Train of Thought

It's 3 am. My sleep cycle is totally screwed... or I'm manic. It might be a little of both. Either way, my brain won't shut off. My body is physically tired but I can't go to sleep. Finally, I get up and go to Meijer to buy more baking supplies...

I spent the day Tuesday working on my cookies that I plan to enter in the Gold Medal Cookie Contest on Friday. I got them done just in time to hand some off to the guy that was doing the estimate on our heating and cooling system replacement, then went to work.

I worked til just after 2 am. I was fine when I left work but the drive home was an eternity. I was horribly sleepy. Lately this has been happening to me a lot on this shift. I never set the cruise control when I'm tired and so last night I kept finding myself driving 40 mph on the highway as my foot kept easing off the gas as I got sleepy. It took forever to get home.

In the morning, the heating and cooling guys showed up at 8:30 am to replace our furnace and air conditioner. BANG, BANG, BANG. That's all I heard. I guess I can forget about sleeping in.

Baking all day is physically demanding. It may not look like it but it is, at least for me. I stand all day. My feet hurt. My lower back hurts and my legs ache. My hands and shoulders ache too from constantly stirring and gripping and washing dishes and cleaning off my countertops. I carry a lot of tension in my neck and shoulders. I also have thoracic outlet syndrome - a condition where the tight muscles in the neck and shoulder area actually compress the bundle of nerves and blood vessels that exit into your arms.

So... I woke up in the morning feeling like hell. Exhausted. All my fingers were swollen up like little sausages and I could barely grip a toothbrush. The thoracic outlet syndrome makes my hands swell and I have difficulty doing any fine motor movements or gripping with my hands until I start moving around a bit. Hot shower helped. Then I decided the thing to do was to just sit and try to wake up by going through the 600+ emails in my inbox.

It was my day off. Reading emails led to surfing the internet, catching up on stuff I'd saved to see...

Trena had sent a link to Nikki Kimball's Ultra Running Documentary about her record breaking attempt at running the 273 mile Long Trail in Vermont. It's 55 minutes long.

I love this woman. I can so relate to her mentality. Two of my favorite quotes were...

Women need to take ownership of their dreams.

        and

The highs are so short lived but you will remember them forever.

 

Plus, she eats bacon and Ben and Jerry's during her ultras.

I got done watching it just as the kids got home. Then I had to take G to the eye doctor and grab groceries for dinner and more baking. Dinner got made and I started on a practice cake for this weekend.

My layer cake entry was going to be a pina colada cake. I had visions of a pineapple rum cake with coconut icing. I had a rum cake recipe that was suppose to be made in a Bundt cake pan and then doused in a rum syrup. I cut back on the rum in the cake and replaced some of it with pineapple juice then added crushed pineapple. Baked it all up in three 9" pans and nixed the rum syrup, replacing it with coconut icing. In theory, it all sounded wonderful.

So... this is why you should always practice your visions. The cake came out denser than I wanted. It was, after all, originally a Bundt cake recipe. Plus, even after cutting the rum back to just a fourth of a cup, it was way too rummy... at least for a State Fair cake. It was just too much of an "adult" cake.

Back to the drawing board...or, in my case, the internet. So now it's also about 11 pm. Kids are in bed. It's nice and quiet in the house. Just me and my thoughts, searching for a winning cake recipe. It bothers me that I want to win so much. Why can't I be a mom that just cooks good food? Why am I so damn competitive? But I want to win. I've learned to play the game and I'm pretty good at it. I need a cake that stands out. Something different but not way way off the reservation. I end up on Food Network, looking at recipes from their Ultimate Recipe Showdown: Cakes. I need something that meets all the food safety rules... no whipped cream, no cream cheese... something different. Then I see it. Sweet Potato Layer Cake with Spiced Pecan Buttercream. It sounds intriguing. I've never even heard of Sweet Potato Cake. The recipe reviews say it's fabulous. But I want a picture...

So now I'm searching the internet for sweet potato cakes... and the I find IT. The cake that I want to make. It's on a wonderful blog called Love and Olive Oil. The recipe here sounds better than the one on Food Network. New plan. Use the cake recipe from here but keep the spiced pecan buttercream from Food Network. Then of course, I had to spend time looking at all the other stuff on the Love and Olive Oil blog, including this stunning blueberry cheesecake recipe that I'll have to try. And now it's 1:30 am. I have to go to sleep!

My plan for the upcoming day includes making my layer cake, single layer cake, and honey cake for the Fair. Also have to run to Bloomington for a doctor's appointment and the heating and cooling guys are coming back to finish their installation. We have to go to G's dance studio in the evening. The State Fair Open House is also this evening if we want to see how the items we turned in last weekend did before the Fair officially opens on Friday. Oh, and I have to make my real competition cookies for the Gold Medal Cookie Contest on Friday. It's a full day ahead and I have a million things running through my head so I can't sleep. So I go to Meijer...for sweet potatoes.

Mom? Is that you?
Yes honey, go back to sleep. I just had to run out to the store real quick. And now I'm wide awake. Probably a bit manic too...