I'm Old and Wise Now That I'm 40

This is the year I turn 40, and instead of guilting all my friends into making a big deal out of me (no, really, you're too sweet!) I'm going to give you all a present instead. A present of my Wisdom and Experience. You're welcome.

A Random Number of Things
 I Have Learned in the Past 40 Years 

If you need to get something from the kitchen in the middle of the night, an open microwave gives a nice non-blinding light.

Having Tres Leches cake for your birthday means low-guilt leftovers for breakfast the next day. It's cake soaked in milk. It's basically cereal.

You can get a baby or small child to swallow yucky medicine instead of spiting it out by putting one finger in the corner of their mouth and giving it a tug (so they look like Two-Face) while squirting the meds into their mouth. The kid can't get the right mouth shape for spitting.

If your life is boring, try injecting adventure into your everyday tasks. When cleaning, wear rubber gloves and imagine you're getting rid of incriminating evidence after a murder. When starting the dishwasher or washing machine, pretend you're on a starship. "Set course for the laundry nebula, maximum spin." BOOP BOOP Dial Turn START thrumming noise

It's easier to open a box of macaroni and cheese from the bottom. I'm sorry, did I just BLOW YOUR MIND?

You will never not freak out about your housekeeping when your mother comes to visit. Ironically, embracing this fact can lead to less freaking out. Try leaving something obvious messy or undone or objectionable out for her to focus on. This will deflect her attention from anything you actually feel bad about (which you have stuffed into a closet or basement).

The helpful person in a new workplace who takes you aside to warn you about someone else MIGHT be the person you should watch out for.

If Sunday night is the most depressing night of the week because you have to go back to work the next day, you should consider getting a new job. Don't wait two more years while you lose the will to live.

There is such a thing as too much bacon. Theoretically. Much like Absolute Zero, one can only approach Ultimate Bacon under carefully controlled circumstances.

Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies, much like revenge, are best served cold. Stash them in the chest freezer and forget about them until you're looking for freezer space on a boiling August day. Finding cool Thin Mints might change your outlook.

If you rinse off spaghetti, a four-year-old will still be able to detect the foul taint of marinara.

Trash Cake Says I Love You

(FYI, I wrote this a couple of months ago. No need to wish me a happy birthday. You're off the hook.)

I try not to keep sweets in the house because I’m trying to pretend I’m healthy. As long as there aren’t any treats in the house the illusion works. But I also feel that cooking for my family is a major way for me to show my love for them. These two attitudes collide when it’s someone’s birthday.  I baked a two-layer chocolate cake from scratch this week as a present to the birthday girl (me).

Now, it didn’t turn out as jaw-droopingly amazing as I’d hoped, and it wasn’t very sweet or moist or decadent, but still, it was a freaking chocolate cake. It was a moist chocolate genoise with chocolate hazelnut praline sheets wrapped around the whipped ganache frosting, in point of fact. As you can imagine for something with such a long fancy name littered with French words, I worked pretty dang long and hard on that “cake”! It was disappointing, though. I think maybe the chocolate I used was too dark and therefore not sweet or moist enough.

You can always try it yourself. 

I kept the cake around for a couple days hoping that time would improve the flavors or magically create sweetness, so I could feel good about my will power in not eating it, but it just wasn’t tempting. So this morning I tipped it into the kitchen trash can. Out of sight, out of stomach and all that jazz. It no longer taunted me with its failed greatness, its deceptive appearance of deliciousness.
But not five minutes later my sweet five-year-old came to me with her big blue eyes. “Mommy, can I have some chocolate cake?”

Whoops.  She hadn’t asked for cake in three days. Why did she choose NOW? How could I tell her I just threw it all away! That seems really cruel, and one of my parenting goals is to not be cruel. That’s why I tossed the cake when I was alone in the kitchen. I’m not cruel enough to throw away perfectly (mostly) good cake right in front of my kids. If they ask me for a fish, I don’t give them a rock.  I might question why in the world they think they want fish, when it stinks up the whole house and then they don’t really eat it anyway, and hey, isn’t this a pretty little rock? But to tell her she can’t have cake because it’s in the bin seems wrong. So I chickened out.

“Uhhhmmm. Yeah. Go back to the front room and I’ll bring it to you.”

“Yay!” She lifts up the cover to the cake carrier. “Wait. Where’s the cake?”

“I’ll bring it to you.”

“But where is it!?” she insisted.

“Just go back to the other room like I said and I’ll bring you the very last piece!!”

As soon as she was out of sight, I lifted the lid to the trash can. The cake sat on top of some junk mail. I sliced off a piece and placed it decoratively on a plate with a curl of chocolate that had come to rest on an empty medicine bottle.

“Here you go, sweetie-pie! The last piece of cake.”

She took the plate. “Fanks, Mom!” And I felt like an awesome and resourceful mother.

Of course, two minutes later she brought the plate back to the kitchen with most of the cake still there.  I guess I was right to put it in the trash in the first place. It really didn’t turn out the way I wanted.