Ruptdate

Baby Sunflowers
Originally uploaded by darntootindevra

The summer will be ending for me soon.

My primary inclination is to dread to upcoming semester, to spin the future into some dreadful disaster that will inevitably end horribly. However, there was a time when I really loved school, and looked forward to new classes the way one looks forward to summer vacation. I loved the excitement of the unknown, the promise of new friends, new information, new school supplies.

This is a different time of my life, one with many new worries and preoccupations. I worry about money and the world ending, about my physical appearance and whether my plants are getting too much or not enough water. About Tim, and what I'll be doing in the future. In other words, shit that I have little to no control over, or shit that is not that big a deal at all.

Originally uploaded by darntootindevra

I have always said that change really frightens me. I'm starting to realize that my fear stems from being happy. I can understand why I wouldn't want things to change if I'm happy the way they are, but it isn't realistic.


I have been increasingly interested in gardening over the past month. I've since put in a few hardy fountain grasses, lavender and rosemary, in an attempt to start off simple and not stress anything out too much by planting in the summer. They seem to be doing well, mostly because the fledgling drip irrigation system I've got set up. I now am charge of taking care of my old neighbor's garden, since she moved out and lives 45 minutes away. My boyfriend's sister gave us her worm bin, because she wasn't having much success with it, and his Mom gave us worms. The wormies seem to be doing well, active, damp and cool.

Yesterday was another gem of a day, both Megs and I had the day off, which was out of the ordinary for a Monday. Got out to the house and painted with her, then she, Erin, the baby and I went for a five mile walk to the farmer's market. We stopped to buy my bike, and then to the playground. We went home, ate burritos, made a fire in the pit, and watched Two Fat Ladies.

I have weekends off this semester, but I hope that the weekdays won't be so crazy that I'll miss out on the shit that matters. If I need to bring my homework over to the house then I will.

photographix

Flickr update.

A summer of scenes

I return from a long, stupid silence without pictures, exciting news, or even anything that cheerful. I am blogging just to blog, content with the mundane un-extravagance that plagues these pages.

This summer has been what my friends have been affectionately calling the "Summer of our Lives". I waver between absolute agreement with that phrase and bitter cynicism, my uncool enthusiasm and dampening sporadic depressions going hand in hand in what seems to be an almost unsettling series of days that vary so dramatically that I honestly don't have any idea what to make of it all. I will attempt to catch up slowly, landmark situation at a time. I begin with the most exciting.

A few weeks ago I helped deliver Jason Schwartzman's wedding cake in LA with my boss, Yarrow. I blog about this now, hoping that this isn't invasive to anyone's privacy.

Sir Schwartzman got married to a woman named Brady. She's a small, cute, stylish woman that actually came into the Cakery to order the cake a month or so ago. She's a fashion designer. The wedding was at her parents house in Studio City, a big, LA house with a secluded yard, where was valet parking, if you can believe it. There was another cake in the car with us, for a different wedding the next day that we were delivering for the same wedding coordinator at this wedding. We were gonna knock off two cakes with one stone. The drive down there was fun with Yarrow. She's hilarious, always regaling you with some crazy story, like how her first job was working the drive through at Der Weinerschnitzel, and because she was really into acid at the time, she remembers very little of it. Or of the crazy woman who lived in the apartment below her in Berkeley that had a crack rock stuck in her teeth when she told Yarrow about her hot date one night.

But the mirth dissipated the moment the smaller wedding cake fell apart 30 minutes away from our destination. Buttercream covered almost everything, it was like a huge bird was caged inside Yarrow's tiny Toyota Matrix, and shit white, wet substance all over everything. Including the small coconut side cake meant specifically for Jason Schwartzman to eat all to himself that was a surprise, since he loooves coconuts so much. The good news however, was pretty damn good. 1) The cake that exploded was not meant for today, but tomorrow, so Yarrow could re-make it and drive it back down in the afternoon the next day. 2) the huge cake that was meant to serve one hundred some odd of the Indie World Elite, which could have very well included Francis Ford Coppola, was unscathed. 3) The coconut for Jason was made out of fondant, which is a sugar dough that hardens with time. It created a hard, protective shell for the cake underneath it. And though the shell was covered in frosting, it did wipe off, leaving it changed only slightly in color if wiped very gingerly.

The bads news was that we were now late, and it was 100 degrees outside and the big cake was now melting. And it was my job to carry the coconuts in my lap wiping off the mess, but instead of using a towel, which Yarrow forgot to bring, I was using Kleenex. So now the car, once filled with the bright laughter of light hearted women and stories of drug use, was completely silent, save an occasional deep, anxious breath, and the tense, constant whirring of the air conditioner, now going full blast as I slowly tremulously wiped off the frosting with kleenex after kleenex.

When we got off at our exit, it was now my job to make sure that the big cake did not tip over on the steep, windy roads on the way to the house. I did this by crawling to the back of the hatchback with the seats down, kneeling down next to the cake, and holding my hands out so that if it tips, I guess I could catch it with my bare hands. I guess I should tell you about the cake now. It was huge, about 70 pounds, in the shape of a big, white tower. A castle tower, I guess. The white bricks were accented with bricks of light pastel colors, like yellow, pink, and blue. It was also covered in fondant.

Now that I'm back here with the cake, I immediately wish I weren't. This is because I now have a full knowledge of how close we came to disaster because every bump, every turn, reveals how precariously the cake was secured. Not only this, but I am also completely unsecured, on my knees, without even my hands to brace me, because they are surrounding this big fucking cake. So if it fell over, there's no way that whatever makes it fall over won't make me fall over too. Even further on up the hill, the streets get really fucking steep, and the cake is tipping. So its my job to now wedge my hands underneath the cake board and lift it slightly so that it is level. And it is in this manner that we arrive at Jason Schwartzman's wedding.

And sure enough, when we arrive, so do the guests. And some of them are surrounding our car, gawking at me in their smart indie cocktail dresses and fedora hats. They see a destroyed cake and I'm sure they assume that we fucked up. Yarrow gets out of the car, and talks to the wedding coordinator, with the car closed, the A/C off, and with me, kneeling down in buttercream, sweating, with my mitts pried underneath a cake that is almost a hundred pounds. I wait. When they open the car and take the cake in, I stay behind, beginning to wipe myself down, and the car. We're looking ok, when Yarrow comes out and says, "So I'm gonna need you to cover the coconuts when you bring them in, because they're meant to be a surprise and he's right there." Huh. So we go in, and I immediately feel like some sort of slave on a plantation. I do not want to look at any of the guests in the eye, I do not want to be seen.

I did get to see the house, and the decorations though. There was no lawn on the ground, but actual circles of lawn sprawled intermittently in no pattern whatsoever. There was a gigantic mural on the wall, not made of stones or paint, but entirely of fresh flowers. We're talking like, 14 feet by like, 10 feet. Pure, fresh flowers. I see Fiona Apple, wearing a backless dress that exposes her bony back perfectly. I think, I will never get such a good look at a celebrity's skeleton. We're inside, the cake is down. I'm watching, and I see a big sculpture of a French Bulldog made up of what appears to be only plant matter. This is Arrow, Jason's dog, whom I saw surrounded by people outside. There are children sitting quietly on a couch, wearing white, linen, matching outfits that look like they are undergarments from the 1830's. I see the woman that played Adrian in the Rocky movies. I later found out she is his mother. There are bowls of food, but they aren't really there for eating. They're things like kumquats and gochi berries, fruits chosen for their asthetic value. Lots of neutral colors, white walls, smart outfits worn by wealthy, attractive hipsters. I am excused to go start the car while Yarrow takes a picture of her cake, and I go to open the front door when it is opened from the outside before I get to the knob. I am then face to face with the man of the hour, wearing a plum colored suit and large, glittering, silver aviator sunglasses. I laugh, and scurry away.

Yarrow's camera was out of batteries, so I only have shitty pictures on my phone, taken from the front of the car at the beginning of the trip, when the world was my oyster and Yarrow was out arranging flowers for a quincenera cake in Santa Maria. It doesn't really do the cake justice. It doesn't look like some sacred item that caused my boss and I so much anxiety that one would think we both had schizophrenia by the way we were acting at the end of the trip. It just looks like a big, cylindrical white mass. Which I guess it was.

I hope to continue with my trip to the Bay Area, Disneyland, the sweet moments inbetween. But one can rarely depend on me for regular blogging, so let's just hope I get some of it done before this hellish semester starts.

ganache and summer

My friend Jamie is visiting from London this summer, and she's driving down to the area tomorrow for a visit!

Her birthday was in April, and I'm pretty infamous for how shitty I am about birthdays, so I thought I'd I'd make it up to her a bit by making her a late bee day cake.



White cake with strawberry filling and ganache icing.

ATTN: BAX

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une autre gateau

A teeny cake for Tim's dad and sister's birthday. I won't be able to go, because Rhinoceros has a matinee tomorrow.

newest cake

My friend Jeremy's birthday is on Thursday, and his wife Melissa threw him a surprise party on Saturday. I wanted to make him a cake, and since Jeremy is truly the best guitarist I have ever met in person, her suggestion to make him a guitar cake seemed perfectly reasonable.



It was a challenge, as usual, working with a really small space, sub par tools, and not really knowing what I'm doing. But I did notice that the little techniques I picked up when working as a cake decorator at the cafe really helped a shit ton. Icing, for example, and knowing how to drape and knead and properly handle the fondant. Keeping the iced cake super cold helped a lot too, keeping the mess at a minimum and the fondant sturdier. I made my own fondant again this time, for purely financial reasons---the stuff is expensive. I had the ingredients on hand, and so I made a night of it and made it a couple of days beforehand. I really recommend doing the cake thing in parts, especially since cake and frosting making take so much time. It keeps well when wrapped and refrigerated properly, and the assembly is really what you want to focus on, not getting your sink and counter cluttered with all the B.S you accumulate when baking.



You can see my "cake face" perfectly in these photos, the expression I make when concentrating on being as coordinated as possible. You can also see the crumb coated cake.



I'm pretty happy with it, and Jeremy liked it a lot, so I consider it a success.

I will leave you with these pictures of my cat Leona after a much needed bath: