Getting Baked

I'm not really sure why I do this to myself every year, but once again it's the day before my family Christmas Eve dinner and I am definitely going to be up until 3 am. Why you ask?
Because I bake.  Also, because I am a horrid procrastinator and can't just make chocolate chip cookies like everyone else.

This year I am making a pear tarte tatin, salted caramel macarons (which won me an awesome trophy at my work's bake-off), and probably some lady locks.  Throw in some egg nog cream cupcakes, and call me done.  I take weird satisfaction in knowing I'm an awesome baker, and walking in with some Sara Lee just doesn't do it for me.

It drives my mother crazy, because it inevitably dirties way too many dishes, and our tiny kitchen becomes coated in a sugary stickiness.  And seeing as how I don't drive, she gets to go about finding the strange and often expensive ingredients with me. I still have flax meal in my freezer from a goat cheese and beet casserole for a gluten free friend, an entire jar of red curry paste, and have some how ended up with 2 jars of gumbo file powder.

I often think about the possibility of opening a boutique/bakery combo where I could sell my designs and booze-soaked cupcakes.  I call it Tipsy Cakes.  Eat a cupcake, have a glass of wine, and try on fabulous dresses.  That shit is golden.  Actually, anyone interested in funding such an endeavor?
I promise to pay you back in cupcakes and new clothes for you after your inevitable weight gain.


<3 Cass

I'll Take Religious Deities for $600, Alex.

I have been searching for answers all my life.  Mostly answers to mundane things I was curious about, but whatever trivia I could come up with was usually answered by a "look it up" from my mother.  That Encyclopedia Britannica from 1964 saw a lot of action in those days, although any questions about Russia were a little tricky.
What's the difference between a giant panda and a red panda?
Look it up.
Do they live in houses like ours in China? What's a pagoda?
Look it up.
Times have changed though, and "look it up" has been replaced by "google" it.  But I still do.  There's a different sort of satisfaction in knowing that you took the initiative to really find out something, and it sticks with you.  That makes the questions with no answers all that much harder.
Why did it have to be cancer?  Was it my fault he drank so much?  Could I have done anything to stop him from drinking?  Would it have mattered?
What am I supposed to do now?

I've never been religious.  I don't believe in God.  And it's not like I actually believe in him but am just pissed cause life is hard...I just don't believe in a god.  I think people just use him to give answers to the questions in life they can't answer.  But that's not neccessarily a bad thing either.
What's wrong in feeling secure in knowing that there's someone out there who has this ultimate plan that everyone fits into?  It makes not knowing the answers okay, because somebody else does have the answers, and they apparently got it covered.  It's not working for me though.  I can't google those hard questions, and just knowing that some guy down at the google headquarters has all the answers is totally not satisfying.

I still have a hard time with some questions.  But I'm getting better at just being okay with not knowing.


<3 Cass

Children Are Evil. Have you not seen any horror movies?

I hate children. No really, I do.
My anti-baby comments usually elicit a giggle or an eye roll from my friends who tell me, "It'll be different with your own kids." But I truly do not want kids.  Maybe more than hate them, I fear them.  They are terrifying.  Children have the confidence to believe that the world revolves around them, and for all intensive purposes, it does.
Oh, you can't sleep?  Yeah, your well restedness is much more important than mine, since I only have a full-time job to go to and you have the arduous task of laying around and pooping your pants.  You want to scream for no reason on an airplane?  By all means, you go ahead, since you paid for your ticket with your own hard-earned money.
But they are children, so they get special rights.  If I screamed on an airplane I would be forcibly removed and treated to a free pap smear by TSA.
But more than just the fear of children, I an terrified of motherhood.
Just cause it comes through my vagina doesn't mean I somehow gain super mom powers.  That would be kind of cool though... But I mean, how can I, or ANYONE really, claim to be ready for raising a human being with morals and ideals, and an awesome sense of humor? Did popping out two kids make Britney Spears a good mother? No, it didn't.  It DID make her bald and crazy, and NO WONDER.  Children are all-consuming soul suckers.

Plenty of people tell me that children are rays of light in an otherwise dim world.

And to them I say - how are you not terrified of a super-baby with mutant light generating powers?


<3 Cass

Bucket List for the End of the World

Seeing as the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world to be Dec 12, 2012 I figured I should go ahead and post my current "Bucket List."  Also, at the bottom click to link to see why we're not going to die.

1. Island hop in Greece
2. Look good in a bikini
3. Learn how to oil paint
4. Learn how to speak French
5. Have a play I’ve written performed
6. Put all of my photos into albums
7. Visit Finland and find my relatives
8. Get a good review in a paper with my name mentioned
9. Buy a pair of Louboutin heels
10. Sell my own fashion designs
11. Live in L.A.
12. Learn how to make shoes
13. Get my driver’s license
14. Get my Masters degree
15. Drive across country
16. Camp in Yosemite Park
17. Re-decorate a room
18. Live in New York City
19. Learn Adobe Illustrator
20. Take a bus somewhere I’ve never been
21. Visit the ruins at Machu Picchu
22. Go to a Steelers game
23. Own 100 pairs of shoes
24. Donate $500 to a charity I believe in
25. Visit Shiori in Japan
26. Take a kickboxing class
27. Be able to do side splits
28. Jump in a fountain
29. Be able to do a cartwheel
30. Fall in love
31. Pay off my debts
32. Attend a TED conference
33. Record my Mimi’s history
34. Attend a legal gay wedding
35. Read all of Shakespeare’s plays
36. Read everything J.R.R. Tolkien has written
37. Dye my hair a weird color (purple!)
38. Keep a photo journal for a year
39. Kiss someone in the snow
40. Bury a time capsule
41. Visit Disney World
42. Volunteer for an archaeological dig
43. Do 100 push-ups
44. Throw a drink in someone’s face
45. Punch someone
46. See the cherry blossom festival in D.C.
47. Read everything on my book list. And then start another
48. Work with an arts-outreach organization.
49. Learn to play the guitar.
50. Return to the Prague Quadrennial at least once more.

NASA explains why we don't have to plan for impending death.


<3 Cass

5 Things I've Learned about Being 20-Something

1.  You would think by this point you would have your shit together, but you don’t.

I mean, you pay your bills on time (mostly), and you work at a job, although maybe not your dream job.  But there are still those nights where your friends have to get you home because you’re “not drunk” you just “can’t walk in these heels.”  Any you know what? THAT’S AWESOME.  I personally aspire to have a photo album I have to hide out of reach of perspective in-laws because I can’t remember most of the circumstances.  If I wanted my twenties to be predictable and responsible I wouldn’t have gone to art school.

2.  People from high school aren’t the same people any more.  Except the ones who are.

It’s a crazy turn of events when you run into some one from high school that you could never see yourself being friends with, and then HOLY SHIT BALLS, it turns out they’re an interesting, amazing person.  Time changes people.  It’s the people who never change you have to be worried about - the high school friends who are still so wrapped up in drama that should have been left back in high school.  These are the people who will gossip about what happened to the “it couple” way after anyone still cared.  It’s great to reminisce, but leave the rumor-mongering to the teens.

3.  There is a nagging urge to compare yourself to everyone your age, but you really shouldn’t.

It is really hard when I graduated amongst people who are now a professional skier (no lie), human medical rights worker in Africa, and a Broadway star, to not feel like a giant waste of a college education.  It is absolutely pointless to think this way because it’s like evaluating your worth based on someone else’s ruler.  I never wanted to be a professional skier, and so it’s ludicrous to feel inadequate when I never even tried.  The best I can do is try to be the best at what I aspire to accomplish.  And even if I’m not where I want to be yet, it doesn’t mean that I stop trying.  It just means my goals might take longer to achieve, and that will make it even more satisfying in the end.

4.  Love is a many-splendored thing…and also rather elusive.

Unless you’re like almost all of my childhood friends and met your great love in high school or college and got hitched (seriously, 3 in 6 months…it was rough for a single gal), the dating atmosphere afterwards is a little unnerving.  You, of course, have your choice of bars, which is honestly better for filling your shame-photo album than meeting the one.  You also have your place of work, which can be rather dangerous if things go sour.  What other options does that leave?  Perhaps a chance meeting at a café, the gym, or a blind date set-up?  How about the dreaded online dating?  Everyone always says when you stop looking for love it finds you.  Well, I hope it can find me on my couch, wearing yoga pants and a sweatshirt, eating a grilled cheese and watching House Hunters International.

5.  When in doubt, have a kiki.

When life hands you lemons and menstrual cycles, gather up your closest friends, lock the door, drink excessively, and have yourself a merry little kiki.  Because City High’s What Would You Do isn’t going to sing itself.


<3 Cass