Where's My Hamster?

I have a problem that most people, particularly mothers of young children, seem to suffer from. It's usually not too debilitating, but occasionally it makes every day activities next to impossible to perform.

Brain Fog.

It's not that it feels like my brain shuts down, it's more that it keeps moving, but it's not doing anything. "The wheel is spinning, but the hamster is clearly missing," or something to that effect. It really does feel like a fog, and I wander around the house aimlessly trying to figure out what I am supposed to be doing.

When it gets really bad, I can't even read. That's hard for a bookworm like myself to deal with. If you can't read, what can you do?

The other night it was even so bad I could barely do laundry. Almost like I was forgetting how to  fold clothes. This is not normal. At least, this extreme case is not normal.

What is normal is for me to lose my train of thought half-way through what I was saying. This is why I really try to rely on outlining when I write. Otherwise I just ramble and make very little sense. (I did outline this post; I hope it actually helps.)

It's very common for me, and has been for years, to forget a point I wanted to make in an online post after clicking the send button. I apologize to anyone if I miss a question when responding to comments. I promise I'm not doing it on purpose.

So, does anyone else find themselves suffering from this mental wandering? If so, what do you do to cope with it? I've figured out outlining for my writing, but what about other instances, like answering a list of questions, or attempting to do household chores?

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Chocolate Mess

When I made my post about my family Christmas traditions I made the statement that we did not have a traditional dessert. One of my cousins took offense at the statement and reminded me of a dessert that my mom makes almost every year in December: Chocolate Torte.

I'm re-naming it Chocolate Mess. It looks prettier sliced up and arranged on a serving platter. And let me tell you, they are tiny slices. They have to be. The whole cake has a grand total of five cups of sugar. That's right: five. But because of the small slices, this cake would appear at three or four different Christmas parties throughout December.

I'll post the recipe below for those that want to try it once I regain access to it. I would warn you, though, this recipe is for either the incredibly brave, or the incredibly stupid. Personally, I think I fell into the latter category considering the fact that I had a seven-month-old baby to take care of as well as make a time-consuming cake.

I could not find my cake pans when I began this venture. I decided that my loaf pans would do in a pinch. That was my first mistake. You cannot get a spatula down into a loaf pan well enough to loosen the cake layers, so all of those fell apart. I tried pan-frying the batter like a crepe, but couldn't get it quite thin enough, even when I managed not to scorch them.

Fortunately, my mother offered to help me with the cake, so the next day I brought my batter and icing over to her house and she began showing me how she makes this look so easy. It should be noted that my mother made this cake almost every year with no assistance. After my experience, I would recommend that you have two people working on it. It speeds this up and just makes everything go smoother.

There were so many things that she does that are not in the recipe. Like greasing the pans with butter. Granted, I assumed you needed to grease the pans, but Mom has a particular preference for using butter because of the taste. And spreading it with your fingers if you want to be sure that you really got the pan covered. We just used a paper towel with a dab of butter most of the time, though.

The recipe says that it is a twenty-two layer cake. Mine turned out with sixteen layers...I think. If it weren't for the layers that I ruined while attempting to make the cake on my own, I probably would have had twenty or more. Oh well. It still tasted good.

Make the icing in advance. It thickens as you cook it. This is another thing not mentioned in the actual recipe. Also, you will have to wash the pans in between uses. Every. Single. Time. I was actually hoping I could skip that step. No such luck.

But the number one recommendation I would have for anyone that wants to try making this cake for the first time? Find someone that has done it before. Mom finally told me that it took years of making this cake before she had it down to her smooth process. It's worth it, though.

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Random Ramblings

I had a nice little blog post typed up last night. Then my phone ate it. I was far too tired to be bothered with trying to remember what I had written to attempt rewriting it…so I went to sleep.

Now I find myself floundering to find a topic to write about tonight. I have yet to reach the point of tired where the weird ideas start appearing, but I wish I was. Or if I were planning to write tonight and edit tomorrow, I'd wish I was. Last time I wrote while super tired with no clear ideas I wound up with magical koi that feed off excess energy. The scary part is that two days later, that actually made sense in my story arc. NaNoWriMo simultaneously brings out the best and the worst about my subconscious.

My apologies if I keep changing verb tense. I should go back and edit, but while I am not yet so funny that everything is tired, I am a bit worn out.

At this point I consider the phrase "brain dump" to describe what I'm currently doing with this blog post. Stream of consciousness might be another description. Except I'm actually bothering to use punctuation.

Welcome to weird me. I use proper capitalization, punctuation, and grammar at all times. Or at least I try to. The occasional snafu does slip past me. But I cannot stand chat speak. If u typ lik ths, or 1f u typ3 u51ng numb3r5 4 l3773r5 nd w0rd5… Seriously, I'm cringing at that right now, contemplating changing it and making it right. 

OCD. Honestly, I know people who have it far worse than I do. I've just arranged my bookshelf by author and title. I've only contemplated looking up the Dewey Decimal system for my non-fiction books to designate their order on the shelf. I haven't actually done it. At this point I doubt I ever will. Babies keep you busy. 

I think that is quite enough rambling for tonight. Hopefully tomorrow I will come up with something a bit more coherent. I will satisfy myself by leaving the gentle reminder that the point of this blog was to keep writing every day. And I have. Even yesterday, when my phone ate my blog post. 

Weird Tea Moods

I am a chronic tea drinker. I would no longer call it an obsession, it's more of a debilitating habit--without the debilitating part. I can actually survive without it. I just prefer not to.

My favorite teas are unflavored black teas. Occasionally I drink some herbal tisanes, but not as a habit. White teas are okay, and green teas are something I have yet to acquire a taste for after 10+ years of habitual tea drinking.

But my cupboards are filled with more than just my morning, afternoon, and evening unflavored black teas. Yes, I have different kinds for different times of the day. That's very important. I have some flavored teas as well. Now, I know you're thinking that these are reserved for guests, and you are partially right. I do serve my guests the flavored teas if that is what they desire, but they're also for me.

I drink flavored teas when I am in weird moods. Cinnamon is for when I'm sick. Chocolate mint is for when I'm feeling romantic...don't ask. Earl Grey is for when I'm feeling a bit down and weird at the same time.

Then there's Darjeeling. I know, it's not technically a flavored tea. It's just so different. I can't say that I actually like it, but there are times when I want it for some inexplicable reason. When I get the reason figured out, I'll tell you. I suspect it has something to do with being simultaneously tired and hyperactive.

Just keep the green teas away from me. I have yet to be in a weird enough mood to actually want one of those.

Shhhh... I'm Introverting

I'm an introvert. There is no denying it. Some people are somewhere between extrovert and introvert--I believe it is called ambiversion, but I am firmly on the side of introversion. I come from a family of introverts, so it's sometimes hard for me to remember that other people do not function the same way I do.

Rather than explain what introversion is, I want to tell you what it means to me personally. You can find all kinds of information on introversion, what it is, and how introverts behave on average. That's not what I want to do today.

I don't dislike people. I do dislike crowds. They make me nervous.

I don't actually dislike interacting with other people, even strangers. Today, I purposely went inside the bank and Starbucks rather than the drive thru. I even avoided self check-out at Walmart. It is possible that I prefer face-to-face interaction when I know dealing with other people is unavoidable. I have fewer screw-ups going inside than using the drive thru. But I can guarantee that none of these people knew I was an introvert. I'm as friendly as you could wish. I even smile.

Unfortunately, if I am forced to be constantly in the company of other people--even people I like--for days on end, I'm going to start feeling claustrophobic. If I spend a weekend at social events, come Monday, I need another weekend to recover from my weekend.

Even at parties that I'm enjoying I will be very aware of the exits, possible retreats from all the noise (a bathroom or hallway), and what time I am planning to leave. It's nothing against my host or my friends. I just can't handle extended periods of high noise levels well.

Small talk bores me. Almost nothing annoyed me more as a teenager than to be asked how I was doing by someone that I knew perfectly well did not want an honest answer. This was especially true if I didn't think it was any of their business. I nearly insulted a dear friend when I complained about it, and he pointed out that he did care, and it was his business since he was my friend. I'm glad he called me out on it, but if he had not been a true friend, I would not have agreed with his sentiment.

If at all possible, text me. If a phone call is warranted, I would love dearly to have a text as a warning first, but I know that's not going to happen. Phone calls give me anxiety like you would not believe, unless you suffer from it yourself. Even making phone calls is difficult, which is why my sister and grandmother occasionally complain that they don't hear from me often enough. I love talking to my friends, but I hate phones. Phones are evil.

So...comment, text me, tweet me, email me, message me, post on my Facebook wall, but for the love of biscuits and gravy, don't call me about this blog post!

Want to read more about my introverted misadventures?
Check out these posts:

I Hugged a Stranger
Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
Talking To Myself

Adulting

Sometimes I like to pretend that I'm just pretending to be an adult. Then the baby screams and shatters that fantasy.

I think my first clue that I was irrevocably an adult was when I noticed that I was eating oatmeal for breakfast almost every morning for a couple of months. It should be noted that I hated oatmeal as a child and refused to so much as touch it. Almost all of my childhood food aversions have actually become foods I love. Except liver, that stuff is nasty. 

I've always been the type that was only as mature and responsible as I had to be. If I could get away with goofing off, I would. When there was work to be done, that was fine, too. My dad somehow didn't pick up on this trait, and really worried about me when I moved out on my own. Mom, on the other hand, laughed and told him that I would be fine. And I was.

I never was in a hurry to grow up as a child. It just happened naturally and one day I'm eating oatmeal while working on the budget with Baby playing in the floor. What's more, I like the oatmeal, budgets, and my baby. Even if it does mean that I don't get uninterrupted sleep anymore.

Sometimes I do miss the time in my life when the thing I worried over the most was a chemistry test, but I wouldn't return to it now for anything. I'm sure not searching for the receipt to return my little son, moon, and stars. I'll take adulthood as it comes, and let my children take it naturally, too. 

When I'm old and gray, though, I'm looking forward to scandalizing my grandchildren by blowing my straw wrappers at them.

NaNo is over. Now what?

December is upon us. Once again I find myself wondering where the year went...and why I'm not more excited about Christmas. Seriously, have I grown up that much? November went by much too quickly, but that I understand. I was busy during November. Writing.

Yeah, I was one of those crazies that attempted NaNoWriMo. Short for National Novel Writing Month for those that don't know. It's a challenge...emphasis on challenge...to write a 50,000+ word work of fiction during the thirty days of November. I actually finished a day early. Yay me!

What will I do with my rough draft? I'm sitting on it for the month of December. Not literally sitting, it's on my laptop, and I have it on good authority that sitting on my precious computer would be hazardous for its health.

I have yet to decide if I will do revisions in January or not. It's chronologically the first of four stories, but it might make a bit more sense to go ahead and write the next two rough drafts at least so that I have a cohesive whole. I've asked my brain why it can't come up with anything simple, but I didn't understand the answer.

So...since I decided that writing is fun, and a good habit for me to have, I thought, "Why not start a blog?" I've done the journal thing off and on since I was a kid, and I always worry that someone will find it and read what I've written. Solution: post it for the world to see as a reminder not to write anything I wouldn't want to be read.

I make no promises to be interesting. I think I'm interesting, but that's good since I have to live with my own thoughts day in and day out. It's a useful exercise to empty some of those random thoughts. Somehow they don't feel the same if I've got them on paper--or computer screen. Will I do NaNoWriMo next year? Who knows? I'll probably always have a story to tell.


Want to read more about my 2014 NaNoWriMo project?
NaNoWriMo Editing Plans
Did I Write Feminist Literature?
What I Did To Silence My Inner Editor

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