Thank you to everyone who entered the Route 66 Gift Pack Giveaway. I enjoyed reading all your vacation comments!
The winner is Veronica G., who stated “The best summer trip I ever had was our highschool trip to Myrtle Beach.”
I look forward to doing another giveaway soon, so stay tuned… and Happy Summer!
And Frankly, My Dear… that’s all she wrote!
As some of you know, Dot and I are in the middle of the Wilton Cake Decorating Basics Class.
Last week we learned how to level a cake, and how to cut, fill, and frost it.
You’ll recall that for as much as I love being in the kitchen, I’d never baked a cake until a few months ago. It turned out all right for my first attempt.
This week, our homework was to bake and ice a cake before coming to class. My first two cake attempts failed miserably. I neglected to let the first cake cool before trying to remove it from the pan. I think needing the hot pads before turning it over onto the cooling rack should have been a clue. The second cake decided it wanted to stay in the pan as well… or at least, half of it did.
Finally, with Cake Round No. 3, I was greeted with near-perfect, 8-inch, round French Vanilla cakes. We iced them the day before and took them to class with us.
After a little instruction and demonstration from the instructor, we were basically told to do our own thing.
The icing colorant I brought was unusable. Apparently, when the directions say “use a clean toothpick each time” to pull the gel from the tiny jar, they mean it! Also apparently, the last time I used my reds and greens, I didn’t pay attention. Because my colorant was unusable. So I was relegated to using the coloring that Dot chose.
I’m proud of my efforts:
I intentionally left part of the outline transfer showing. I liked the red gel underneath. I also intentionally blended the blue and white icings to look like a Frost-ee or Icee.
I’ve no intentions of eating the cake; as we have enough in the house with just Dot’s cake. So I promised this one to my friend’s son whom I affectionately refer to as my Un-Son Number One. His sister is taking the class with us. When we took her home, we showed the family all our cakes, and USNO said he liked mine so I told him after I show it to my family, he can have it. Hey, at least I know it won’t go to waste!
Dot has never decorated a cake before (other than the cupcakes we practiced on last year). The instructor was ah-mazed! Dot has a gift for artistry. Instead of family photos in my house, I hang some of her artwork. So it was no surprise when, at the end of class, everyone ~ and yes, I do mean everyone ~ gaped and gasped and questioned whether she’d actually taken a decorating class before.
Her cake, as you see, was the Piece de Resistance.
Which is just one more reason I’m so proud of her. This Girl’s Got Talent!
And Frankly, My Dear… that’s all she wrote!
I just published Hidden Files, about discovering some old writings I’d forgotten or pushed to the sides. I found writings I’d intended to publish on a former Blog. It was a blog that had three readers, and lasted four or five months. For obvious reasons, I shut it down and started Frankly, My Dear… which seems to be doing so much better. [Thank you, kind readers!]
I came across these two in particular. I apologize they’re a bit unclear; the only way to capture the entire essence and word structures was to save them as a PDF-photo and enlarge them here. It makes the letters a bit blurred; but still readable.
I was surprised at the raw honesty of these two posts. The cursing of emotions that I was willing to announce. But mostly, I’m pleased because I can now look at it from The Other Side instead of In The Moment. I am no longer That Girl in That Moment. I am now The Girl Who Grew.
I’m at peace with different events in my life. I’m at peace with the absence of what I once thought was love. Now, before you get all riled up in my defense, I will add this disclaimer: I’m very good friends with the “enemy” of these posts. He knows I write about him now and then. We talk often. He was a lousy almost-boyfriend; but he’s always been the best of friends.
And I’m at peace with the experience. It was years ago when I was younger and unsure of myself. I had little to offer someone else, other than, as he affectionately tells me, requests for High Maintenance.
I read these posts yesterday. And I smiled.
Because I’m not who I was. I’m who I am. And even that’s not Who I’ll Be.
And I’m okay with that.
Because I’m living for the future.
And Frankly, My Dear… that’s all she wrote!
On Friday, I spent three hours or so going through Babycakes’s files. Babycakes, by the way, is what my laptop decided to call itself last year. I’ve called it/he/she such names as “Mac”, “Prissy”, “My Writer’s Bible”, and even “Thing”. But last year, for some strange reason, it/he/she became Babycakes. And it’s been that way ever since.
This is the part where a certain number of you are telling your own computer screens, “You ain’t foolin’ no one!” Y’all know exactly where I got the name Babycakes. But honestly, it wasn’t planned or anything. Just, one fine Wednesday morning I put the laptop on the kitchen table next to a cup of coffee and a plate of toast, and said, “Let’s get to work, Babycakes.” And the rest is history.
Happy history. And a future. But right now, we’re talking about history.
I have a tendency to save too many rough drafts of my works in progress. Which makes it hard to find the right work in progress when it’s time to add to it. Three versions is usually the standard. I keep the very original for posterity. The second draft as the Look-What-Changes-I’ve-Made-So-Far copy. And the third for the actual This-Is-What-I’m-Currently-Doing-To-It project. At some point, Number Three becomes Number Two and Number Two gets tossed out only after the unkept changes make their way back into Number One for notes and recovery which means at any given moment I could possibly have three Number One’s…
Confused? So was I.
Thankfully, I had nice labels on my folders. Clear, precise labels like “To Be Worked On” and “Submit Later” and “Ideas” and “Blog Stuff”. Yup. No chance of anything getting lost in those titles, am I right? [Yes. Yes, you do sense dripping sarcasm right there. Thank you so much for asking.]
I decided to tidy things up a bit more. I used actual descriptive words for labels. Now I have folders with such glorious titles as “Blog Photos” and “Short Stories” and each folder has sub-folders with specific titles or post names. It’s lovely. And neater. And now my computer desktop doesn’t look like someone just knocked down all my stacked documents for fun.
Now it looks efficient. Now I feel efficient. Now I feel clear-headed.
And in this great organizational task that I accomplished, I cleared out a few other things as well.
I found some old writings. Mostly projects that I’d forgotten. Ideas to start with. Poetry I’ve not yet shared. And some other writings as well.
Journaling from those moments that seem to last too long in life. Those times when words seemed to be my only friends, my only comfort. Parts and pieces of me that I’d forgotten, or I’d buried.
And here they were made fresh and new with my revival and reading of them. I had always kept them hidden. Knowing they were there, but not wanting to feel those feelings again. Lost, hurt, helpless, afraid, angry…
But right now, we’re talking about history.
And I’m not that person I once was. And the people in my life are not the same people. Even if they’re the same People. We change. We grow. We mature, or we don’t. We heal, or we don’t. But we move on. Even when we don’t. Nobody truly stays stagnant.
Everybody moves on.
And I did. I have. I am.
I read a few entries that had the opposite affect as the writing. I was able to read now, with the distance of years between me and That Girl in That Moment. I was able to see how strong and independent and alive I’ve become.
And I’m able to accept those past entries for what they are.
History.
And it’s okay to not hide from it. It’s okay to talk about it.
But I know.
I’m living for the future. The rest is… well, you know.
And Frankly, My Dear… that’s all she wrote!
On Friday morning, I invested over two hours’ time on my Blog pages. You’ll recall that “Pages” are “static”: those seldom-changing bulletins that are featured on the Home Page header. Posts (like this one you’re reading now) are the occasional (or in my case, daily) updates about something or nothing specific.
It could have been a challenge to make sure all my stories and essays (as opposed to basic ramblings) were linked up properly; and my recipes were easy to find. But it wasn’t. What it was, was fun.
Fun to read posts I’d not thought of for months. Fun to review and see how my writing voice has changed and grown. Fun to be inspired to write even more.
Because I devoted time to Pages and not Posts, there’s a good chance you won’t see it. Because Pages aren’t sent out in the daily emails you receive.
The newest Page is Ten Foods I Love Beyond Reason. That was a fun one to write.
So I invite you to once again check out the Home Page at Frankly, My Dear… and explore the hidden recesses of my mind the Pages I’ve set up and the articles they contain.
I can’t say you’ll be glad you did. But you never know. You just might be.
And Frankly, My Dear… that’s all she wrote!
NOLA, by Molly Jo Realy
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