2000-10-27
I know I really left you hanging on the wedding cake. The top of ours, you'll recall, was cheesecake and had sat in our freezer for a year. (Two freezers, to be accurate, first the one in our kitchen, the left half of our side-by-side, and next the chest freezer in our basement, something I've always wanted and finally got earlier this year.)
It had been in a cardboard bakery box wrapped in aluminum foil. We took it out of the freezer a couple days in advance to thaw. When we first took it out, B suggested we open the box and look at it. At pretty much the same time, we both said, "Looks like a cake." Then we leaned over and smelled it. And at pretty much the same time, we both said, "Smells like a freezer."
We went camping on our anniversary, and brought the cake along. When it came time to cut it, we found that the buttercream icing had formed a hard, protective barrier; it chipped off easily, leaving the cheesecake and graham cracker crust, which was...good! Texture and flavor suffered a bit for the year but not much, really. I'd thought the idea of saving the cake top was pretty corny and impractical, but I found myself mildly moved by the experience.
Meanwhile, life is good. Very full and busy both at work and at home. The rewrite, I believe, is coming along nicely. Slow and steady. I have so many things I want to do, never feel I have enough time. This beats having too much time on my hands--I know because I've been there--but can get frustrating.
I've started watching The West Wing. I don't know whether I've mentioned it here, but my father was an advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. If you read the LA Times Magazine a month or so ago, an article about the execution of a solider during JFK's administration, you read about my father. Watching this show and reading that article, thinking about the kind of power and influence my father had, stirs up a lot of feelings in me. I'll just leave it at that for now.
My father, incidentally, has a new "lady friend." (I referred to her in an email as his girlfriend and he gently let me know the term he preferred.) She's a Holocaust survivor, and apparently does quite a bit of--what is the word? not activism--education, I guess you'd say. Public speaking. In a few weeks I'll be heading to DC to meet her.
We're closing in on my least favorite day of the year, the first Monday after the time change when it's dark an hour earlier. I dread this. But you know, there's not a thing I can do about it.
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