cakes I have baked

 I snagged myself a copy of Snacking Cakes by Yossy Arefi, and it's so much fun! The cakes are so cute and delicious and easily converted to gluten free. 

Here is a list of cakes I have baked the last few weeks:

Chocolate peanut butter with peanut butter glaze with chocolate peanut butter balls (for our anniversary)

Coconut lime

Banana peanut butter with cocoa glaze

Apple with salted caramel glaze

Two cakes I didn't get pictures of but were delicious:

• Spiced honey with almonds
• Oatmeal cookie with chocolate chips

Not to mention the birthday cake I baked for the not-so-baby small human (a hazelnut meringue with whipped cream and mandarin orange segments in the middle)

In many ways, I'm clearly using baking to deal with my stress and things going on that are challenging, and that's not a bad thing. I'm also having fun and baking in a way that's manageable this time of the semester--small cakes that are whipped up with minimal dishes needed (and can be done by hand). And while I still love making gluten-free sourdough, I'm also just not able to commit as much time to baking bread, except on the weekends, so the cake baking has been good for getting a baking-fix in on more limited time scales. And the elder child is pretty happy with this arrangement.

By the way, if you're a cake-baker and use 9" round pans, get yourself some precut parchment--it makes baking cakes (or other round things) sooooo much easier.

can't I logic my way out?

 My friends, I have procured yet another type of planner--this one a Panda Planner from Rocketbook. I was curious about it, and I've been enjoying my Rocketbooks that I got for Christmas from a friend, so I figured, eh, why not. I'm not sure it's the planner I want, particularly when the example gave a goal (get in shape) and then the target metric was weight-based, and it triggered my rage at diet culture. So maybe Panda Planner should not be so fat-phobic in its examples, and besides, weight shouldn't be a target metric for "get in shape" but instead something like "lift X lbs" or "do plank for 1 minute" or something. Gahhhh.

Anyway, I digress.

Another friend mentioned something their therapist told them, which is that you can't logic your way out of situations (not an exact quote, but the gist). And I come back to that idea time and time again--I often think if I can just plan it out, then I can eliminate all of my woes. I empathized with Courtney Milan's character in The Duke Who Didn't because she loved making lists and always aimed for perfection on completing the list--but always failed. The point there is that the character purposefully made the lists impossible to accomplish because she was aiming at a standard of perfection that seemly wasn't attainable as a way of coping with the chaos of the world. And I do that a lot.

My calendars and planning systems are all an attempt to obtain some perfection, to use my formidable organization skills to impose order on a world that simply cannot be ordered. I know this. And yet, here I am, with a new sleek planner and the promise that I can try a new way to organize things to make the world fit into orderly patterns.

Ultimately, though, my systems are useful: I'm using them to realize what I can accomplish in a week and to plan out my days. I'm getting a clearer sense of what is feasible in a day--and also considering how I can shift things if I need to take a break, like I did last week after an exhausting day that followed a few hectic weeks. So, perhaps the planner obsession is useful in helping me reach some clarity about working as much as I need to work and letting everything else go--something I am working toward much more consciously this year.

mothers and babies

 Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how mothers and babies are portrayed in literature and film. Particularly, the ways babies are often snatched from their mothers, while the mother lies helpless on the birthing bed. Most recently, it was in Bridgerton, where the duchess was left with her arms reaching for her son, while the duke held him for all to see his triumph--only for the duchess to die without even getting to see her baby. In Jane the Virgin, Jane's baby is kidnapped shortly after she gives birth, leading to a wild chase while she is still sore and raw and needing to feed him. In a fantastic book I recently read, The Empress of Salt and Fortune, the baby was snatched from his mother. And in one of my favorite books, The Girl Who Drank the Moon, the baby is torn from her mother's breast, and it drives the mother mad. I like all these stories as a whole, but I wonder at this repeated narrative and how hard it is for me to read it.

I'm aware that my thoughts and feelings are because I am a mother--I got to immediately hold both of my babies on my chest and then keep them tucked close to me for much of their newborn days. My body made these tiny creatures, and my body (and hormones) demanded that I keep them close. My body was this baby's first home, and the baby wants to stay close to it. In some of the books I've read about birth and midwifery, they refer to the mother-baby dyad, which is a way of capturing the relationship that makes sense to me: the baby is a separate being but also not, and together, the mother and baby make something else, and you have to care for both mother and baby to ensure health and well-being for the whole. So I have a visceral reaction--and not a positive one--at the narratives that cast mothers as weak or helpless or exploit them after they have given birth to steal their babies.

It reminds me too of the arguments around reproductive justice. The ways that controlling women's bodies become a way to subjugate women and remove their agency--both in preventing them access to birth control and abortion as well as taking their children from them. Forcing women to have children but then taking those children away for a range of reasons. Taking children from birth mothers as a so-called deterrent to illegal immigration but really just an exercise in exploitation and inhuman cruelty. Denying nursing mothers access to their babies. Incarcerating mothers for being poor. These are real stories, stories that happen daily.

It also makes me want to write a story about a powerful mother whose baby isn't taken, who is able to fight the powers that want to steal her baby. A story where a mother isn't weak or passive but uses her ferocity to destroy the entities that would control her body and rob her child of their first home. A story where women band together to protect and support each other and take down the patriarchy.

capsule creation

 I follow some folks on Instagram who talk about dressing minimally, others who advocate for conscious consumption and purchases of clothing (the fashion industry is an ecological disaster that exploits humans to make sure you can buy a cheap t-shirt). I also follow Dacy Gillespie of Mindful Closet, who is a stylist whose mission is to help women spend less time getting dressed by helping them find their style. These have had me thinking about clothes, my body, and using clothes to suit the life I have rather than some vague self I might want to be.

Thus, over the past few years, I've been trying to reduce my consumption, consciously donate or give away clothes I no longer need, and mend/renew clothes that need repair. All of this is caught up in my growing desire for body acceptance in light of the inevitable body changes that come with age, children, and living--I no longer want to rely on chasing the whims of fashion for how I feel about my body. I want clothes that work with the life I have now. I want to wear soft, comfortable clothes that are durable and work for the life I lead--a mix of professional and active, whimsical/fun and durable, natural fibers that are also nice to wear.

Anyway, so in all of this thinking about clothes and making more of my own and buying pieces from sustainable makers (who also pay their employees living wages), I had another baby, which meant that some of my wardrobe no longer fits, some of it no longer suits me, and some of it I no longer like. After reading about Project 333, where you whittle your wardrobe down to 33 items for 3 months, I figured I'd use my furlough day to clean out my closet and see if I could build a capsule.

So on Friday, I pulled out every article of clothing I owned and dumped it on my bed. Then I began to sort, pulling out the stuff I've been happily wearing over the last year and putting it back in the closet/drawers, and then considering all the other stuff. Obviously, I have a lot of dresses and things I can't wear (or don't need to) because pandemic (and also breastfeeding--all my clothes have to be easily adjusted to feed my chunky milk-hungry baby). Some of these items I want to still wear, like the awesome Pyne and Smith black dress that is one of those wardrobe workhorses--great for traveling, able to be styled a zillion ways, etc (again, can't wear it because I'd have to pull it allllll the way up to feed a baby and I don't have time for that). But a lot didn't fit or didn't feel good or just didn't work for me anymore--so it got washed and will be sent out of the house.

I found that the act of pulling all of my clothes out and touching them and having to really just understand why they are in my closet was enormously helpful. I also listened to my immediate gut reaction when I picked up an item or tried it on. I also paid attention to what I was drawn to and what I reacted against. I also noticed a color palette emerging--definitely heavy on the reds/rusts. And in the end, I piled up quite a few items that were in good condition to sell on ThredUP or give away or send to a friend, but I still have lots of clothes in my closet, but all things I love and will make the most of.

Ultimately, I decided I didn't need a capsule, though I did create a "highlight" section of the closet for clothes I'm currently wearing in heavy rotation (the snuggly cardigans, the soft flannels, the cheerful or the cozy shirts). It means I can just zoom (haha) into my closet and snag what I need, so hopefully will reduce the time I might spend picking an outfit (though, let's be real: these days, it's usually a pretty quick process anyway). My goal, though, is when we do go back that I'm able to just rotate through those pieces, shifting the highlight section as seasons change. So it turns out the capsule isn't really useful for me--but the process of thinking about what I would pick for a capsule wardrobe really helped me appreciate the clothing I have.

I'm planning to avoid buying clothes anytime soon (I really have enough of what I need), though I am planning to make things I have fabric and patterns for, so that will be a fun way to mindfully and carefully add new items to my closet that fit me well and serve my needs. And that's all I really need right now, even if all the ads on Instagram are telling me to buy buy buy.