The Baker’s Notebook - September

I haven't written a personal blog in almost eight weeks, which is probably a good indication of how my brain has been functioning lately. There has been plenty going on, but most of it has been bakery stuff, and after thinking about wholesale orders, markets, schedules and invoices all day, the last thing I wanted to do was sit down and write about them again. So I thought I'd try something a little different. Think of this as a peek into my notebook—a place for the things I've been thinking about lately, whether they're important, completely ridiculous, or somewhere in between. Some weeks it might be a few things from my day. Some months it might be something I've been reading or thinking about. And sometimes it may just be whatever happens to be taking up space in my head. Basically, this is the part of my brain that doesn't fit neatly into a regular blog post.

My diary? How very elementary school of me. My journal? Ok, now I’m a grown up. My NOTEBOOK? Look at me, I’m a scientist with thoughts. And some of those thoughts are really mundane. Read all about it.

Godzilla
He died. I buried him in the garden, and I've been thinking about that.

Godzilla, a teeny leopard gecko, came into my life six years ago when he was already six years old. He needed a new home and I had kept lizards in the classroom when I was a teacher. I knew they didn’t live very long, so I figured I could give him a good life until the end (it seemed low commitment). And the “end” lasted six years. He was cute and easy to take care of, but I’m too old to have a lizard as a pet. That’s a pet for kids and for those big reptile people. And I am neither.

But I gave him a good life and now he’s out there decomposing in the garden and enriching the veggies. Is that macabre? Maybe. But you can’t just flush him down the toilet like your dead goldfish. He’s out there giving back to the Earth. Honestly, he was a real one - I think he would approve.

My increasingly elderly automobile
Every sensor in my car has reached retirement age simultaneously.

The car, or should I say, my beloved favorite car brand ever, the Acura, is one old lady. She’s 17, so in car years, that’s about 96.

And I never want her to die because she’s the best and has been paid off for years and years. But only one of the daytime running lights works, and I cannot turn the working one off. And these aren’t the headlights, so it confuses people. People constantly tell me I have a headlight out - but those still work. The leather seats have fully cracked, and the tire sensors go off every time I drive it. So, now I constantly worry about a breakdown, but I fear I’ll just end up turning into one of those people that drives their car with every alert light on and turns up the volume on the radio if I hear a weird noise. Oh wait, that’s always been me.

Lifting heavy things and kicking down doors
On the advice of some internet website about dealing with fibromyalgia (there are so many websites with advice- and I think I picked the wrong one), I used to do 20 minutes of cardio a day. They (the internet) said 20 was enough but not too much to put you in a flare. But then I would do 20 minutes on the treadmill and work a 12-hour bake day full of heavy lifting, crouching, bending, and bad posture. Anyway, that was not working for me. I was beyond fatigued every day. So, I stopped doing cardio, started lifting heavier, and somehow have considerably more energy. Plus, I have the added bonus of super strong legs and arms - if anyone needs to me to kick doors down or help them move a couch, I got you.

A very brief crush
I haven't had one in ten years, or maybe because I’m not in middle school. It lasted four weeks. I enjoyed it. I deliberately did nothing about it. He has charisma, confidence, and intelligence (more of a wit), but does he have a girlfriend? No idea. A wife? We’ll never know. Does he know I had a crush? Absolutely not. I highly recommend this to any single people out there if you are thinking about dating again. Get a crush and do nothing about it. Apparently, fantasy is better than reality, at least for this Aries. Plus, you don’t ever have anyone asking, “What’s for dinner?’

Ray Kurzweil has me thinking about the future
I’m reading The Singularity Is Near and loving it. It was written in 2005 and predicts when AI meets, then surpasses, humans. That prediction is 2030. Yikes.

I think I like it because it’s well written by a very intelligent person and it makes me feel like all the reality tv I used to watch didn’t make me as dumb as I thought. I almost (and I said almost) miss my Ph.D. program classes where I used to have intelligent conversations with intelligent people all day long. Now I mostly talk about cake.

And don’t get me wrong, I LOVE cake. This body was built by cake. I just miss deep, engaging, make-you-think conversations.

I think that's why I love reading so much. It gives me a way to wander around outside of whatever I happen to be doing for a living. I have always had wildly varied interests, and I like that I can spend one week reading about artificial intelligence and the next week reading about something completely unrelated, like how to make your own soap. This one just happens to be what's in my head right now.

My big baking life

Things have been all over the place for the bakery lately. Markets are winding down, wholesale seems to be stuck in place, and it’s been so hot that cookies were melting on my cooling racks. I have spent approximately 900 hours this summer thinking about how to make this business work without making myself crazy, which is probably why I didn't want to write about it here, too.

Is it too much to ask for the wholesale to be more predictable? The pre-orders and markets are NEVER predictable, so I was hoping for wholesale to be my steady rock. It is not. And I’m not really the type of person to harass these businesses more than I already have, so if you guys want to get on that- go for it.

And I SO want to write and film a bunch of recipes for that part of the website, but I don’t know what I am doing half the time. Did a bunch of orders come in that I had to move to this week, last minute? Did I get zero wholesale orders or ALL the wholesale orders? Is the market going to be busy or is everyone out of town? Honestly, I’m tired of worrying about it. It’s exhausting.

So let’s all just think about the candy bars, because they are back in a week, and I LOVE making them.

—Annie