All Is Grace

lately, Saturdays have been completely out-of-my-ordinary. generally they make me crazy…two or three stressful cakes, running errands, catching up… the recent change is hard to get used to, actually. last week, i sat on the couch the ENTIRE DAY (after an hour and a half delivering a cake) and watched movie after movie. i don’t know what came over Joey…he stayed awake and watched them with me…i’m guessing he actually didn’t feel very well, and it just worked out that we sat and vegged. today, i finished up a cake, cleaned part of the house, and coordinated a wedding…but i was not relegated to my kitchen alone for the whole day. i’m sitting here on the couch at 7pm, watching something on the History Channel about abandoned places…typing. sipping merlot.

what? how does this work??

i think maybe i’ve learned something about caking and timing and working ahead.

i know, terrifying, right?

it only took me about ten years, but i’ve sort of figured out how to pace myself with my cake projects. i used to wait until the day a cake was due (or the day before, at the very most) to bake and decorate and mix and just deal with the stress and panic. now? fondant, buttercream and decorations are made throughout the week. everything else just has to come together on delivery day.

why did i wait so long to pace myself?? why did i procrastinate when i could have worked ahead?

oh. i remember now.

i have like seven other jobs.

that’s right.

the thing is, i don’t have less jobs now than i had when i started all of this. i actually have more. i don’t have less stuff to do. i. have. more. is it maturity? is it my new, handy-dandy planner (oh my gosh, i’m totally going to start calling it that)? is it experience? is it desperation?

i don’t know.

maybe it’s a combination of all of it. i can’t change the amount of work i have to do, but i can approach it with sanity.

i really wish i had figured this out about 4 years ago. or applied it differently way before that.

truthfully, some of this is just about only having two cakes in a weekend, both of them needing to be done at noon on Saturday, and the fact that January has been a slow month for me. some of this has to do with the circumstance, not my brilliance. maybe i actually am growing up. maybe i’m not screwing up all the time as much as i think i am.

and maybe February will be a complete disaster.

but for today, i’ll take it. hope your weekend was quiet or relaxing or settled or not-crazy too.