guests.

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My food truck dream changes fairly often.  I have thought about a soup truck with fresh-baked goods, since I love making both of those things, but after seeing this pimped out truck my idea morphed into a fine dining truck that would make the dining more of an experience in the truck rather than just picking your food up from the truck itself.

My brain kicked into high gear today and toyed with the idea of creating a fine dining restaurant on wheels, making the impossible night out possible by bringing the fine dining experience to you.  With a mock backdrop of a starry night and some great jazz, you would be able to enjoy the experience of a real date night without leaving the confines of your property.

Food courses, from Amuse Bouche to dessert, would be paired with wine and the food would be presented in a way that would please the eye as well as the palette.  I have been using myself as a guinea pig and, so far, the tests have been an overwhelming success.  Last night’s meal was bacon wrapped Pork Tenderloin served with spinach, apple, Goat cheese, crushed Pistachios and a Balsamic Reduction and I am confident this dish would be a success. (It was delicious!)

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I am still waiting for the lottery Gods to smile favorably upon my new career choice.  Reservations are available but may take a few years to come to fruition based on how those lottery numbers match the numbers on my tickets.  Until then, I will continue to sample future items to perfect the menu of my food truck and hope my culinary dreams turn into a reality.  This truck, if all goes well, may be coming to a neighborhood near you!

 

 

 

Finding the beauty in exhaustion

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I absolutely love what I do for a living but the long hours and the physical demands of the job can take a toll on the state of my well-being.  I have just organized and worked a wedding and dynamic conference back-to-back.  If you asked me to spell my name right now I would have difficulty providing that information with any sort of accuracy but the reward I have reaped far outweighs the strenuousness I have endured.

At the end of my arduous days, I feel content in the fact that I have given 110% to, not only give great service to each of these functions but, help create a memory for each of my guests.

Where I feel I should lose energy in the many hours I work, I gain strength from the energy of those around me.   This strength does not come from knowing what I am capable of.  This strength comes from my perseverance to give my best effort and make sure I represent all of myself and not just part of myself, not only in work but in every aspect of my life.

That is the beauty of my exhaustion.  I can sit back and relax knowing that I have given everything I have.  I can take solace in the fact that I do my job well.  And I can absolutely appreciate when I receive praise for my efforts because I truly feel like I have earned it.

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Although my weariness does come at a price, the satisfaction I get from knowing that my efforts positively affected so many others makes that extreme fatigue all that much more bearable and makes me want to do it all over again.