Guaranteed to get double takes

So, it's been a little while since I've updated. I could come up with a variety of reasons, ranging from the large stack of school work I have (I have to read Beowulf, the Canterbury Tales, and Hamlet in the next two weeks, because I've not yet and I need to for my English class), to my own inclination to put off doing something I'm good at, because I figure eventually I'll write something really awful and never be able to post a blog again for the shame of it. Hey, I'm a variety of contradictions and oddities. You get used to it.

But a picture says a thousand words, and this one says a lot about how my mornings have been for the past eleven days:


It's from the morning after the Atari's show, so I was basically talking myself into getting out of bed. A lot of mornings look like that for me. Only my hair usually hasn't decided to stick up in seventeen different directions. Most mornings, it limits itself to six.

So what have I been doing, besides procrastinating?

Cleaning. And getting ready to cave into the fact that I want to bake.

I spent all of Saturday cleaning my house, and nearly vacuumed our dog by the end of the day. To say that she sheds would be an understatement; it's more like she's trying to go bald, and failing miserably. There was fur in piles around the game cube, in shoes, in the spider webs I sucked out of the corners. Whenever Dreamer gets excited, she sheds, which is perhaps the most aggravating thing in the world. The shedding just never, ever ends. If she wouldn't hide under my mom's bed for several days afterward, I really would vacuum her.

The upside to all the cleaning (it really wasn't that fun; if I ever meet anyone who can say cleaning is fun, I will assume that I just met Martha Stewart. And I will walk away) was that I got to fill up the CD player and actually got to listen to some albums I either hadn't gotten to yet, or hadn't really just listened to in a while. Nellie McKay's new album kicks ass; anyone that can sing a song about feminists and another song about zombies and have you singing along to both is pretty much a genius.

So, I'm gonna talk about the aforementioned baking, and then I've got notes to type up, textbooks to read, and other fun bits and pieces to do that fill my day and leave me wondering if giving up coffee was really such a brilliant idea.

I haven't baked anything in a month. I used to bake at least once a week, and, after a month of not baking, I think I'm finally going through withdrawal. I look at bags of cocoa and wonder how many cupcakes I would get out of it. I pick up jars of instant espresso powder and put them back several times during shopping trips. There is no substitute for baking- not learning, not knitting, not the Internet. I want to bake.

I used to bake for this one guy, but he moved up north a few months back, and as good as I am at baking, I don't think my stuff can survive the mail. I also used to bake for Donkey, but my mom's taken that over for the time being- I make banana nut muffins. She makes pumpkin muffins. Pumpkin muffins trump banana nut muffins. I would complain, but when I can eat three in a row without blinking, I probably shouldn't. Technically speaking, I've had no reason to bake for the past month. But when you really love something, you like to do it even when you have no reason. Besides, nothing can brighten one's day like giving someone a still warm pudding cake and seeing their reaction.

I also have been, in a way, avoid baking lately, because I think once I start again, I won't stop. My parents would come home to find me surrounded by cupcakes, muffins, cookies, and several different types of frosting. You can only give away so much before your friends can't eat anymore, and my family is kind of iffy when it comes to some of my more experimental cupcakes (green tea cupcakes ended up going to the dog (they tasted odd to me too); chum (chai and rum) cupcakes had to be encouraged. Heavily. Alcohol bakes off when you cook. They didn't really believe me.).

Even though I want to bake so much that I'm not sure if I'll be able to stop, I'm going to. Because I need something that is not processed and filled with high fructose corn syrup, that I know will taste good. In addition to the needing something I know is healthy, or that I can at least pretend is healthy (vegan cupcakes are healthy... right?), I promised a couple of people from around town some baked goods. Besides, the looks I get when I walk around town with boxes full of goodies are almost as good as the ones I get when I wear my peep hats. (Which I can't describe, other than they're colorful and poofy and have nearly caused people to walk into street lights because they're too busy staring at my head.)

So when I post again and it's a bunch of pictures of cupcakes and banana nut bread and latkes(I've been craving them like mad for some reason)? Try not to drool all over your keyboard.