Last week I found out that one of my former coworkers had committed suicide.  I went through this whole range of emotions. He was only 25. I had been planning on calling him to wish him a Happy Birthday as it’s just days away, but that day will pass and 25 he shall remain forever.

I went over the many nights we worked together in my head, looking for signs I must have missed, finding nothing but more questions. I had this feeling that I needed to do something, but I couldn’t imagine what that might be.  I’m not foolish enough to believe that I could have saved him, but I would have tried.

My thoughts kept returning to his Mom on the East coast, and to his little sister, and the  times we had sat together drinking pints of beer after work. He had planned on returning for a visit home. He felt guilty that the years were slipping by. He wondered aloud if the letters and little gifts he was sending to his much younger sister meant anything at all. I assured him that his sister was undoubtedly thrilled to have any contact with him whether it be phone, email or letters and encouraged him to keep the lines of communication open with his mom even if it was hard at times.

He has returned home now, his body anyway, where he can be buried close by his family. Last night I finally sat down and wrote his family a letter and slipped it in a card. I can only hope that my words can one day offer even the slightest bit of comfort to them.

In honor of his love of music, and Sam Cooke in particular, I wanted to post the following song.

Hold On

The Dough Rests But The Baker Does Not

I have been trying to write here, but I can’t seem to finish anything. I set my standards too high and then get disappointed when I can’t make the words dance the steps I choreographed. I have decided to listen to Thursday and Jean and their encouraging words in my comments for my last post. Haven’t read the comments? What’s the matter with you, go and take a look, it’s fun. Join in. Everyone is welcome. I want the communication to flow both ways here. I’m lonely. Christ. I’m lonely.

Yesterday I tried to write a post about anger but I got so pissed off recalling the tale I was telling I ended up furiously weeding in the garden on a very blustery day instead.

That food group I mentioned joining, well, I can get large quantities of apples amazingly cheap and so I do. I did just about everything you can do with an apple and it got a bit nutty, my quest to make sure none of them went to waste.For dinner the other night I baked a beautiful lasagna and an apple crisp. I pointed out to my family that the sauce was from the tomatoes, zucchini and basil from our garden and Nathan said, “Yeah, I don’t really like basil.” and later Alex said, “The next time that you make that crisp could you cut the spices in half, it was way too spicy.” I had to excuse myself to the bathroom where I sat on the toilet and had a little cry because I’m tired and I sometimes fantasize about living alone, leaving my husband and two teenagers here to clean up after themselves and to cook their own fucking meals. I cried because I wanted to be a writer when I was a little girl, and a clown who could make people who were sad laugh, and a photographer, and a sculptor, and the person who took on world hunger, because when someone is down and out and you take away the pain of hunger it means so much more than words like love.  I cried because I want a room of my own with no TV noise in it so I can just sit in peace. I cried because I have been longing to fill this emptiness inside of me for so long, a lifetime of longing, and I don’t know how to do that. I cried because last week I got a coupon in the mail for some crappy chain salon so I decided to take myself down there all by myself on the bus and get my hair trimmed. I asked for two inches of the ends and she chopped my hair into a mullet. English was not her strong point. I came home and tried to brush it into a ponytail and now it won’t go. I found some barrettes and clipped the sides back and Nathan laughed and laughed at me when he saw it and I wondered how he could be so cruel. Polly patted my hand and told me that it wasn’t bad and that I looked pretty and I wondered if she meant it. I know it’s just hair. It’s not about the hair. It’s me, never knowing how to be a wife, mother, daughter, sister and aunt and still have time to do a few little things to feed my soul before I dry up. When is it OK to say, “Fuck it. The garbage needs to be taken out again, the toilet keeps clogging, I have to get some towels in the washer if they’re going to line dry in time for everyone to shower, but I am going to take a walk to the library and spend the afternoon sitting amongst that wonderful old book smell?” Oh yeah, I wanted to be a librarian when I was a girl too.

Moving on now…

***

Jean was asking me about a recipe of her mother’s that she had tried to recreate. She was kind enough to share it with me (it’s in the comments of the last post) and so I will be giving it a try as soon as I can.  I wanted to talk  a little bit about baking here. This advice is general, and not directed at anyone in particular.

One note about the photo of the dough up there resting before I shaped it: If someone ever wanted to hire me to bake for them again I would check the kitchen for wood benches.  In my dream bakery, the one that I fantasize about opening, I have wood benches for dough. It’s the way. I also have the fantasy about taking this city by surprise with the simple goodness of fresh baked goods coming from a woman who, at the age of 36, decided to go for her dream. I just need the financing. It’s a dangerous idea  in this economy, but it’s fun to imagine designing it.

OK. Simple advice for home bakers.

Just because you set your oven for 325 doesn’t mean it heats to that temp. Get a hanging oven thermometer and see what temperature it really is. The piece of shit oven in my house is off by 50 degrees. Adjust! It can make a huge difference in the finished product. If the recipe calls for you to preheat your oven, do so. When your bread, or your cake, or your muffins are ready to go into the oven they need to get in there and have that heat ready. Muffins, cakes, etc. are usually leavened by baking soda and/or powder. When the wet ingredients hit the dry it is activated. With yeast breads and pastries that need to be proofed (allowed to rise) they need to be placed in the oven at the correct time, where they will rise for the final time.

Baked goods continue to cook after they are removed from the oven. Resist that urge to slice into that loaf. Allow yourself the time to gently lean down and listen to the crackling of the bread as it finishes. Don’t burn your ear!  When I first started training new bakers I was amazed at how many of them burned the cookies. You want most cookies to finish cooking on the hot sheet pan after you pull them out. The trick is learning  exactly when to pull them. Practice. You can always eat the mistakes.

Bake times. This is yet another reason why I have trouble training people. Night after night I had people come to me with things that they had burned. They used the same excuse every time, “But the recipe said to bake for 25 minutes!!” The time listed is a guideline. Set your timer earlier than the recipe states. I call this my check timer.  Check fast! Every time you open the oven you lose heat. Sometimes things are done early and sometimes they take longer.

Yeast. Oh how I love yeast. Baking sweets gets old fast, at least for me, but I am always fascinated with yeast doughs. Before I lost my job I was working on developing breads using no added yeast at all as it is everywhere, wild and in our air and water.  Check the expiration dates on your yeast. To test if our Active Dry Yeast is still good use this simple test :

Fill a 1-cup liquid measuring cup to the 1/2 cup level with warm water (110 to 115 degrees F). Stir in 1 teaspoon sugar and sprinkle with 2-1/4 teaspoons yeast (1/4-oz package). In 3 to 4 minutes, the yeast will have absorbed enough liquid to activate and start rising to the surface. If at the end of 10 minutes, the yeast has multiplied to the 1 cup mark on the measuring cup and has a rounded crown, it is very active. The yeast mixture may then be used in your recipe if baking immediately. Adjust the recipe for the 1/2 cup water used in the test. Discard yeast with slow activity.

Instant yeast needs no blooming, or proofing before it is mixed into the flour.  Bread Machine Yeast and Rapid Rise Yeast is instant yeast that may include ascorbic acid, a dough conditioner.   To substitute instant or bread machine yeast for active dry yeast, use 25% less instant yeast than active dry. I have heard this debated by others numerous times, some say the reduction should be closer to 33%, blah blah blah, but I’ve never had any trouble with the substitution and I’d rather get busy baking than stand around debating.

Fresh Yeast, also known as compressed or cake yeast, is active yeast.

It is sold in tiny cakes in the refrigerated section of your supermarket. I have baked with it at various commercial kitchens with success, but I’ve only purchased it for home use once because it doesn’t keep long, and I hate to waste.

A .6-oz cube of cake yeast is roughly equivalent to 1½ to 2 tsp. instant yeast or 2 to 2¼  tsp. active dry yeast. It needs to be proofed in tepid water (80-90 degrees F) before use.

Speaking of water temperatures, I recommend that every baker have a thermometer. I use one of those instant read probe thermometers, but you can also use a candy thermometer. Active Dry Yeast is proofed with water, (or whatever liquid you are using), at 110 – 115 degrees F. Ideally, the other ingredients you are using should be at room temperature. Did you forget to pull the eggs out? Soak them in a bowl of warm water to bring them up to room temp.

Instant yeast does not require proofing, it can be added right along with your other dry ingredients. I will admit to being an instant yeast convert. I use SAF Red Instant Yeast. I found a store here that sells 1 pound for $2.99. I empty it into a mason jar and store it in my refrigerator. With instant yeast you can use cooler water, as the granuales are smaller and they disolve into the liquid much faster.

If you can’t find it at your local grocery store, here is a link to buy the yeast I recommend. 1 lb. lasts a long time and you can save a lot of money if you were previously buying the little envelopes from the grocery store.

There are numerous reaons for bakers to have a thermometer handy. If the liquid you use in your dough is too hot, it will kill the yeast. Yeast dies at approximately 138-140 degrees F. This is yet another thing I’ve heard debated endlessly in kitchens. Who cares! There’s work to be done! Why are you arguing over 2 degrees? After the dough is mixed, the optimum temperature for it to rise is 78-80 degrees F. Higher temperatures will adversely affect the texture of the finished product. Doughs at lower temperatures will rise slower and have a higher alcohol content. It is of course possible and fun to play around with cold fermentation and I recommend trying it at some point. It’s all about letting time do the work instead of kneading. I recommend this recipe.

Teaching people how to learn how long to let the dough rise, how to shape it, how long to let it rise before it is ready etc. takes time. I’ve noticed that certain people seem to have a knack for this. I have always struggled with people who want exact times ie, exactly how long do you let it rise before it goes into the oven? I tried to train a girl who asked me that question every single night. I kept trying to explain that it varied, that she was going to have to use her eyes and her hands. She wanted exact times and there are too many variables. I trained a young man who was a complete natural. Although he had never baked before he caught on so fast it was amazing. When I complimented him he replied, “That’s funny, because I fucking hate this job. I hate baking.” We laughed. One note about training guys versus girls, if you leave the guys alone with the dough they will eventually shape some of it into a penis. I haven’t finished conducting my research on this, but I will, one day.

When to pull the bread from the oven? I finally started training my bakers to probe their loaves to check the internal temperature. I was so tired of seeing so many loaves with raw middles. Novice bakers often pull bread too soon because it is getting dark and they get scared. The internal temperature you are shooting for is another heavily debated topic. Shoot for the 190-210 range and you’re good.

Most of all, relax. Have fun and remember that everyone has flops and failures no matter how long they have been baking.

One last point before I go, things that come out of the oven are hot. I seem to need to learn this one over and over again.

Damn, I had forgotten how isolated and depressed I can feel being a stay at home mom. I am reminded of when I was pregnant with Nathan; I was the lead party chef supervising a small group of women on the graveyard shift. They were always kind to me, and I wanted to be the type of boss who worked harder than her employees, and never asked them to do anything she wasn’t willing and able to do herself. I wanted them to respect me, but thinking back I guess I wanted them to like me too. There was one woman who was a born again Christian. She was a hard working, kind mother of two, and as long as she wasn’t trying to convert me we got along well. Being an unmarried 18 year old, I was nervous about telling her that I was pregnant. I played fat for awhile but it soon became obvious. After I told her about my pregnancy she asked me constantly when Alex was going to marry me.
There I was: broke, 18, pregnant and working for $7.75 per hour with no insurance. Alex was out of work and I was traveling 90 minutes each way by bus to a restaurant where I constantly picked up extra hours out of a desperate need for cash. I had an envelope hidden in my desk at home. The outside was marked Crib Fund. At times I needed to sit down to rest when before I’d been able to work twelve hours straight no problem. I lived on 7UP and those little saltine cracker packets they served with the soup. I hated Alex at times. He hadn’t asked me to marry him. He hadn’t wrapped his arms around me and told me that everything would be OK. I was mad at myself too, and I kept thinking that if Alex would just get a job and I could be a stay at home mom I would be happy and I would never complain ever again.

Finally Alex did find a job, and I was able to rest for a few weeks before Nathan was born. In the beginning I felt OK resting during the day while Alex was at work. I was recovering from pregnancy, labor and delivery. I was breast feeding. Then I started to feel guilty. The laundry piled up, as did the dishes, and I had no idea how to go grocery shopping with a baby and no car. When Alex would get home from work I would have him watch Nathan so I could have a shower. That shower was the highlight of my entire day. One evening as I stepped out of the tub, wrapping myself with a towel, I glanced at my face in the bathroom mirror and burst into tears. This sucked too! I had envisioned myself at home with my baby, making all of our food from scratch, and greeting Alex at the door every evening wearing a crisp clean apron and saying, “Hi honey, how was your day? Dinner is almost ready.” I felt like a complete failure. I knew that for thousands of years women had managed to keep house, cook and raise children, I just didn’t know how they had managed it. I didn’t expect to be bored, and so fucking lonely.

Over the years I have tried being both a SAHM and a working mom. Both options have their pros and their cons, as I am sure a lot of you with children know. My self worth is and always has been tied closely to my ability to earn some income. I am not saying this is good; I am just being honest. I like having a check with my name on it. Another thing that work gives me is structure to my day and a chance to interact with my coworkers. To be honest, I don’t have any friends. So when I need someone to talk to I either talk to Alex or I call my Mom.

My original plan to return to college was something that scared the hell out of me, but I was excited about it. When I was laid off from my job after taking Family Medical Leave that plan was put on hold as I filed for unemployment and then dealt with interview after interview with the man who was deciding the case. I ended up winning, probably because my employers weren’t returning his phone calls. I had documentation proving that I was laid off eight days before my Family Medical Leave ended.

I joined this food buying club in my neighborhood where people get together and order food and since it ends up being large quantities we get the food for the wholesale price. It took me a little while to get the hang of it, as there are several different purveyors offering different things, and there are several different dates during the month when you have to have your order and payment in by or you miss out until the next order. Before I applied for membership I told the head of the group that I don’t drive and she said that she lives close to me and wouldn’t mind dropping off my orders. I have tried to give her gas money but she always refuses. When she asked me what I did for a living I told her that I was an artisanal bread baker and a pastry chef. She exclaimed that it would be great if I could teach bread making classes to the group. One thing about me, I hate training people, even when I am being paid to do it. I told Alex about it and admitted my regret over those words. “Why the fuck didn’t you just say you were a housewife?” was his response. I realized that it just didn’t sound good to me. I wanted to BE SOMETHING. I was ashamed of myself and when asked an innocent question by a woman who went to college and earned letters to place after her name I wanted to at least have a trade to be proud of. Why do I care what others think? Why do I define myself so much by what I do or don’t do for a living?

So, to make myself feel better about not working I have been working extra hard at home. In addition to my fall garden I have been buying cases of tomatoes, apples and peaches. I have a freezer neatly stacked with tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, applesauce and apple butter. I peeled and sliced the peaches and froze them too.  I even made salsa from scratch and tried to freeze a couple of pints of that. I’ve never frozen salsa before so I’ll have to see how it tastes after it thaws. I have been making huge pots of soups and freezing those to have on hand for fall. Sometimes I like to open the freezer and look at the fruits of my labor. It makes me feel good to see everything neatly stacked and labeled. Yes, I do realize that I could have canned everything instead but I didn’t want to mess with it. Plus, Alex won’t eat home canned foods because he read somewhere about someone dying from improperly canned food and he never shakes stories like that. I’ve also been growing my own bread starters and baking at home. It’s fun now that it’s not a job.

My sister called me yesterday to ask if I could babysit her three kids some Friday in October. I told her that I would check my calendar and get back to her. When I did I realized that my calendar is just scattered with various doctor’s appointments and the physical therapy for my back. Ouch.

I always get excited about the mail even though it’s always bills and junk mail. Yesterday I received a letter that read in part, “Recently President Obama announced that people who receive unemployment benefits may receive financial aid to pay for job training or education. You may be able to continue receiving unemployment benefits while enrolled in an approved training program. Studies have shown workers with more education and training have more secure jobs and higher wages.”  (Duh)  It used to be the case that those who were on Unemployment weren’t allowed to attend college because you had to be available for work 24/7.

I am excited about looking into this because school was what I had wanted to do in the first place. Thank you Obama!
Hopefully I will find a job training program. My primary care physician took some new images of my back last week and gave me a stern lecture about finding a new way to make a living. She said something about me ending up in a wheelchair within a couple of years if I continue at this pace and being totally narcotic dependent by the time I am 40. Zipping around on a Hoveround while wasted on Percocet sounds pretty awesome, but I’ll give this job training a try.

Besides, my freezer is getting really full and my kids just want to eat Hot Pockets and spicy hot Cheetos anyway.

Thanks everyone. You are wonderful, all of you. I am feeling better. There was only the option of going even lower than I was when I wrote that last post, and I’ve been there and hope to never return, or getting better, and I managed to pull myself up to functional. My Doctor added a new med after my appointment with him on Monday. Right now I just feel tired, but I am no longer suicidal. I don’t think I’ve often spoke here about my suicidal ideation. I know what suicide does to those left behind, but it still exists inside my head as a plan B, or C, or D… I am still working on trying to stop that.

I just wanted to check in in case anyone was worried. Today was Polly’s 1st day of high school so she wants to whine about how much she hates it and Nathan got a PT job at a pizza place, so he is at the hospital right now taking a UA. I asked him if he was going to pass, just in case, and he laughed and said he hasn’t smoked pot in years. WTF? He’s 17. I think he was joking with me. Anyway, you have to pee clean to make pizza. I am proud of him for getting the job. He has been looking for a while and was starting to get down. Unemployment is around 12% here so it’s tough.

I’m off to get dinner started and really, thank you all again. It meant a lot to read your comments.

Soon after I started writing here Jane linked to me. We emailed a little bit, and I remember her commending me on a particular entry. Her words came with a warning, however. “You can’t write like that everyday.” I didn’t really understand her words until last night. I have been agonizing over entries here, which seems kind of ridiculous, honestly. I need to just type and get it posted and move on. Sometimes something I am proud of might come of this, but I need the release it could provide, and the practice writing I long for. The longer I wait between entries the harder it is.

Speaking of writing, I have a couple of fiction ideas I have decided to pursue. It started out as the kind of joking around that occurs when sleep deprivation kicks in and everything is even funnier than it would be normally. Working graveyard shift with a small group of fellow bakers means that there are inside jokes, stories we have shared that become classics referred to over and over, laughter and more laughter. I was speaking with my cousin on the phone, and seeing how his wife is in the industry in LA, I ended up telling him one of my ideas. He put me on speaker and I was able to chat with her about the first idea and then my second idea. I had thought that they would make good screenplays, possibly. I have never written a screenplay and I can’t say that I know how, but I decided to try. Having been brave enough to tell my ideas to someone other than my sleepy coworkers felt empowering. Having someone say, “Hey, you might have something there”, felt even better. Sure, she might have been saying that because we’re family, but I don’t think so. We spoke again last night and she asked me how it was going, my writing. I mentioned that I had just been taking notes of ideas at this point. She gave me some excellent pointers and it felt really good to have someone in my life that actually lives the idea of “You can do anything you set your mind to.” I might try posting some excerpts of the fiction here if anyone is interested. Right now it’s very rough, but it’s fun. Moving away from the autobiographical type of writing I usually do feels good.

My depression seems to be waning, due in large part to the fact that I am not in as much physical pain as I was. My feet were throbbing the other morning when I got off of work and so I stopped by the Nordstrom Rack and found a pair of Adidas for 20 bucks. I tried them on and they were so cushiony and comfortable that I bought them. I also got several pairs of new socks. I had so few pairs without holes that I have been wearing Alex’s socks for months now. He said nothing, but I suspect he is glad to have me no longer raiding his sock drawer everyday. I also bought some thick insoles for the shoes and oh my god the difference in how I feel is amazing. I have been baking in clogs for years, but they just weren’t doing it for me anymore. My back, knees and feet all feel better. Money well spent, I should have done it months ago.

I haven’t answered every comment lately and it bugs me because I don’t want to be someone who appears to not listen to her readers. For those of you who are also suffering from panic disorder and/ or depression, you are the reason that I started this site. You are not alone and there are treatment options available. Yes, I still struggle everyday, but I am holding down a full time job; I have been able to go out in public socially a few times already this year; I can attend school functions with my kids etc. I have a life I never dreamed possible 10 years ago. Things could be much better, but they’ve certainly been worse. I am still not driving but I am not going to beat myself up about that.
Those people who stop by to check in on me amaze me. Thank you so much for caring.

The responses to my last post were truly heartwarming and I want to thank you all. I’ll admit that at times like these past few weeks I feel as if I am not going to make it through this. I say this not as a cry for help, or sympathy, but because I want my readers to know the gravity of the disease depression. Those of you who have suffered or who are currently suffering from depression might already understand. Those of you who do not have this disease most likely know someone who does. I understand why so many people commit suicide. Dealing with depression is exhausting and frustrating, and it is easy to give up all hope. Everyday I see the toll this has taken on my family and I have at my lowest wondered if they wouldn’t be better off without me.

Having had a father who suffered from depression and who took his life I know the lifelong effects this has on those left behind. I know the pain and the guilt. I used to wonder in anger how he could have left behind a wife and four children, one who was expecting his first grandchild, but I understand that now. I thought that I wanted to know how and why, but I didn’t want to find out this way.

My husband still loves me, even though I want him and need him in ways that are impossible and exhausting for him. My kids still need a mom and I still believe that they are better off with me than without me.

I am looking forward to spring, my thoughts turning to seeds, and even all the way ahead to picking tomatoes warm from the sun.

My physical pain is getting worse, no doubt due in large part to my job. My doctor is trying out some new medications and I am working on physical therapy.

I’ve been looking for another job, something that doesn’t require so much physical excursion, something that isn’t on the graveyard shift even, as these hours are not healthy for me. I realize (again) that I have no skills that I can translate into a job and then comes fear. Sometimes I wish that I could dooce this fucking site to the point where I could bring in some money to support my family. Seriously, I think that. Sometimes.

50 Greatest Sex Scenes
50 Worst Sex Scenes

I haven’t seen most of these movies, but I plan to use these lists to update Alex’s and my queue from now on. Lately we have been passing off the responsibility of moving a film to the top slot the way we used to try to pass off the next diaper change, especially the ones that announced themselves with unmistakable sounds and/or odors. That was a battle I never did win anyway, because someone had to demonstrate the strength of his gag reflex. Shit loaded diapers, vomiting husbands, what was I writing about?  Sex in movies! Anyway, the only disagreement I had with these lists was Monster’s Ball being on the worst list. I thought that sex scene was hot. I even remember thinking they had to be actually doing it because it looked pretty realistic.

This Operation Feel The Fuck Better has been time consuming lately, because I have been making doctor’s appointments and actually keeping them instead of canceling them in favor of sleep. Things with my psychiatrist are great. He doesn’t talk much; I don’t talk much. I quickly run through how I have been feeling and if there have been any unusual stresses (His words, not mine. I’ve never thought of stress as unusual in my life) and then we chat about should we toy with the drugs I am on or not and I am out of there. At my last visit he asked me if my job was in danger, what with the state of the economy and all, and I explained that there is a pub at the restaurant I bake for and while food sales are down, booze sales are up. My future lies in the hands of the drunken patrons needing a sandwich or a burger to wash up some of that grog.  The other thing I’ve noticed is a lot more people are eating desserts, especially on the weekends. I like to think of this as the “I lost over $100,000 in my 401K, I might as well have a $7 piece of cake” effect. My psychiatrist also noticed that I was sitting crooked in the chair, trying to put more of my weight on the side of my lower back that hurts the least, and he suggested I start doing yoga. Things had been going so well until then. Sometimes I wish that I could be one of the bendy stretchy women who pass by my work in the mornings on their way to the yoga studio as I sit huddled in the cold rain with a pint of ale in one hand and a smoke in the other, but I know that unless I could roll up the yoga mat and smoke the damn thing I probably couldn’t hold the first position, or the second one. It’s a shame though, because without fail, the women who walk by me with their ponytails swinging and their mats tucked under their arm look amazing.

I also had an appointment with my primary care physician and she was wonderful, as always. I apologized for not having shaved my legs and she laughed at that and later she apologized before she looked up something on google. Alex was horrified when I told him that my doctor sometimes looked in a book or went online to check on something, but I think it’s great. First of all I would rather have a doctor double check something before fucking up my health and secondly, doctors probably do it all the time, they just usually leave for a minute or two and then come back. I just made that up, but it makes sense to me. My doctor praised me for slowly taking off weight over the last few years and for keeping it off, which is nice to hear, but not the way I wanted to do it. I know she’s right and all but I want to feel OK in this skin NOW. She then referred me to a specialist for my fucked up back, suggested more physical therapy and YOGA! I told her I didn’t want to stand with a group of people and be the only one who couldn’t  bend myself into this position and then that one, and she suggested a small group, with an instructor who would be willing to modify the poses for me. I don’t want to stand out in a crowd. I like to hide at home. This OFFB (thank you Belle!) is tough.

I went to the specialist the next day, and she looked over the scans of my back and asked me if I’d been in a car wreck. That made me strangely happy because it is a better response than “I see nothing wrong here, it must be in your head.” She showed me some stretches to do before work and throughout the night. She carefully guided me through them until I was doing them correctly and I felt safe and happy in her office, her hands warm against my skin. She casually mentioned that taking off a few pounds would ease some of the pain and I was relieved to be able to say that I had been doing just that, slowly. She advised me to start working in sneakers instead of the clogs I usually bake in, something about having more cushion around my feet. I had all the paperwork to take with me to the physical therapist and she was shaking my hand, saying how nice it was to meet me, when she too suggested yoga. This time I was ready and I told her that I was going to look into it.

I am glad that I didn’t also schedule a dentist appointment this week because all of the time traveling on the bus and sitting in waiting rooms was a bit much.

Other than doctors I spent my days off cooking, baking and cleaning at home. I have really gotten lazy about things, letting chores slip because I am just so tired after work. I have been going over our budget with Alex and we both agreed that we need to cut down on our grocery bill, among other things. A large part of that is the fact that I have been buying more convenience items since I returned to work so that it’s easier for the four of us to eat without me spending hours in the kitchen. Nathan and Polly are both pretty lazy when it comes to fixing themselves something to eat on the nights I don’t cook and I feel guilty every time I hear the beeping of the microwave.

Now it is one hour before I need to catch the bus to work. I am tired, but there are scratch cooked meals in both the fridge and the freezer; I baked fresh bread for us and the house looks great, for now. This must be what people mean by a good tired. I feel productive, on top of things, headed in the right direction. I have a solid idea of the steps I am taking and the ones that shall come. I begin physical therapy next week and my dentist’s phone number is on a post it next to the moniter, waiting for me to call in the morning. I even dug through a box of things I had stashed in a closet and pulled out a few yoga tapes I have on VHS. If I ever get some time in this house when no one is watching me except for maybe the dog and the cats I might give it a try. Just maybe, because you never know.

Enough of my boring life, what’s new with you? Have you been reading but you haven’t introduced yourself? It would be cool if you did. I love comments. Does anyone have any recommendations for journals for me to read? I hope you are all well. Years ago, when I first started reading journals I never really got it when people wrote about how much they loved their readers. Now I do, and it feels great.

I had overslept that Monday morning, waking a mere thirty minutes before I was expected at work, stumbling to the bathroom while pulling on grey sweats and an old baggy sweater retrieved from a pile of clothes of dubious cleanliness. I peered at my face as I splashed cold water on it from my cupped hands. I was puffy and pale, no doubt the result of excessive alcohol consumption. There was no time to shower. I brushed my hair quickly and pulled it into a ponytail, no time for makeup, the clock had ticked away the luxury of my vanity.

I walked quickly down the sidewalk, my two year old but hardly worn Reeboks meowing protest on the concrete, my hand working quickly to raise the cigarette to my mouth for long deep inhalations, my need for nicotine already so powerful at the age of not yet eighteen.

He approached me at the cash register I stood before day after day, banging the keys, bagging the fruit. I had worked with him for over a month, uncertain if he even spoke English, giving a nod and a hello each day and nothing more. His almond shaped eyes were a deep brown, his lashes long and thick, a waste on a man, really. I noticed the deep outline of his muscles through his too tight t-shirt for the first time. He held his hands out to me and I extended mine, uncertain, silent. “You look so cute today” were the first words he spoke to me, his accent from his native tongue still fresh. I was embarrassed as I explained that I had overslept, having no time for my usual hair and makeup routine. He shook his head No emphatically as I pulled my hands away, him squeezing them tightly in a silent protest of something unspoken, his eyes staring intensely into mine.

I felt his eyes on me throughout the day, eyes that left me fumbling, warm and nervous. At lunch I read the paper at a table in the deli, sipping tea, bemoaning the hangover still clinging to my brain. He slipped into the booth next to me, his thigh touching mine for a second, and I startled and slid closer to the wall. He carefully tore the corner from a section of the comics, Dagwood was making a big sandwich again, and wrote his name and phone number in the corner. “You should go running with me in the morning before work sometime.”  I laughed too loudly but his face was serious as he lifted himself up from the table slowly. I had never noticed his arms before then, so large and powerful looking.

When I got home from work that night Alex was already there, bong loaded and ready on the coffee table, forgettable TV on the screen before us. We sat in silence as we passed the bong back and forth, inhaling deeply and holding it as long as possible before exhaling, and then repeating the steps over and over again.
I was feeling restless as I rose from the couch, my hand sliding into my pocket as I climbed the stairs to our bedroom, pulling out the shred of newspaper and reaching for the phone. He answered as if he had expected my call at that very moment, calmly telling me where to meet him the following morning.

The next day the horrible sound of our alarm went off extra early and as I got up to turn it off Alex asked me what I was doing. “I have decided to start jogging before work.” He laughed at this, knowing full well that the only time I jogged anywhere was in a desperate rush to the store before they locked up the beer case at 2 a.m. “Seriously?” he asked as I pulled sweats on again and I nodded, not wanting to look at him. “Whatever” was his response, and he flopped back down, soon to snore again.

I met Muscles at the grocery store we worked at. He nodded his hello and we started walking east. I reached into my pocket for my cigarettes and lighter. As I slipped the Camel between my lips he shot a glance at me, his eyes unbelieving. “You’re going to smoke?”  His eyes were wide, incredulous. “Yep” My lighter flicked as he crossed the street quickly. “If you’re going to smoke I am going to walk on this side of the street!”  Smoking is frowned upon whilst exercising, I discovered. When I had finished the smoke he crossed back over, walking beside me for a block or two before his face looked like it might forgive. “Are you ready?” he asked me, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to be ready for. Without waiting for an answer he suddenly started to run, weaving out into the street. I stumbled out, trying to follow him, my stomach shaking, and my entire body awkward with protest.

He was much faster than I of course, and he keep turning back and smiling at me as we ran through those streets. My breasts were not ready for the flight, having neither wings nor a decent parachute, and I tried to fold my arms in such a way as to tuck them under my breasts to keep them from flying in all directions. This horrifying morning took place in the 80s, in a time before everyone walked around with a bottle of water, with a constant need for hydration. I was breathing heavily through my dry mouth; my throat was burning. It seemed to go on forever, this running, and I continued for no reason that remains in my mind this day.

When he had finally decided we were finished he stood beside me as I panted. Reaching out for my hands once again he tried for the intense eye contact , Andrew McCarthy looks at Molly Ringwald as he opens his eyes as wide as he can in that scene in Pretty In Pink. “You would be so pretty if you lost about 15 lbs.” His words hung in the air between us and the only defense I have for taking that as a compliment is naiveté. As we continued walking down the hills toward my home he began to explain how he was going to get me over to his house to lift weights so I could work on my legs.

When I got back home it was time to get ready for work. All I really wanted was to crawl into bed and sleep for hours.  That night when I returned home from work the muscles in my legs were already starting to scream in protest. Alex was on the couch watching TV and I sat down beside him, feeling guilty, as if I had cheated on him somehow. We sat in silence, smoking pot and lifting cold bottles of beer to our lips for nice long pulls. After we had both gone upstairs to bed and we were beginning to lift the covers up and over us Alex asked me if I was going to be getting up early again, to go jogging. “No, I don’t think so.” He laughed a short bleating sound and flipped onto his side, facing the wall instead of me. “I didn’t think so” he said and sleep came to him quickly as I lay there on my back, eyes wide open in the darkness.

A batch of ciabatta I was so excited about I took a photo with my cell phone.

P.S. Don’t stack hot ciabatta like you see in this photo. I stacked it after it was fully cooled, took the photo, and then carefully put the bread away. Ciabatta is made with a very wet dough and if you stack it hot, or even warm, it will smash the loaves.

The majority of my work is a never changing routine of scaling, mixing, shaping, proofing and baking the same things night after night. I take little pleasure in this work, it is a job, plain and simple, and I do it to the best of my ability. The only product I have the liberty to take any sort of creative license with is the nightly baking of the artisan breads. There is a certain amount we need to have for the restaurant, and there are certain guidelines I am required to follow, such as cost issues, using fresh shaved truffles in my dough would most certainly lead to the end of my employment, for example. Other than that I am on my own, allowed to use whatever catches my fancy in the kitchen. I relish this part of my night, the time when I can look not at a set bread formula in a book, but into my mind. Although I could choose to rely on tried and true recipes for these loaves, I don’t. I always start with a pre-ferment that has been made in advance. Sometimes I take the pre-ferment, mix it with the next set of ingredients, and then allow it to sit in the walk-in cooler for a long period of time (this is a cold fermentation process) and other times I mix the pre-ferment with the next set of ingredients and then allow it to sit out at room temperature, carefully folding the dough every hour for three hours before it is divided, shaped, proofed, baked and then cooled.

For those who have no interest in baking it would be impossible for me to describe the thrill I get from this process every single time I do it. Since I tend to be a risk taker with the ingredients (baker’s percentages) I never really know how this is all going to work out until the loaves have cooled and the first slice is before me. I must get a thrill from this because I continue to do it. My results have been mixed, ranging from two batches that ended up in the garbage (I cried the first time, if you can imagine that), to breads that were referred to as amazing by so many people that I had no idea how to deal with the compliments the first time it happened and my every instinct told me to run and hide. I quickly learned that after I had reached that moment when coworkers were continually stopping me to say how much they had enjoyed a particular bread, when managers and chefs alike approached me to offer their congratulations, when servers mentioned positive feedback from customers, from that day forward it was never enough for me to slice that first loaf in the morning, split it in half with my supervisor or another coworker, and have the response be, “It’s good.” I explained to my boss that I didn’t want to make good bread; I wanted to bake phenomenal, amazing, better than sex, eat a whole loaf in one sitting bread that needed no adornment whatsoever. She laughed, but she understood, as this is her chosen career as well.

I still am not certain any of this will express the why behind what I do for a living. The hours are brutal, the nights long and physically exhausting, the pay isn’t great, nor are the benefits. The competition is fierce, and there will always be a group of younger, highly skilled, faster bakers out there to replace me. I know that I am not as good as I was in 2000, or 1991, for that matter. The physical toll is showing more and more in my back, my knees, my feet, and my hands. A day is coming when I won’t be able to lift and dump the fifty pound sacks of flour, or hoist the giant mixing bowls, or carry the bins filled with dough. I know all of this at the same time as I have no idea what else I will do for a living. Pride fucks with my ego enough to want to bow out before I have completely lost the ability altogether. I am not sure exactly where old chefs go to die, career wise. I am sure that I don’t want to find out.
In the back of my mind I will ponder my future during the rare quiet moments. Until then I will carry on as I am, almost content to rarely produce something that feels to me as if it must have been touched by something other than my own hands, something that feels like magic.

How did you all do, making it through the wonderful, stress free, joyful, holiday season? Or was it an angst filled time of obligatory giving, hours spent slaving in the kitchen, last minute rushes to the store, and long visits with people you really don’t want to see at all? I am hoping for the former, but hey, I do know what it can be like.

My holidays were actually really good this year, and for an unusual reason, the nasty weather. We had a snow storm here that lasted for a couple of weeks. For those of you who don’t live in the Pacific NW I know that even calling this event a storm seems ludicrous. I know that other places have several feet of snow for months at a time and life goes on just fine. By way of explanation I can only offer up the following: Portland doesn’t have very many snow plows. We don’t have the anti-icing agents or the de-icing agents in sufficient quantities to handle these situations. The majority of people here are not prepared to drive in the ice and snow. Trimet, the local transit system that I use on a daily basis, ended up canceling a large number of the bus routes because so many buses were getting stuck. I left hours early each evening to make it to work in time, and still it was as close to impossible as it could feel. I was feeling very frustrated at my inability to do the normal daily things I usually do with ease.

Before the snow came I had ordered groceries to be delivered, as I do about once a month, letting the heavy items come to my door and knowing that for the rest of the time I can stop off and pick up a couple of bags of perishables now and again. Our delivery was canceled three times. We didn’t have any garbage pickup for three weeks. Alex and I had done the majority of our Christmas shopping online, leaving enough time for the gifts to arrive before Christmas, or so we thought. Mail delivery was only able to make it onto our street once, and tracking information showed that although our packages were here in Portland, FedEx, UPS and USPS were unable to deliver them. All of this sent me into a horrible feeling of failure; the idea that the holiday was ruined; the certainty that nothing at all could make it right.

I ended up sitting Nathan and Polly down and explaining to them that some of their presents weren’t going to make it in time. I explained that we were going to make do with the food that we had in the house. I told them that we were lucky to have heat, power and a roof over our heads and that we would be fine. I had anticipated that Nathan, at 16, would take this all better than Polly, at 13. I was correct in that, but really; despite a couple of comments from Polly that it didn’t really feel like Christmas, they were very understanding about the whole mess. We wrapped what gifts we did have, we made meals from the food we had here, and we spent more time together as a family than we usually do, truth be told. All in all it turned out to be a very nice holiday.

I learned a lot from the experience. Alex has more of a “there’s nothing we can do about it so why bother worrying?” type of attitude, while I am a constant worrier. Just by letting that go, and I really did manage to let it go, I felt relaxed enough to not feel like a failure, but rather to feel truly grateful.

Operation Feel the Fuck Better (OFFB .Thanks Belle!) is going quite well. That is not to say that I haven’t still been dealing with moments or even days of anxiety and depression, I have. I just want to actively take steps to help myself feel better, and it is something that I am realizing that I need to learn how to do; it does not come naturally to me, this taking care of myself thing. Being tired of the person I had become made me realize that if I am to change I actually have to make changes. It sounds like a DUH! but for whatever reason I am ready now.

Now, how are you? How were your holidays? Did you do anything special for yourself, or enjoy any moments with loved ones that stuck out in your head? I truly do love hearing from you all and I hope that you consider my comment section a place to post freely about whatever you want to, and do know that my email box is always open.