Timing. That magical moment. The right moment. When everything you've been holding your breath for falls into place and it's magical and it works. Bad timing and it's the other way. It feels like you're losing everything and the heavy weight in the pit of your stomach...well that would be regret. God damn it. Missed my moment.
I tend to not live with regrets. I'm a fan of living life to the full but even when you try to do all that you can to avoid those moments of timing that lead to regret, still there are moments of indecision and opportunities missed that you will kick yourself for forever.
I thought about timing a lot today as I watched myself play out almost the same scenario that occurred 20 years ago and tried to make different decisions for a different outcome. It dawned on me tonight that at the end of the day it's going to turn out the same way despite my best efforts. And I'm starting to think...maybe it isn't just timing. Maybe there are no happy endings for girls like me.
Monday, 11 November 2013
Tuesday, 22 October 2013
Pigs in mud cake
This was my attempt at making a pigs in mud cake I've seen floating around the interwebs. This is the original;
And this is my finished product;
So a quick and dirty how to. I made two very moist chocolate cakes (vegan - a recipe to follow shortly) in a 21cm spring-form cake tin and left them overnight to cool in the fridge. I also made the pigs ahead of time. When I say "I", I actually mean "we" because Kat is just better at modelling than me. It's not that I can't make cute little piggy bottoms with sweet little tails attached - it's more that it would take three hours and seven individual tantrums whereas Kat can do it in like ten minutes. Bitch.
A hot tip I got from a website somewhere is to tint the icing not just with pink but with a tiny amount of ivory/flesh/apricot colour as this makes a much nicer pink pig skin colour instead of a lurid pink. It works. You need four trotters, three piggy bottoms and two piggy torsos - one with arms and one without. For the trotters -just roll four balls slightly bigger than a pea and press a bamboo skewer across the middle to make the "cleat". Pea-sized balls pricked with a skewer work for the snout. The bottoms are just balls, again with a bamboo skewer pressed to make the "cleavage" of the bottom. The tails are tiny sausages of icing curled around the bamboo skewer. Belly buttons and eyes are, again, just holes made with the bamboo skewer. The arms on the pig reclining against the edge of the tub are one tube, about ten centimetres long, cut in half and with a snip in each end to form the "cleat". Then they were left overnight to air dry. I highly recommend either making spare parts or keeping some icing wrapped in cling wrap in the fridge in case you need more. Placing the parts in the mud can be challenging and pink piggy parts smeared with mud just don't cut it.
The day after making the cakes and the pigs I took the cakes, cut them in half and layered them with vegan buttercream. I checked the height of the Kit Kats and found that I only needed three of the four halves to make the cake high enough (you need about an inch between the top of the cake and the top of the Kit Kats). After stacking them with buttercream between the layers I coated the sides of the cake with more buttercream to make the Kit Kats stick.
A word on Kit Kats. They're not cheap and for this size tin you need eleven. I got them half price so it wasn't too $$$. I have seen other stuff used but I liked the hot tub look the Kit Kats give. So yeah. 21cm cake tin? Eleven Kit Kats.
Insider tip? Break them in half while they're in their packets - it makes them split easily without shattering. Then start putting them around the edge of the cake so there are no gaps. Finish it off with a pretty bow (I went with pink organza) which not only serves as decoration but keeps the Kit Kats in place while you pour in the "mud".
Okay it's mud time! I went with a 2:1 chocolate to cream ratio. 200g chocolate and 100ml of cream makes a very firm ganache when it sets and it won't run or leak on you. Heat the cream and chocolate together in the microwave, taking it out at frequent intervals to stir so it doesn't burn. Pour into your hot tub and then smooth the top.
And the final part is to place your piggies. I personally recommend using tweezers to place your trotters or you can make like Kat and go through a few replacements while muttering "shut up, shut up, shut up" and making a concerted effort to ignore the tweezers your bud is wordlessly holding out for you. Your call.
The pigs were a massive hit. The man I made them for used to work in an office called "The Swamp" so it was the perfect theme. For a few hours they lived a condensed version of the celebrity lifestyle with all the trappings of fickle fame. Famous, gossiped about, photographed...and then their adoring public turned on them and consumed them in a vicious flurry. Unfortunately I had to leave the party early...this is what greeted me when I returned;
I'd say it tasted as good as it looked!
And this is my finished product;
So a quick and dirty how to. I made two very moist chocolate cakes (vegan - a recipe to follow shortly) in a 21cm spring-form cake tin and left them overnight to cool in the fridge. I also made the pigs ahead of time. When I say "I", I actually mean "we" because Kat is just better at modelling than me. It's not that I can't make cute little piggy bottoms with sweet little tails attached - it's more that it would take three hours and seven individual tantrums whereas Kat can do it in like ten minutes. Bitch.
A hot tip I got from a website somewhere is to tint the icing not just with pink but with a tiny amount of ivory/flesh/apricot colour as this makes a much nicer pink pig skin colour instead of a lurid pink. It works. You need four trotters, three piggy bottoms and two piggy torsos - one with arms and one without. For the trotters -just roll four balls slightly bigger than a pea and press a bamboo skewer across the middle to make the "cleat". Pea-sized balls pricked with a skewer work for the snout. The bottoms are just balls, again with a bamboo skewer pressed to make the "cleavage" of the bottom. The tails are tiny sausages of icing curled around the bamboo skewer. Belly buttons and eyes are, again, just holes made with the bamboo skewer. The arms on the pig reclining against the edge of the tub are one tube, about ten centimetres long, cut in half and with a snip in each end to form the "cleat". Then they were left overnight to air dry. I highly recommend either making spare parts or keeping some icing wrapped in cling wrap in the fridge in case you need more. Placing the parts in the mud can be challenging and pink piggy parts smeared with mud just don't cut it.
The day after making the cakes and the pigs I took the cakes, cut them in half and layered them with vegan buttercream. I checked the height of the Kit Kats and found that I only needed three of the four halves to make the cake high enough (you need about an inch between the top of the cake and the top of the Kit Kats). After stacking them with buttercream between the layers I coated the sides of the cake with more buttercream to make the Kit Kats stick.
A word on Kit Kats. They're not cheap and for this size tin you need eleven. I got them half price so it wasn't too $$$. I have seen other stuff used but I liked the hot tub look the Kit Kats give. So yeah. 21cm cake tin? Eleven Kit Kats.
Insider tip? Break them in half while they're in their packets - it makes them split easily without shattering. Then start putting them around the edge of the cake so there are no gaps. Finish it off with a pretty bow (I went with pink organza) which not only serves as decoration but keeps the Kit Kats in place while you pour in the "mud".
Okay it's mud time! I went with a 2:1 chocolate to cream ratio. 200g chocolate and 100ml of cream makes a very firm ganache when it sets and it won't run or leak on you. Heat the cream and chocolate together in the microwave, taking it out at frequent intervals to stir so it doesn't burn. Pour into your hot tub and then smooth the top.
And the final part is to place your piggies. I personally recommend using tweezers to place your trotters or you can make like Kat and go through a few replacements while muttering "shut up, shut up, shut up" and making a concerted effort to ignore the tweezers your bud is wordlessly holding out for you. Your call.
The pigs were a massive hit. The man I made them for used to work in an office called "The Swamp" so it was the perfect theme. For a few hours they lived a condensed version of the celebrity lifestyle with all the trappings of fickle fame. Famous, gossiped about, photographed...and then their adoring public turned on them and consumed them in a vicious flurry. Unfortunately I had to leave the party early...this is what greeted me when I returned;
I'd say it tasted as good as it looked!
Kachow!
Any marriage breakdown is full of the "could have, should have, would haves" and I'm no exception. There's a bunch of burning resentments that can drag you down if you let them. Case in point - the ex taking the lawn mower to go mow the new girlfriend's lawn. ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME? Know how many times he mowed our family's lawn in the last five years? ONCE. You want to mow a lawn sunshine? Come mow mine because you OWE me a BUNCH of lawn mowing and that be the tip of the BIGGEST iceberg since the Titanic.
You can see how quickly that sort of thinking snowballs, right? I recently had something of an epiphany about this one. I've got a limited amount of energy to spend in the wake of this separation. I can pour it into anger and resentment over all of the things he failed to do or I can pour it into just getting on with doing those things myself and forging the life that makes me happy in his absence. Obviously I choose option B.
So first up was my little boy's bike. My aunt gave it to him for his third birthday in the (vain) hope that it would prompt the ex into putting it together for him as a father-son bonding session. Here's his bike right up until recently;
Sad, right? So I assembled my not inconsiderable collection of tools and got busy.
Here's my issue with this sort of caper. I've got the tools. I know how to wield them. But oh my God instructions? I have never been the "Insert Tab A into Slot B" type. It doesn't help that they insist on a one-size fits all instruction booklet to cover the nine different kinds of bike they make and you wind up with instructions like, "if your bike has a cam shaft differential prong you will need to rotate the locking pin 90 degrees before insertion. WARNING - If your bike has a fiscal foreign deficit prong and you rotate the locking pin 90 degrees instead of 60 before insertion your child's bike will explode the instant he sits on it taking his genitals with it and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT*." And then there's the vague sketches that are meant to help you identify which model you have as opposed to just writing the model number on the fucking box in the first place and clearly marking the booklet with which instructions apply to which model. I digress.
I gave up on page two straight after the identification of all the parts and decided to wing it. 20 minutes later we had a shiny metallic red bike and one very happy little Viking who insisted it was his "Lightning McQueen" bike, shouting "KACHOW!" while posing for photos with it. Best. Mother. Ever.
* ACME Fuck You Co does not accept liability for any injuries that result as a direct result of your failure to pay the $200 assembly fee on your $60 bike you miserable cheapskate. Best of luck.
You can see how quickly that sort of thinking snowballs, right? I recently had something of an epiphany about this one. I've got a limited amount of energy to spend in the wake of this separation. I can pour it into anger and resentment over all of the things he failed to do or I can pour it into just getting on with doing those things myself and forging the life that makes me happy in his absence. Obviously I choose option B.
So first up was my little boy's bike. My aunt gave it to him for his third birthday in the (vain) hope that it would prompt the ex into putting it together for him as a father-son bonding session. Here's his bike right up until recently;
Sad, right? So I assembled my not inconsiderable collection of tools and got busy.
Here's my issue with this sort of caper. I've got the tools. I know how to wield them. But oh my God instructions? I have never been the "Insert Tab A into Slot B" type. It doesn't help that they insist on a one-size fits all instruction booklet to cover the nine different kinds of bike they make and you wind up with instructions like, "if your bike has a cam shaft differential prong you will need to rotate the locking pin 90 degrees before insertion. WARNING - If your bike has a fiscal foreign deficit prong and you rotate the locking pin 90 degrees instead of 60 before insertion your child's bike will explode the instant he sits on it taking his genitals with it and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT*." And then there's the vague sketches that are meant to help you identify which model you have as opposed to just writing the model number on the fucking box in the first place and clearly marking the booklet with which instructions apply to which model. I digress.
I gave up on page two straight after the identification of all the parts and decided to wing it. 20 minutes later we had a shiny metallic red bike and one very happy little Viking who insisted it was his "Lightning McQueen" bike, shouting "KACHOW!" while posing for photos with it. Best. Mother. Ever.
* ACME Fuck You Co does not accept liability for any injuries that result as a direct result of your failure to pay the $200 assembly fee on your $60 bike you miserable cheapskate. Best of luck.
Tuesday, 15 October 2013
Can I go now?
Some days I think I might be permanently broken. I think I have used up all of myself trying to help others, make things better and there's nothing left over for me. Nothing really prepares you for the moments when you put yourself out there, extend yourself beyond your comfort zones to a place where your heart and health are at risk and you are rebuked as though you came with evil intent.
I'm spent. I'm drowning. And no one is noticing. Kat tells me it is because I do such a good job of emulating someone who is coping. If only she could see the hurt, the anger, the gathering rage which for all it's substance still feels like a superficial film masking a rising tide of black nothing. I don't have the capacity to love the way I used to. I don't want to care about anyone or anything. I am morbidly obsessed with what it would be like to be empty and feel nothing.
I want to be swallowed by the earth, with nothing remaining but the occasional memory. Hey remember that girl with the red hair who smiled even when the tears ran down her face and said she was fine even when she wasn't? What happened to her? I don't know. I think she moved away.
Why does the thought of becoming a whisper seem so attractive? Because if I could fade like that I could give myself permission to take a bow and leave.
Tuesday, 1 October 2013
Family portrait
This weekend I took my babies to the park for a picnic with friends at Floriade. My goal was to get one nice photo of the three of us together. Five attempts. Here's what we got;
Well if nothing else we managed to capture the personality of the subjects in this portrait. *sigh*
Well if nothing else we managed to capture the personality of the subjects in this portrait. *sigh*
Monday, 30 September 2013
FML....and my photinia
So on the back of the can't stop crying thanks to family abandonment issue I decided to do what I usually do...channel my impotent anger and sorrow into something productive. In this case, pruning the photinia that was starting to damage the fort I built for the kids a few years back. Halfway through cutting through the branch that was pushing into the fort there was a cracking sound. Not from the branch but, rather ominously, from near the base. And just like a buxom opera singer on her final curtain call, the whole thing curtsied majestically to the ground.
See all that there photinia? It used to be three metres off the ground. Fuck. My. Life. And fuck the photinia, which I will now have to disassemble with a bloody hand saw and a pair of secateurs. As I stood there in shock, surveying the devastation my sassy pants little girl came and stood beside me.
"Mama," she said quite calmly, "you said you were going to prune it. Not kill it."
Thank you sweetheart.
See all that there photinia? It used to be three metres off the ground. Fuck. My. Life. And fuck the photinia, which I will now have to disassemble with a bloody hand saw and a pair of secateurs. As I stood there in shock, surveying the devastation my sassy pants little girl came and stood beside me.
"Mama," she said quite calmly, "you said you were going to prune it. Not kill it."
Thank you sweetheart.
Sunday, 29 September 2013
Total rant
Today I snapped. Again. I've been crying ever since. See my sister-in-law was pregnant and I had a niece on the way. Like all my previous nieces and nephews I said I'd make her a quilt and took her shopping for fabrics. Know how I found out my niece had been born? Because my ex called me to say he was going to go and introduce his new "partner" to the baby and he wanted to make sure I wasn't going to be there when he did. Didn't even know she'd been born. Still don't know her name or any other details about her birth. Guess I'll pop the quilt in the post if I can bring myself to finish it. Cannot believe his "partner" of six weeks has met the niece I don't even know the name of. Still don't know what the right etiquette is. Do I send an SMS saying congratulations, hope it all went well?
Yesterday my brother-in-law had a family dinner to say goodbye before he goes off to rehab. Not invited. Haven't seen him since. Assume he's gone but no way to know. The final straw came today. I was doing more cleaning and decided to run a few bags of clothes that Charlotte has grown out of over to my other sister-in-law. When I got there I found out my former mother-in-law is across from Perth to see the new baby because she was there. I didn't know that either. In that moment it hit me. I have not just lost my husband, I've lost my family too. I'm totally out of the loop and not even an after-thought. I couldn't help it - I started to cry and I fled.
My sister-in-law sent me an SMS asking me if I was okay and saying they're here for me but I find it hard to believe at the moment. I am so fucking hurt. I've been a part of that family for over ten years and it feels like they, just like Charles, have switched track without a backward glance. I feel disposable all over again. I am trying to tell myself that it must be hard for them. That it's tricky to balance the new dynamic, hard to know what the right thing to do is. But in my head I am going over all the times I've put myself out there for them and in my heart I'm broken.
I think I might be becoming toxic and bitter and I hate myself for it. *sigh*
Yesterday my brother-in-law had a family dinner to say goodbye before he goes off to rehab. Not invited. Haven't seen him since. Assume he's gone but no way to know. The final straw came today. I was doing more cleaning and decided to run a few bags of clothes that Charlotte has grown out of over to my other sister-in-law. When I got there I found out my former mother-in-law is across from Perth to see the new baby because she was there. I didn't know that either. In that moment it hit me. I have not just lost my husband, I've lost my family too. I'm totally out of the loop and not even an after-thought. I couldn't help it - I started to cry and I fled.
My sister-in-law sent me an SMS asking me if I was okay and saying they're here for me but I find it hard to believe at the moment. I am so fucking hurt. I've been a part of that family for over ten years and it feels like they, just like Charles, have switched track without a backward glance. I feel disposable all over again. I am trying to tell myself that it must be hard for them. That it's tricky to balance the new dynamic, hard to know what the right thing to do is. But in my head I am going over all the times I've put myself out there for them and in my heart I'm broken.
I think I might be becoming toxic and bitter and I hate myself for it. *sigh*
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