Neglect.

I'm not sure what, if anything, I'm doing with my blog. My updating has severely fallen off this summer; I suppose I need the structure of NaBloPoMo to actually write something on a daily basis. Without it I write less and less, but with it, I am stressed for absolutely no good reason. I look at the blog from time to time and think, I can write something quick, but I'm too lazy to even be sitting at the computer (which I do incessantly) writing; just clicking on Facebook stuff is enough for me.

What is it about Facebook that, if I manage to tear myself away from it to go and do something constructive, I have to take a break after a half hour and check it again? I sit and wrack my brains, which must be slowly turning to mush, for people's names from my past that I can look up on Facebook. I said to my father in law the other day, a new Facebook convert (who already understands its time-sucking ability), that probably 2/3 of my Facebook friends are people whom I don't really associate with, don't comment on, or I skip their updates (I haven't gone as far as blocking anyone, but I have dropped one "friend"). So with most of these people, we became friends, said hello in a brief message, and that was it. Why? Is it just me? I would consider dumping these folks as friends, but then I wouldn't want to offend anyone, which is even more ludicrous when you think about it. Don't get me wrong, it is a great tool for getting people together and keeping them informed of what you're doing, down to the most annoying details. But when you finally find that kid that moved away in first grade, and feel the triumph of having solved a mystery of some sort, what happens after that? Usually nothing. You may have had many things in common when you were 8, but probably not much 30 years later.

Wow, what a tangent. I'm neglecting many things I want to, and should, do. I'm running out of time and excuses to justify sitting in front of the computer when I get home from work. I always told myself that I wouldn't be on the internets when Sarah was at home, but that's happening a lot now, and I feel the worst about that. I think I could use a support group for this. I'll have to look on the internet for one. :/

Unexpected Emotions

As I say almost every blog now, I am a baker. I can do cakes, but it's not my strong suit. I have done a few wedding cakes, but to me they are not worth the mental stress (I have had a few bad experiences). I have started saying to people who ask that I will only do wedding cakes for blood relatives, the last one being my sister. But that one wasn't so bad, because my dad and I made it together (I made the cake and icing and did the basket weave, and my dad did the rest).

A few months ago I was chatting online with a friend (I'm not using any names, just in case), and she asked me if I did wedding cakes. My guard instantly went up, but instead of saying "no" I asked "why?" She told me that she had a friend who was a cancer survivor (let's call her Jane to alleviate confusion) and was getting married in the fall. Jane was on a tight budget and lived close to me, and my friend thought it would be a nice gesture to help out with the wedding cake. I gave her my blood relative line, but I told her I would think about it. Meanwhile, I looked Jane up on Facebook. I could only see her photo because of privacy settings, but it was a picture of her and her fiance, and they looked so cute together. I think it was that picture that convinced me to help. I emailed my friend back and told her I would do the cake, but I also stipulated that the only good thing about the cake was that it would be cheap. I don't have as much confidence in my cake making as I do in my bread baking, so I really undersold myself in the email. My friend said that she didn't want the wedding cake to be torture for me, so she didn't let Jane know, and I didn't try to convince her otherwise. I think that same week I started watching Cake Boss, and the show hit a little close to home for me with the bad parts about making cakes, so it was a relief to me that I wasn't going to make the cake.

This wedding cake was still in the back of my mind though, and last week I decided that I would do it, confidence be damned. I just hoped that I wasn't too late, since it was a little over 2 months until the wedding. I let my friend know, and she told me to go ahead and email Jane through Facebook. I went through my friend's Facebook friend list, but I didn't find her. I searched for her on Facebook, but I couldn't find her that way either. I knew her fiance's last name, so I searched for that in the region he lives in, but he also disappeared from Facebook. I Googled Jane and her fiance, but I couldn't find anything recent, and I was panicking because I thought something bad had happened to her. I spent a good part of the afternoon searching for her on the internet, but no matter what combination of words I used, I found nothing. I was really worried at this point, and I emailed my friend to tell her that Jane was no longer on Facebook. She emailed back later that night to tell me that she was there in her friend list, and she sent me the link to her page. I clicked on the link and got my home page, and I then figured out that she had changed her privacy settings to friends only, which never occurred to me while I was searching for her, afraid of what I might find out.

I did eventually get in touch with Jane to let her know that I would be willing to do her wedding cake. She sent me a reply and was very sweet about it, and she told me that they had a cake as a package deal with the reception hall. I was again relieved that I didn't have to make the cake, but I was also disappointed more than I was relieved, possibly because I felt a connection with her after my alarming few hours of fruitless searching.

I have never met Jane, and now I probably never will, but for an afternoon it felt like a friend was slipping away from me. I really don't know why I felt that way, is it strange or normal? Has anyone else felt like this before? I don't mean with a celebrity either, just a regular person. I suppose this kind of chance encounter doesn't come up very often.

Hawt.

Since I'm a baker, I get to deal with ovens and a proofbox (which doesn't give off heat, but a nice brief sauna when you open the door). Luckily I don't have to work with a fryer, which is the worst. You kind of have to lean into it to flip the donuts and get them in and out, and you have to watch out if you're sweating and it falls into the fryer (I know that's gross, but it happens, probably very often during the summer).

When I was a teenager working for my dad, I worked by myself overnight on the weekends, and despite the ginormous exhaust fan over the oven, it was boiling in that place. A lot of times I would just wear sneakers, shorts and an apron. If you've seen me lately, you're probably throwing up a little in your mouth picturing that (if you've gone that far), but fear not, I was pretty svelte in high school. That's when the sweaty donuts happened.

The only relief from this was either sitting in the walk-in freezer for a few minutes (which didn't really help in the long run, it just gave me a chill because it froze my sweat), or I put on the cold water and used the sink sprayer to spray down my head. I did the water spraying more often, and that's how we get the phrase "go soak your head." Now you know the REST of the story!

At my current job, they added on to the original building and put the bakery in the new part, back in 2001. We've had some problems with air flow in there since then. We have an exhaust fan over the ovens, but it is on the roof, above the hood (we could see the one in my dad's bakery). We found out 2 years ago that it was broken. We could hear it power on, but it wasn't turning. It broke again early this summer, and they said it would be fixed permanently this time. I listen closely when I turn it on now, just in case it sounds different.

The other problem is air conditioning. I only worked at one place where air conditioning was effective, and that was at Rutgers. Other places had it, but it was instantly negated by ovens, and at Aramark, by the 4 giant open steam kettles that they made soups and sauces in. When I first started at Byler's (where I am now), if you walked from the bakery into the store proper, you could feel the temperature drop about 20 degrees. About 4 years ago they put an AC unit in our back room, which was only good in the back room and the warehouse behind that. We put a giant fan in the back room to blow the cold air into the bakery, but it didn't really help. There was a lot of head soaking going on in those years.

There is a thermostat, an air intake, and diffusers in the ceiling of the bakery. We found out last year that the hoses for this AC were screwed up, which is why we weren't getting any air. They fixed that, and lo and behold, we had AC in the bakery! After 6 and 1/2 years! But like I said, it does get negated by the ovens, but it's much more bearable.

Until we got our new convection oven, and I had to move stuff around to make it fit. My back is now to the ovens, and it gets pretty hot. You can see the salt stains in my shirt at the end of the day. Last week, I moved the benches a little further away from the ovens, because we had the space on the other side. Thankfully, it made a big difference.

Thanks for making it to the end of today's disgusting topic. Tomorrow, all about pus!

MORAL: Don't eat donuts in the summer.