The Good Life

Developing a Social Life

January 14, 2009

It’s amazing what not having a child in the hospital can do for your social life. For the nearly two years that we’ve lived here, I’ve been fairly isolated. First by being new and in the middle of house renovations, then by scary personal problems, then by the intensive needs of my little guy. It’s pretty hard to meet someone under the most stressful conditions of your life and seem at all like a sane and fun person to hang out with. Honestly, without the gift of the internet I probably would have made myself a little Wilson by now.

Now I’m starting to settle into the groove of what my little guy requires. Bear even joked the other day that I’m so used to the constant stream of appointments that I don’t even bother to put them on the calendar anymore. And I’m finding the idea of getting out and making friends appealing again, instead of just one more thing to try to squeeze into my day.

On Monday I finally got together with my “new best friends” from church. We’ve known since early on that we’d all get along so great, but along with my own drama of the year, one friend had a daughter graduating and going off to college with all the work that comes with it, and the other friend’s husband was in a major car accident and has been recovering from serious injuries ever since. It was not exactly an opportune time for any of us. But we finally succeeded and it was so restorative to me. We had a great lunch, we passed around my teething fussy baby, we talked all about art and culture. I just got home and wanted to let out a big sigh. It was just what I needed.

The Saturday before that my sister Traci and her kids came into town, and I was just sad we couldn’t see them longer. But how can we compete with Disneyland? It’s not the first time we’ve had to steal a few hours away from the mouse, and it certainly won’t be the last.

But on the Friday before that, I got to see one of my very dearest friends for the first time in six years.

Jana is one of those friends that you’re lucky to find once in a lifetime. The kind of friend where months (or years) can go by and you can pick right back up where you left off. Where you may not get to talk as much as you like, but they make you feel so secure in your friendship, so truly loved and “gotten” that you feel buoyed up just knowing they exist in the world.

Check out Jana’s death grip on Grant. These boys loved each other.

Jana’s in the middle of a big prolonged move back to Hawaii in preparation for her husband returning from serving in Iraq, so she stayed with me for a day before driving up to visit her brother and shipping her car off before flying to Hawaii, with her three year old son Grant, setting up house and getting her car about a month later.

Oh, and she just finished running her first marathon. Can you believe her? She’s like a cartoon version of the ultimate capable woman. “Oh sure I can be a single parent while my husband is off creating roads and bridges and infrastructure to help the Iraqi’s, and I’ll handle a complicated move on my own while being a crazy great parent to my sweet little Grant. But how am I possibly going to fill in my free time? How about a marathon!”

We’re more “indoor” types of people.

I’ve been so lucky to find the friends I have. The only problem is that they’re all scattered from one end of the country to the other. Jana is particularly gifted at making the distance not seem so far.

Filed Under: mama musings, The Good Life

2009 Year of Pleasures #2

January 13, 2009

I had a ton of guests around last week, so I used the occasion as an excuse to make my favorite sinfully wonderful cake.

I invented this recipe myself and it all started because I don’t really like chocolate. I know, I know, it’s crazy, but it’s true. I like sour fruity desserts, chocolate doesn’t thrill me, unless it’s hot chocolate which I could drink in place of water. I am a connoisseur of hot chocolate, and my very favorite is Mexican Hot Chocolate because they add a ton of cinnamon to an otherwise somewhat bitter taste.

So I made a Mexican Hot Chocolate Cake. Here’s the recipe:

For Cake:
1 1/2 Cups all purpose flour
3/4 Cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/8 Cup cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 Cup sour cream
1/3 Cup water
2 tsp vanilla
1 Cup unsalted butter, softened
1 1/3 Cups firmly packed light brown sugar
3 large eggs

For Frosting:
3/4 Cup unsalted butter, softened
1 Cup cream cheese, whipped
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 Cups powdered sugar
2 Tablespoons cinnamon

Make Cake:
Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour two 9″ round cake pans.

Into a bowl, sift together dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together sour cream, water, and vanilla.

In a large bowl with an electric mixer beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add flour mixture to butter mixture in batches alternately with sour cream mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture and beating until batter is blended well.

Divide batter between pans and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make frosting:
In a bowl with electric mixer, beat together butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy. Add all the other ingredients, and beat until combined well.

If you leave the melted chocolate out of the frosting and cut back on a little of the sugar, you’re left with a really yummy cinnamon buttercream frosting that I think would be delightful on a spice cake or a pumpkin cake.

Filed Under: Stuff I Cook, The Good Life, Year of Pleasures

Atti update

January 8, 2009

I think I’m fairly overdue for an update on the progress of my miracle baby. Especially seeing as he somehow manages to turn one year old in less than a month. I have no idea how that happened.

The sad thing is that I’ve been so wrapped up in the day to day demands of meeting his needs as well as my own, that I’ve been horribly neglectful about documenting this kids life. Especially after the computer crash stole so many of his photos.

I had intended on privately writing monthly newsletters like Dooce does on her blog, but the best I’ve managed to do is a piece of notebook paper with an outline of his life scribbled down on it. I have to fix that. Maybe I’ll add “A Big Fat Scrapboook of Atti’s First year” onto my never ending crafty goal list.

This picture is already several weeks old, and it’s amazing to me how much he’s changed so quickly.

As of today he is 11 months old chronologically, which makes him eight months old adjusted age (based on when he *should* have been born), and his developmental age is all over the map. Speech and language he’s advanced. Hearing he’s nearly at adult levels. Eating he’s doing just great. Fine motor skills, he’s very weak. He can’t clap his toys together, he can’t hold his bottle, he won’t grasp small items. Gross motor skills he’s about three months behind even his adjusted age. He can’t sit up, he can’t crawl, he’s like an eighteen pound five month old.

When I just focus on the major milestones, it’s easy to let the news appear somewhat bleak. But I am surrounded by an amazing team of specialists who have trained me to notice all the many many many little milestones that come before the big ones. And those little milestones he’s slowly but surely checking off the list. He may not grasp toys and clap them together, but he’ll pick them up and bring them to his mouth, and when he wears his boots he’ll kick at the hardwood because he likes the sound it makes. He may not be able to sit quite yet, but he gets closer every day. He used to barely be able to hold up his head (in fairness, he does have a fairly gigantic melon), and now he can sit up with just a little support at his hips.

Every week he has visits from his Physical Therapist “Miss Jan,” the Occupational Therapist “Miss Alice,” and the Infant Stimulation Teacher “Miss Cathy,” and I can’t even begin to explain how I love these women. Because they love Atti. And they rejoice with me whenever he does a new trick. Whenever he gets infinitesimally closer to those big elusive goals we all celebrate because they understand how hard he has to work to get there and that the important thing is not how far he still has to go, but that he’s GOING.

So far we haven’t seen anything that we can nail down as being a sign of the dreaded CP. So far everything can be explained away by the fact of his prematurity, so we’re hopeful everything will stay OK.

He’s developed quite a bit of trouble with his eyes, which is really to be expected in a preemie of his age, so we’ve started having to patch his eye for two hours every day. It’s awful. He hates it and claws at his face whenever the patch is on, his sensitive little baby skin is all torn up from the sticky patches being ripped off of him every night. But we can already see improvement, so we swallow our instinct to grip him close and protect him from the awful thing and put on our drill sargeant personas.

We’ve made up elaborate backstories to try to make us feel better about the pain we’re subjecting our baby to for his own good. Bear calls him “Patches O’Hoolihan,” a barenuckle boxer from Boston circa 1890, blind in one eye from an unfair fight, but rumor has it it was really from an unsavory involvement with a local barmaid. Gosh we’re warped.

Filed Under: baby news, The Good Life

2009 Year of Pleasures #1

January 6, 2009

Let’s recap for all the new folks, shall we?

Back in 2007 I was having a totally crap filled year. (Who? ME? Impossible! I’m queen of sunshine and roses!) We moved away from everyone I loved, I’d just lost the baby I’d waited seven years for, we were trying to buy a house and fulfill my life long dream with little success, and then when we did buy it we launched a prolonged and unpleasant renovation. It was not exactly a banner time.

I was horribly sad and depressed and I was not coping very well. Do you remember that episode of Friends where Ross starts dating Janice until she dumps him for being too whiny? And the thought of *Janice* thinking he was too whiny made him straighten up and get himself together? That’s kind of where I’d gotten. I was so whiny that even the whiniest of teenage emo bloggers would have looked at me like, “girl, please.”

Not that I didn’t have cause of course, but I was just not getting over anything very well. And that’s when I read A Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg.

I explain it in detail there in the link, but in a nutshell, the main character has to grieve through some losses of her own and decides to give herself a year of pleasures instead of a year of grief. So she spends more time with girlfriends, she buys extravagant soaps and plush new towels, she eats dessert even when she’s alone, she treats herself well and seeks out things that are pleasurable and restorative to her soul.

After reading the book I launched into a similar journey, and I shared some of that here on the blog. So now, without further ado, let me share the very first pleasure for 2009.

Time in my studio with a cooperative baby.

My kid is so sweet tempered. He is patient and content as long as he’s being cuddled. It was just before Christmas and I had a million homemade presents to make, rain was pouring down outside, and Atti was babbling to himself while he played with his toys right beside me. It was perfection.

Filed Under: The Good Life, Year of Pleasures

New Years UnResolutions

January 1, 2009

Does anybody ever manage to keep their New Years Resolutions? I’ve never known anyone besides my friend Jess who could actually keep anything going past January. I’ve given up on the idea working for me. Instead I like to think about what I’m going to learn in the New Year. I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out why that’s any different, why learning a skill is any different than changing a behavior, and I can’t come up with a reason. Maybe because I’ve got a little more time to learn something, and the first time I resort back to my old behavior the resolution is broken. Maybe it’s all in my head, but for some reason there seems to be less pressure this way.

My big new skill this year is: I’m going to learn to draw. My entire family draws beautifully, and it’s one thing I’ve always been lazy about developing in myself. And yet it is the one thing that has really held me back in my career. I have so many designs and plans in my head and between not knowing Photoshop very well and not being able to draw, they’re all trapped in there.

I’ve also been working on a huge list of my crafty goals. With all the house renovations done that we can do by ourselves, and my baby not in the hospital (knock on wood), I should have some time to work on feathering this nest we’ve worked so hard on already. I’m totally going to jinx myself. Everybody wish me luck.

In 2009 I hope to:

Finish Binding on Tree Skirt

Make 2009 Christmas Cards

Finish off my Christmas Work in Progress Box

Sew a tree skirt for the snowfall tree

Sew a tree skirt for the 12 days of Christmas tree

Finish crosstitched ornaments for the 12 days of Christmas tree

Finish off the projects in my Work in Progress Drawer

Finish the Satin Quilt (AKA Quilt of Hate) I’ve been working on for years

Organize my recipes

Crochet new kitchen washcloths

Embroider teatowels for the kitchen

Sew a quilt to go in the guest room

Decorate towels for the bathroom

Create art deco inspired art work for wall niches

Create a big papercutting for the entryway

Collect and mount plates on the wall in the stairwell

Plant flowers in the backyard

Build a headboard

Build a toybox for the family room

Create paper mache balls for the big niche

Make Atti a Christmas stocking

Create a Halloween themed tree

Sew a Halloween table runner

Create an Exotic themed tree

Update Etsy shop once every season

I may be getting a little overly ambitious here, but I want to try to do two new trees this year. I saw this gorgeous copper tree at my favorite floral design mart, and I think it would be perfect for an exotic inspired tree as well as a Halloween tree. I’ve been wanting to do a Halloween tree forever, but I wanted something with enough branches that I could actually hang plenty of ornaments from it, but something that didn’t just look like a Christmas tree. If I can get my hands on that copper one it will be perfect.

The exotic tree will be full of animal print and feathers, but I’m going to have to be careful to walk that fine line so that it doesn’t veer off into tackyville. Not everything can be leopard print. I’m thinking Morocco, I’m thinking India, I’m thinking the Middle East, all places that are very exotic to me.

We’ve got all the painting completed, but we have nothing up on most of our walls. I’d like to work towards changing that with some of my own work, some family photos, and loads of illustrations from artists around the internet. For the big wall up the stairs I’m going to hang all sorts of vintage plates, but it’s going to take a lot of them, so I have to get busy collecting.

It will be interesting to look back at this list this time next year and see just how wildly divergent my plans were from reality. It sure would be lovely if I could have a year without complications, but come on, what are the chances that’s going to happen?

Filed Under: Grand Schemes and Other Plans, The Good Life

What a year…

December 31, 2008

Honestly? I don’t know if I could live through this year over again. I’m not quite sure how I did it this time. Come to think of it, I nearly didn’t get to.

I don’t know that I’ve ever truly delved into how close I came to death during Atti’s birth, but it was as close as you could get and still have a happy ending. I was strapped down to the table because they were sure I was going to have a stroke or seizure at any moment, and things started to get very dim. I remember the room turning black and starting to drift off when I had to force myself to straighten up. I was like one of those people you see on ER where the nurses are shouting, “Stay with me!”

That experience rattled me in a way that I haven’t quite been able to let go of. That knowledge of my mortality comes to me in unguarded moments and knocks me flat all over again. Just now I put Atti in his crib for his nap and saw the quilt and bumper I made for him after he was born and thought about what his life would be like if I didn’t make it off that operating table. It’s quite a weight to walk around with, and one I’m striving to use productively.

I’m trying to let go of the fear and cherish the awareness that experience has brought me. I’m appreciating the minutia of life in new ways, food tastes better, colors are brighter, and all the other cliches of close calls, but I think more valuable to me is the appreciation it has given me for myself. For my contributions to my family and my world. Maybe this sounds brazenly selfish, but in my fearful moments I don’t think about what I would be missing, I think about the people I’d be leaving behind. Atti without his mom. Bear without his partner in crime. Maybe because of my LDS faith and my view of the afterlife I’m not worried about what would happen to me, but I’m aware of my influence no longer being in the lives of the people I love.

Now I look around my house and I see all of my little nourishing touches. I see the nest I’ve made and the plants that spring up under my care, I watch my little guy grow and reach milestones and feel loved and I get a little thrill that I did all that.

Nearly losing my life made me appreciate life, but it made me appreciate myself, the talents I have to share, the contributions I have to make, the work I put out into the world, the love I have to give, more. I don’t mean to say that it made me appreciate how great I am. I just mean that it made me appreciate that *I* *am*.

I am here, I won’t always be here, no one out there is exactly the same mix of creativity and neuroses and humor and fear and ambition and heart and stubbornness and smarts that I am, so I have to stop apologizing for myself, I have to stop being so worried about what people think of me, I have to stop downplaying my efforts and I have to get to work.

Atti’s first year wasn’t exactly a cakewalk either.

But he’s come so very far.

I am so grateful to be here at the end of another year with my family. It’s all been worth it.

Filed Under: Grand Schemes and Other Plans, Stuff I Make, The Good Life

Christmas Debriefing

December 29, 2008

Ahhhhhhhhh.

I love the feeling of sacking out and doing nothing that comes after a busy time. I’ve only left my pajamas long enough to teach my lesson at church, dishes haven’t been done in days, I’ve even managed to watch a whole movie without working on something, and I didn’t even have a freak out! (mostly.)

I think a long weekend was just right for hibernation. Now the house is starting to stink, I’m starting to stink, and I’m ready to get back to some sense of order. Atti even managed to catch a cold* over the holiday, so I’m able to do chores while he sleeps the day away in a cough syrup haze.

*How perfect is that? All flu season long we are fanatical about keeping him inside since he’s in the super high risk group for RSV, and the one day *literally one day* we break him out of his quarantine he gets sick. Mommy Paranoia justified!

On Christmas Eve I cooked up a fancy dinner for Bear and me and then we all snuggled into the couch to watch cheesy Christmas movies.

When Atti went to sleep we had a present wrapping party. I wish I thought to take pictures because this years gift tags looked adorable with the packages all wrapped up. But not as adorable as this sweet little guy. Isn’t his face just perfect? *Sigh*

Christmas morning we woke up and exchanged presents, but there wasn’t much of a surprise since Bear already knew what his present was. I was so excited to finally pull off a big Christmas for him. Every year he blows the budget on something big for me, usually sacrificing his Christmas and birthday money to pay for it. He just can’t resist overdoing. This year he’s been so busy at work I knew he’d be too distracted to plan something like that, so it was finally my turn. I bought him a PS3 and put it on a credit card we hadn’t used in months so that he wouldn’t discover it, and then two days later he comes to me in a panic that our credit card was stolen because there is a huge random purchase on it all of a sudden.

I could have killed him! There was nothing I could possibly say to cover it. I just ended up yelling, “BEAR! It’s Christmas! You’re not supposed to scrutinize the accounts!” As soon as he realized it was me, he knew what his present was. There’s nothing else that crazy expensive he would have any interest in.

What do you guys do at Christmas to keep your presents secret? With both of us being involved in the finances and being pretty responsible about them, we both know where all the money goes which means that big surprises like this don’t stay surprises for very long. But at least I have the sense to ignore the credit card purchases in December and only look at the total. Sheesh Bear!

This ended up being the real surprise:

Bear’s turning into such a good baker, he had to have an apron. So I bought some lightweight suiting material and whipped him up one. I even had enough fabric to make a matching one for Atti. I made sure to make it super big so it would fit when he was actually old enough to help.

Bear felt so guilty after blowing my present for him, that he went out and overspent on me, so I ended up with speakers for my ipod so I don’t have to keep headphones balanced on my head as I’m digging through fabric stacks and looking for the right color paint, and then he bought me Guitar Hero World Tour, complete with drum set, guitar and microphone. It was a little bit like the time Homer bought Marge a bowling ball with his name on it, but I don’t mind. It’s been so much fun, we’ve already beaten the game on the easy level and now we’re trying to keep up with the Medium difficulty.

{{{{{picture unavailable. Too busy rocking out.}}}}}

We finished our present exchange super super early and raced up to the grandparents house for a little family time.

All the excitement just tuckered our little guy out. He gets stressed when it’s noisy or crowded, and with all the cousins around, he got stressed.

Since then we’ve been lazing around the house, playing Guitar Hero when Atti would let us, snuggling up against the chilly weather that cuts right through our house, watching movie after movie and eating a huge ham all by ourselves.

Atti’s calling me from his swing, I’m sure it’s time to wipe his sore little nose again. And then I have to dig my kitchen out from a nest of funky dishes. Sigh. I guess the fun can’t last forever. I hope your holidays were happy and that Santa brought you everything you wanted!

Filed Under: baby news, Over the Top Christmas, The Good Life

Need a family night activity? I’ve got you covered.

December 3, 2008

So this post isn’t strictly Christmasy, but if you stick around for the next couple of weeks, it will come back around. Honest.

I’m sure most of you have probably seen that cool new site wordle.net It’s a nifty little application that can make word art out of whatever text you submit, using the frequency of each word to determine its relative size. Then you customize the colors, the font, and the layout, and you’re left with a cool little word cloud.

Once I started playing around with this thing I had a flash of inspiration. As I’ve mentioned once or twice around here, our family motto is, “Go Team Edmunds!” It’s silly and fun, but it showcases that one of our highest priorities is unity. I love the brevity of it, but I’ve been thinking of how I can incorporate more of our family goals into something codifiable and articulated. I’ve seen some families make up a family crest, or create a motto they could translate into Latin. As soon as I saw Wordle I knew I had my method.

Bear and I sat down and made a list of traits we wanted our family to exemplify. We said, “Our house is a house of….” and filled in the blank. Once we had a list we were satisfied with, we then ranked them according to priority. I went a teensy bit crazy here and came up with a spreadsheet and a statistical analysis along with multiple ways of weighting each value to arrive at an actual mathematical priority, but if you don’t feel like breaking out Excel, you could just as easily rank them in order of importance.

I then typed our words into Wordle, with our higher priority words showing up more often than the lower priority words, and here’s what we ended up with:

If I remember right I typed our last name 20 times, the most important words 15 times, the next tier 10 times, then some 5 times and the last ones just once.

As my bloggy schedule looks right now, it should be around the 15th that I share what this has to do with our Christmas celebrations, so stay tuned.

Filed Under: Over the Top Christmas, Stuff I Make, The Good Life

Thanksgiving Tree

November 26, 2008

I’ve kind of become obsessed with trees over the years. I think Christmas got me started. I don’t know what it is, but nothing makes me happier then staring at a beautifully composed Christmas tree all lit up, with a cup of cocoa in my hand and a kitty on my lap. When I married Bear and saw how crazy his parents go for Christmas, I knew I had to jump in, but they rely mainly on dolls, which just creep me right out. I knew that my festivities would involve trees as far as the eye could see.

Maybe it’s a subconscious thing – my friends and family do call me Tree after all.

Anyway, when it was time to decorate for Thanksgiving I knew there was only one way to go. This time it would be a gratitude tree.

I made up a bowl full of little paper ornaments, and I make everyone who enters my home contribute. I’ve got friends from school, my young women from church, Atti’s therapists, and of course my dinner guests.

The rules are simple: Write something you’re grateful for, but it can’t be something everyone is grateful for. You can’t write “My Family” or “My Job” or “My House.” You can write something about those things, but it has to be specific.

Some of my favorites:

The cool side of the pillow
stand up comedy
A crisp night and an open window
the DVR
fuzz
a hug from my baby after a long day of work (guess who wrote that one)
that tart frozen yogurt
my fancy chef’s knife
the back of a baby neck

I have a ton of work ahead of me – getting the house ready for much beloved guests, dealing with a cranky teether, starting all the cooking. I’m pretty much following my typical menu (along with time-tested battle plan you can see here)except this year I’m going to add a side of corn with bacon, and instead of whipped sweet potatoes, I’m going to do the traditional baked with little marshmallows. Then at the grocery store last night I got one of my wild hairs and decided that I absolutely could not go another year without making a homemade cranberry sauce. So I just grabbed a couple things I thought would work and I’m going to make it up as I go along. Also, in the time since that post Bear has become a fabulous pastry chef, so instead of my trifle, I’m going to turn the second dessert over to him and let him make a pumpkin chocolate swirl cheesecake.

Cooking a big dinner for guests is one of my purest joys in life. I’m a little stressed today, but to me, it’s like the feeling you get waiting in line for a roller coaster. I was so torn about this dinner because part of me wanted to invite everyone we knew, and the other part wanted to hog The Good Twin and her family all to myself. I just need to throw dinner parties more often.

Filed Under: Grand Schemes and Other Plans, Stuff I Cook, Stuff I Make, The Good Life

A Dream Come True

November 19, 2008

There are about seven different paths I could have gone down in life and still been happy. One of them is as a chef. Culinary school always sat in the back of my mind as something that I would love to do someday…along with vocal training, an MFA, school for design (interior or graphic), training for a marathon, and art classes. I suppose it was always slightly more likely than everything else because of the practical application in my family life, but it seemed just as misty and far off as any other dream I’m not currently pursuing.

And then I just fell backwards into the luckiest opportunity ever and before I knew it I was in a kitchen in checkered pants and a funny looking hat on my head.

California has a program called ROP, Regional Occupational Program, where you can receive training in specific fields for free. Usually it’s things like Diesel Mechanics or Heating and Air Conditioning. It’s a benefit to the community to fill certain jobs, and it’s a benefit to get people more and better employment. I happen to live in an area chock-a-block with casinos desperate for trained chefs, and so for absolutely no money, I get to get training from a Certified Executive Chef in a nationally accredited program. And the best part is that it only meets one night a week.

I’m never again going to have an opportunity like this. I’ve looked into culinary schools before and they were full time and then some and cost thousands and thousands of dollars. Never again will I be able to take one class at a time one night a week and save myself that price tag. So even though I really really really don’t need one more thing on my calendar, I have to make this work.

I’m having a blast. I lucked into a fantastic team and we work so great together. We laugh and tease and scream for each other when we manage to flip an egg without breaking the yolk.

My best Iron Chef face.

My chef looks scary, but he’s a teddy bear. Somehow he manages to keep us all entertained through five straight hours of lectures. And this is my friend Ieesha. She always calls me her “new best friend.” And just last week we discovered that our birthdays are on the same day. We giggled like maniacs.

I’ve always done well at schoolwork from the book, but labwork is a little more difficult for me. I was really nervous that once I got in the kitchen I’d fall apart, but so far I’m doing really well. We have three weeks of finals coming up, a couple of practical exams and a final written exam, and I’m already having anxiety dreams about it. The other night I dreamed that Chef just started testing us on random abilities. He pulled out a big piano and started playing, and we had to sing a song on the spot. Then we had to paint a piece of ceramics, and then do a math problem. All while wearing our big chefs jackets and goofy hats. I was hoping that I’d be able to relax a little more this time through school, but apparently those pressures never go away.

Filed Under: Stuff I Cook, The Good Life