high-bar baking

I sometimes want to ask surgeon friends of mine a very rude question. 

“Do you worry about your hands?”

And they probably don’t, not any more than any other of my friends do. But then I’m at lunch reading Anne Lamott, and she’s talking about the impermanence of life, and then my hand shakes ever so slightly putting the bookmark back.

And I wonder. 

Because I’ve never had particularly steady hands; this comes out when i do something like pipe frosting onto cupcakes. Though I do feel worse at it than I actually am. They always turn out fine. 

But what if it mattered? What if you spent the better part of two decades honing your brain in concert with your hands to stay steady and strong and skilled? It makes me think about Doctor Strange, shattered like that. And I’m confident anyone (other than Cumberbatch, apparently) who survived that kind of training would pivot and thrive in no time (although, I suppose he did?). But I do think about it. 

How delicate most things are.

I’ve no idea anymore what I did to the leavening; probably halved it? I could have gone a little further. Gotta love altitude.