But anyways. How are you? I hope you're well. I realize that I did not get a chance to post the photo and recipe for the last thing I made before I left home for school again. So here it is:
Whoa, in-your-face bundt cake! It's not just a bundt cake, though. It's really a chocolate root beer cake. More like a chocolate cake that was made with root beer and didn't taste much like root beer at all. Here's a better picture below that doesn't make you feel like I'm stuffing your face with it.
In this picture, you can see that some of the glaze (consisting of root beer, confectioner's sugar, and vanilla) drizzled nicely over the cake. But, just like with the lemon poppyseed cake I made a while ago, the rest of it pooled around the bottom, making the bottom of the cake insanely sugary and sticky and moist.
It was a really tasty cake. Just not very root beer-like at all. I made it for my baby brother, who loves root beer. Next time I make it, I will try to add more root beer in the final root beer soaking phase, before glazing. Also, I think the next time I try to ice something with a glaze, I need to let the glaze dry a little bit before I add more. Hopefully that will reduce the mess I've had these two times. The recipe for the cake can be found right over here.
So there was your food thing. Hope the couple of pictures made you happy. Because that's all I've got on that front for now. As I have said before, I am going to experiment this semester with things you can make with boxed mixes and premade doughs- basically stuff you can get in a college convenience store. (Although, it turns out, mine does sell flour and baking soda, in addition to eggs and milk. So I could actually make something from scratch. But we'll see.) Upcoming projects include cake batter rice krispie treats (which I cannot get off my mind) and Oreo brownies- which are basically brownies with chopped up Oreos mixed in. I will also have to show you brownie chip cookies- a chocolate chip cookie made with brownie batter. I made them for my roommate's birthday last year, and they went over really well with her and her overworked architecture classmates. So yeah. I'll keep you posted. Stay tuned.
Are you ready for a heart-to-heart, dear readers? Yeah? Good.
(Holy crap, the song just changed over to Mumford's "White Blank Page." Intense. Excellent timing.)
So I'm the resolutions girl, right? I'm the one who sets goals for herself when seasons transition- New Year's, beginning of the school year, post fall-break, et cetera. Wanna know something else about me? I'm also moderately terrified of change. This is actually something I've just realized about myself in some less than pretty ways.
Let me see if I can qualify that statement. I don't hate change. There are many things I'd like to change about myself and my life, and quickly, too. I think what I actually don't like is leaving my comfort zone.
(Now it's Mumford's "Timshel." The lyric is "You are not alone in this." Beautiful. You all need to listen to this music ASAP. Legally, please.)
Back on topic. I don't like leaving my comfort zone. I like safety. I really really need safety. Remind me to tell you a story about me a high ropes course sometime. That was a big step for me recently- getting up on that high ropes course. And I feel proud of myself for giving it a really good try, even though it didn't end as well as it could have. But that was a physical challenge. What I'm talking about here is different.
I'm starting a new school year, all right? I have so much more that I want to do this year. I want to meet more people, go to more parties, lead some kind of project, maybe even run a half-marathon. That would be quite different from last year, in which I wasn't a terribly committed runner, I had few extracurriculars, I spent most weekends in, and I was with pretty much the same people from the beginning of the year onward. So I envision myself having a much more active, vibrant life than last year.
But here's the deal: I was extremely lucky in that the group of people around me didn't shift very much at all last year. I had to counsel a couple of other friends who were experiencing just that as their year went on. And I thought to myself how lucky I was that it wasn't happening to me.
Now, I'm nervous. We've all had a summer to reflect and think about where we're all going. And things could very well change. Which is not a bad thing! I am a big believer in the organic relationship: people come together and come apart naturally, tough as it may be sometimes. I'm a student. People change a whole heck of a lot during these years, as well they should. And I think that certain relationships serve certain purposes, and that not all of them last forever, and that's okay.
But that's where I get to worrying, guys. What if things are changing now, and I'm not getting a good sense of it? What if I'm being clingy? How do I seem to other people? Am I trying too hard? Am I too nosy? Am I too motherly and nice? Should I be more giving on my standards? Just how uncool am I? Can I even hang with that person the way we used to- or is it just weird? What about new people? How do I even handle that??
This is almost worse than being a freshman. Because as a freshman, everyone is trying to make friends and very few people already have ties to each other. Now, there are ties, and there are shared stories. We made friends. Now what if that all changes? Can I seriously build new relationships all over again? Is anyone else feeling this way? (Don't answer that. I don't want your pity or reassurance unless you actually mean it.) It doesn't seem like it to me. Am I overanalyzing things and thinking way too much? Is this all in my head? (Yeah. I know the answer to that one already.)
On top of all this, I'm sick of being stuck in a rut. That whole "breaking my pattern of risklessness" thing I talked about very early on this blog? Yeah. Hasn't really happened yet. Not the way I've wanted it to, I guess. I'm losing patience so very quickly. I mean, I've only been back here a week. And yet I feel like so many things are happening to other people and not to me. This is where the self-esteem crash comes in (which always makes me think of this post on the unbelievably funny blog called Hyperbole and a Half. Go read it. Especially if this post bums you out at all. I know it made me feel better last night.), where I start comparing myself to other people and come up with about a billion different reasons as to why their life is better than mine and all the things I've done wrong and the hamburger I shouldn't have eaten that day and the five more crunches I didn't do and blah blah blah. Whine whine whine. You know you've been there too. And it sucks. A lot. Because it feels real! Real enough that you end up having to do things like cry by yourself in the shower and then journal for half an hour about it in order to feel just a little bit better. You know how they say good things come to those who wait? Well, I've waited for a really long time.
So that's what's going on right now. And, since this jealousy and self-pity make me feel very ugly and ungrateful, this is what I'm doing to work through it:
1) Writing. Journaling, which is extremely free-form and raw. Then blogging, which is more polished and allows me to articulate what is going on in a more focused, controlled way. Both things are a big help in sorting stuff out. Journaling is a great cathartic release of emotions, and blogging takes enough time that along the way, you can sort a couple things out a little bit.
2) I run. With some really good music.
3) I listen to more music. Really good music. Like Mumford & Sons. And Florence + the Machine. And The Rocket Summer.
4) I pray. A lot. For patience. For guidance. For a sign. For something.
5) I think about all the really wonderful things that happen to me every day. Because I do, in fact, have a really fabulous life. I am a lucky, blessed person.
6) I remind myself of this quote from Modern Family, my favorite TV show. For context: Younger sister Alex is giving the valedictory speech at her middle school graduation, and her speech focuses on the fact that she focused on grades rather than popularity and was shunned for it, and simultaneously rubs it in her classmates' faces that she is the valedictorian. Haley, in trying to persuade her to change the speech, says something to the effect of, "We all have our stuff." We all think the grass is greener on the other side. But really, we don't know. So comparing yourself to other people is just silly.
That's all I've got for now. I will leave you with a few quotes I'm meditating on lately.
Love,
Imara
"Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars."
- Max Ehrmann, "The Desiderata"
"Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets. So love the people that treat you right and forget the ones that don't and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said that it'd be easy, they only promised that it would be worth it."
- Anonymous
"And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding the way it should."
- Max Ehrmann, "The Desiderata"
"All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well."
- Julian of Norwich
P.S. I made the Oreo brownies. Here is the link to the original website. And here is a photo:
Delicious and chocolatey.
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