high-bar baking

At this point I’m hopelessly behind and out of order, so I’m putting my hands up in the air and just coming back as I am. If posts chronologically don’t make sense, so be it. Better to do it anyway. 

We have entered fall-winter, the weird span of time in Salt Lake when the leaves are colourful and rain turns to snow in a day and we’re all just expected to go along with it. When I wake up with hair just as wet as it was when I went to bed and goosebumps become embarrassingly large stretches of razor burn. (Who let me use a razor, anyway? Just last week I sliced my calf diagonally like I was 13 all over again). A season where sometimes you read a book all day. And feel inspired enough to go for a one mile run, to set a baseline time for the training you might start doing toward a sub-eight minute mile. No, that’s not a typo, I’m just that slow. 

I want to train for something again, was the overwhelming takeaway of finishing the book. I haven’t fought like the protagonist in a long time. I miss it. I won’t go back to boxing, but I do miss hitting. And being hit. Things you can’t understand until you do them. Both are fun. For different reasons. Maybe clarifying is the better word. 

I ran a half marathon, and then I retired. My resting heart rate went to hell in a hand basket. I shouldn’t be winded going up the stairs. That’s not me. I shouldn’t be outpaced by my college friends, the “nonathletes.” Not that I ever saw myself as an athlete. Still doesn’t mean I want fifth-floor walkups to kick my ass. 

But it’s not even the shape. It’s the struggle, I think. Trying for something. Caring. Suffering. Is that too weird to say? We trained for eight weeks (most of us trained the whole year) for three six-minute fights. That ratio is insane. But that’s what we did. Most of it was just work. I don’t have that anymore. 

I suppose I just miss the clarity. The goal. Any goal. A benchmark against which to compare myself. Even if the benchmark is dumb and a little fake, like finishing a half instead of being good at it. Hey, high school me never thought she’d do that. 

It’s down the back / but who cares / Still the Louvre.

Another, from Sugarland this time: There’s gotta be something more. 

I was proud of this one, because this friend is basically impossible to impress. He loves my coffeecake, and I’d given up on finding anything else that would make him half as happy. I say that. Do we ever give up on the people we love? I kept trying in the Snickerdoodle vein, and I came up with a winner. Maria’s Brown Butter Snickerdoodle Blondies again, this time for a birthday. Sometimes, more is more. 

And sometimes the only thing we can do is create our own meaning.