Kitchen Aid Mixer

I got a wild idea that I want to do some Holiday baking. For those of you who know me well, you know this is probably not the best idea. While I enjoy cooking and have developed some skills, I am NOT a baker. I have a tendency to burn things. I lose my patience with cookies because I believe they take too long with mixing, scooping on the cookie sheet, baking, removing from the over and cooling. I have a bad habit of mixing up the baking soda and baking powder. I could go on and on about why baking isn't my gig. But I wont.

Today I am baking a pumpkin dessert to take to dinner with my dad's dad's cousin's wife. Eunice lives just a few miles from me in Ypsilanti, MI. This is great to me because I am HOURS from South Dakota, where I was born and where most of our family still lives. I am excited to meet her son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughters.

So, back to what I intended to blog today..... When I made the list of things I want to bake, I decided it would be easier to tackle all of it with the use of a Kitchen Aid Mixer. I don't have one, but my mother-in-law does so I asked to borrow hers. Rick brought it home a couple days ago. I just used it for the first time. WOW!! It made things go so much faster, and it was a ton easier than the mess I would have made without it. Needless to say, my wish list now has a Kitchen Aid Mixer on it.

Writing

Many years ago, I did a little writing. Sometimes poems, sometimes just what I was thinking at the time. I once started to write a short story and was using Microsoft Word to do so. But I password protected the document and managed to forget the password. Maybe someday I will try again. This afternoon, I was looking through a box of old photographs and came across something I wrote a while back. I have never shared any of my writing, but thought I would now.

Blue and Orange
Standing between the two houses, I wonder, "What if...?" These two words haunt my every movement. The house on the right is blue. The house on the left is orange. It's not the outside of the houses but the inside that confuses me. On the inside, the orange house is blue and the blue house is orange. I am sure these colors represent something. Maybe sadness, frustration or confusion. But when I try to understand, the colors become brighter, almost blinding.

When I sit on the porch of the blue house, I am sad. I can see the orange house from here. I wonder what it's like on the inside. This mystery makes me sad so I go inside to forget the sadness, but the orange walls here frustrate me more. They are fulled with commitment and resentment. Commitment to a love that doesn't die. And resentment of that love that causes another death. Not a death of a body or soul. But the death of a spirit. A spirit that gives me energy to run and to laugh. The twisting combination of commitment and resentment drain me of the spirit and energy. So I go back to the porch. And I sit... staring at the orange house.

Eventually I journey off the porch. I find myself getting closer to the orange house When I get there, I am afraid to go in. So here, too, I sit on the porch. I can't go in. I am afraid of what I will find. So I sit on the porch looking at the blue house. Remembering the commitment and resentment I felt there drives me to go inside the orange house. The blue walls make me sad. Sad because of resentment and commitment. A resentment of the circumstances that caused a commitment to die.