Absolute Poppycock

“Hurry!” I say to them as we’re rushing out the door for anything you choose: school, scouts, church, piano, fun at the park. “Please.Come.On!” I insist, louder, my voice trilling up to something akin to a screech. “NOW!” and I have blown past screeching to unadulterated yelling. They hurry now, realizing that I am mad. Their faces show the dread of what follows my yelling; my temper is not pretty, particularly when I feel impatience rising up in me, vile and ugly. I do not like this me, angry and hurried, harried and haggard.

I long to move slower.

 

I keep thinking, “Ten minutes. If there were just ten extra minutes, we would be on time. all day. Why are we always late? Why are we always rushing?” I know the answer, know it like I know the freckles sprinkled across Abigail’s nose and the shape of the café au lait spot on Gracie’s calf. We are always rushing not because we need ten more minutes. We are rushing because I haven’t engaged with the girls until seconds before it’s time to leave. I tell them, “Get your shoes! Brush your hair! Don’t forget your teeth!” I bark these orders absent-mindedly while I answer one more email, type one more line of code, click one more link on Pinterest, like one more post on Facebook. And then I am surprised when I finally look up, pay attention to something other than myself, and they, these unfocused girls of mine, have done nothing that I have asked. I am mad at them for not listening I tell myself. Truthfully, the one who deserves my anger is me. We don’t need ten more minutes. They, we, me need ten minutes of undivided attention. They, we, me need to admit to me, us, the universe that multi-tasking is an oxymoron, something that would be more aptly titled do-nothing-well-and-everything-piss-poorly-tasking.

I flirt with an idea that is dancing around in the far corners of my brain, almost out of reach. What if I do one thing at a time and do it well? What if I stand with my daughters while they brush their teeth, help them, nurture them. Hello! Mother them. What if Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance could translate to Zen and the Art of Getting My Daughters Out the Door on Time. What if? What if? What if? No, I scoff at myself…I don’t have time to do that. I .don’t.have.time. A whisper of a conversation I had with an acquaintance tickles my memory. “How do you do everything?” she asks and I answer, in a moment of rare honesty. “I do lots of things, but I don’t do anything well.” I.don’t.have.time.

Maybe, just maybe I do have time. Time. Time to do things slowly. separately. well. Maybe if I have time I will have time. Maybe, just maybe I think to myself, it would be better to do less, but do it better. Maybe my Facebook page will lay dormant; maybe my Pinterest boards will be empty of the coolest craft that I never have time to do. Maybe, though, we’ll get out the door on time for anything and everything. And maybe the me, the hurried and harried, angry and haggard me that I do not like, maybe there won’t be any time left for her.

I stand with my girls, zipping them up in their puffy winter coats adorned with purple hearts and pink Peace signs. We are not late and I do not use words profane when the zippers get stuck in the nylon. I help Gracie with her backpack and Abigail with her shoes and when we can’t find one of her white tennis shoes, I do not feel my heart race and color flood my face; instead, I shrug and pull out the scruffy black Mary Jane’s that she’d rather wear anyway. I do not scream; I do not yell. We have time. Simple, beautiful, joyful time. As we count our God presents on the cold drive to school, I do not feel stressed. I chatter along with them as they shout out the presents God gave them today. “Church!” “The community center!” “Mrs. Murphy!” “Mommy!” “Abigail!” “Gracie!” “Hot Chocolate on a cold morning!” At the top of my list of God’s presents today is time, time enough to go slowly. I do have time.

Despicable Daddy Party

I think I’ve mentioned a time or two that I adore my husband.  Really, I do.  And not just in the “gosh I love this man because he puts up with my insane ideas and we’ve been together forever so we can finish each other’s sentences”  totally comfortable but not so exciting kind of way.  I also love him in the “he makes my heart do flip-flops and his kisses turn my knees to jelly” first crush kind of way. You wouldn’t know that I love him at all, though, based on the amount of attention I give Father’s Day and his birthday.

I think I’ve mentioned before that Steve’s birthday and Father’s Day generally fall within a couple of days of each other.  And, somehow, I manage to always be in the middle of some kind of work or personal crisis during those days.  I barely even said “Happy Father’s Day” to Steve on his very first Father’s Day because I was behind the 8-ball on a HUGE software development contract.  I hope that I make up for my wifely horridness on other days like our anniversary and Christmas and Valentine’s Day.  And, I hope, truly, that I show him every day, in little ways, exactly how important he is to me.

This year, I elevated my slackness to a new level.  The girls and I weren’t even home for his birthday or Father’s Day.  Really, I think he has ample grounds for leaving me and taking everything I own…wait, all I own is an 8-year-old van that sounds like it has bronchitis and a slew of craft supplies.  I haven’t made up for Father’s Day yet, but I think the girls and I did a pretty good job of making up for the missed birthday this past Sunday.

Steve isn’t easy to shop for (he disagrees with this, but I stand firm in my believe that it’s easier to just tell him to go buy what he wants than to guess if I’m buying the correct shape of watch or right color of shoes).  So, rather than shower him with gifts that he may or may night like, we decided to have a family birthday party for him.

Now, please remember that my husband turned 41 this year.  So, it seemed totally appropriate to me that we would throw him a party that would be perfect for a preschooler.  To my credit, Steve LOVES Despicable Me.  Like in a cult classic way (and I can appreciate that, having been to more than one midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show).  I’m sure that he could probably recite the entire dialog of the film – that is if he could stop laughing long enough to talk.  I’d venture a guess that Despicable Me is one of his favorite movies of all time.  So, when I saw these ideas for a Despicable Me party at PluckyMomo a few months ago, I knew that the girls and I had to create a party like this for Steve.  And, I’m not sure who had fun…Steve, the girls, or me! 

I think my favorite part of the evening was Abigail running around the back yard hugging her stuffed unicorn screaming “It’s so fluffy! It’s so fluffy, I’m gonna DIE!”  just like Agnes did in the movie.

It was a great evening of minion bowling, eating stuffed crust pizza and cupcakes, shooting aliens, drinking shark punch, playing Pin The Goggles on the Minion and finally reading Sleepy Kitten (I happened upon the book at Amazon by sheer luck.  I’m so glad I did – it was the perfect ending to the party!)

I hope Steve knows that despite our craziness, all three of his girls love him!

 

I made this dessert for our Mother’s Day Tea a few weeks ago (I seriously need to blog about that and where I came up with the idea for it…soon, very soon).  Anyway, I wanted to make a pretty cake with a slightly different flavor and this fit both bills. 

It is a pink champagne cake with pink champagne buttercream frosting tinted pink and white.  It was good.  Really, really good.  It was also sweet. Very, very sweet.  Like I could only eat a tiny slice.  Gracie, however, would have eaten the whole thing in one sitting if I let her.  And that girl generally doesn’t like cake.

Anyway, I saw the ruffled cake on Martha Stewart sometime in March.  (Steve, if you’re reading this…yes, I go to Martha Stewart’s website. Often. Very often.  Steve does not like Martha Stewart.  There are some things we agree to disagree about in our marriage.  Martha is one of them)  So, I knew how I wanted to decorate it early on. 

Then, sometime in April I saw a recipe for Pink Champagne Cake in a magazine.  It looked wonderful.  So I put a bookmark on the magazine page and then promptly lost the entire magazine.  So, two days before the tea I was scouring the internet for pink champagne cake recipes.  Luckily, I found several!

Some of the cake recipes where from scratch.  I would have liked to have tried one, but they were fairly labor intensive.  I knew I wanted to make homemade frosting and I was cooking several other things for the Tea, so my time was somewhat limited.  I decided to take the easy path and start with a cake mix and doctor it up.

I knew I wanted a tall cake and I realized after I finished the pink champagne cake that I didn’t have as much height as I wanted, so I made up a white cake mix for the center layer (I used 1/2 the mix and made cupcakes with the other 1/2).  I used whole eggs instead of the egg whites that the box called for so the cake would be dense enough to not collapse under the top layer of pink champagne cake.  If you don’t care about height, you could certainly leave this layer out.  I think it looked really pretty, though, with the white and pink cake together!

So, here’s the recipe:

Pink Champagne Cake

1 box French Vanilla cake mix (you could use a white cake mix)

1 1/3 cups pink champagne, chilled (if you’re using the white mix, just replace the liquid amount with equal parts champagne)

1/3 cup vegetable oil

3 large eggs

1- 2  Tablespoons pink food coloring (use more or less to get the color you want)

Mix cake as directed on box (mix in the food coloring after you’ve already combined and mixed everything else).  Pour into 2 prepared 8 inch round cake pans.  Bake as directed. 

After baking, let the cakes cool in the pans for five minutes.  Then, remove them from the pan and let them cool completely on a wire cooling rack.  Frost with Pink Champagne Buttercream Frosting.

 

Pink Champagne Buttercream Frosting

1 cup butter, softened
4 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup champagne
1 tablespoon vanilla
5-5 1/2 cups additional powdered sugar

Pink food coloring

 

Beat butter for 30 seconds. Gradually add 4 cups powdered sugar. Beat in milk, champagne and vanilla.  Gradually beat in 5-5 1/2 more cups powdered sugar until it reaches the consistency you want. Add food coloring a drop at a time to the frosting until it reaches the color you want. 

 

**Note:  If you can’t find or don’t have pink food coloring, you can use red – you’ll just use less***

 

 

Enjoy with a glass of cold mike or a flute of champagne!