gothcookie

I made some mint chocolate chop cookies again the other day and I think they were the best batch I’ve ever made! Took me a couple tries to get the cooking time right so the first dozen or so were a little crunchier than I wanted but the last couple dozen were amazing! Soft and minty and delicious! They were a hit all around. I adapted Alton Brown’s “The Puffy” chocolate chip cookie recipe from Good Eats to make them. I changed the 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla to 1/2 teaspoon and added 1 teaspoon mint extract. I also changed the 2 cups milk chocolate chips to 1 cup and added 1 cup Ande’s creme de menthe baking chips. Fantabulous!

I had a friend at work offer to pay me to make him so almond poppy seed muffins because it’s his favorite and cents find them anywhere. My first paying gig! As soon as I get my ingredients in, I’m gonna tackle that. I’ve also been asked to make my pumpkin chocolate chip cookies again by a few people. I’m very happy to be getting back into baking again!

Now I will leave you with an old poem I found when I moved.

I always thought
Immortality meant never dying,
Until that fateful day
That I spent just lying
Face down in the dirt,
Feeling like an unborn child
Stillborn but still inside,
Not yet being released into the wild.
When I tasted that substance
For the first time,
My eyes quickly changed
And all thoughts were mime.
I became this
At a very young age,
But I never thought this book
Would turn to this page.
I was always told
That I could never die.
Just keep feeding on the weak…
It was all a lie.
As I lay dying,
I need the redness in my mouth.
If only I could SCREAM…
My vocal chords have been ripped out.
I cannot speak.
I cannot eat.
My immortality has faded
And now my eyes are jaded…

I haven’t posted anything in a while, there’s been so much shit going on that I just don’t know what to do with myself. The basic rundown is that my husband and I separated, I moved out, we’re getting divorced, it all really sucks, I’m currently living with my brother and his wife and kids, work has been decent but they’re taking their sweet ass time approving me to transfer to a closer store, I haven’t done much cooking or baking but I may start up again soon, and my laptop has been a piece of shit so I haven’t had much of a chance to update this. That was probably the longest run on sentence ever but there it is. I’ve written a few poems recently (and found some old ones) that I’ll start posting here periodically just to have something going here. I’ll leave you with the latest…

Sometimes it’s hard to find the words to express how I feel.
It’s been so long now since I’ve had to do this that it all seems unreal.
I’m confused and tired and always alone.
It’s so fucking hard and every part of me still hurts down to my bones.
I know that one day it will be easier but for now I just hope that I don’t get crazier.

There will most definitely be a new post from me tomorrow. Again it won’t be about baking. My life has been up and down and I haven’t done much. Tomorrow will be for me. I feel I am close to an emotional break down and need to get out all this shit that I have bottled up. Be prepared…

I haven’t been cooking or baking much lately, sorry for that. I’ve had a lot going on in my head that has kept me from doing things that I love. My best friend has got me watching Lost, though so that has been keeping me occupied. I didn’t like it at first but I’m getting into it now. Work is still pretty good. They’re about to begin a remodel of the store, though, so it’s about to become a huge pain in the ass. There’s yet another guy hitting on me there too. I’m not sure what is going on with all these men around here but it’s just ridiculous. I think I’m getting sick, too, which is also no fun. Anyway, I’ve started writing a story. I’ve tried writing before but I always give up after a while. This story idea I have is really good, it’s just a matter of writing it correctly now. I don’t want to give up this time but damn sometimes it’s hard to do this right. My friend isn’t gonna let me give up this time though, mostly because it’s about zombies. ZOMBIES! Like I said, it’ll only be good if I write it correctly. Anyway, not much else to say so bye!

I’m thankful for those of you that read my last post. I didn’t get many comments but I did get a decent number of views and it means a lot to me that people hear my story. I hope that this band can help many more people in the ways that they have helped me. I realize that a good number of people hear and sing their words but don’t know quite what they mean. I feel that I do. I’ve felt a connection with them since day one and it’s only grown since. Last Saturday I had the great fortune of seeing them again live. It was definitely one of the best shows I’ve ever been to. The energy in the crowd and in the band was just phenomenal! We were all pouring sweat and jumping and singing and smiling…always smiling. They opened with “na na na na” so that completely set the scene for the whole night. They played so many of my favorite songs. “House of Wolves,” “Welcome to the Black Parade,” “Cancer,” “Sing,” “Destroya,” and “Helena” just to name a few. I cried of course, during “Helena,” as I quite often do. With the energy and the emotion it was just so overwhelming. I’m so glad that I had my best friend, Mychelle, with me, who knows how I feel about that song. She held my hand the whole time and almost came to tears herself. I miss my grandma so much and I love singing that song for her, especially since that song helped me say goodbye. I know it sounds odd, and maybe a little stalker-like but I have always felt this strange connection with Gerard Way. Kind of like a soul mate although I don’t completely believe that. His words are so overpowering for me sometimes. I have felt those same feelings before, written about those same feelings (just not as well), it’s just strange how his songs have made me feel. Sometimes even just looking at a picture of him makes me genuinely smile. Not like giggly rock star crush that a lot of girls feel, but it’s something oddly familiar with him. Reading this over again makes me sound kind of creepy but I just don’t know how else to explain it. I hope that one day I can tell him thank you. Either for him to read my blog, or even better, for me to be able to tell him in person. I just want to say thank you, Gerard Way, for everything. Also, about a week before the show, I got my other wrist tattoos. “We’ll carry on” is a lyric from “Welcome to the Black Parade” and I got the spider logo from Danger Days. I now have a tattoo from each album and hopefully in some way this also shows the band my gratitude for everything they’ve done.

Shit, I can’t believe it’s been almost a month since I’ve done a post. Between work and sleep, I guess I just don’t think about it much. Not a lot going on really. I made about 50 cupcakes for a family reunion a little over a week ago. I think they were enjoyed by all that had them, although I didn’t get a lot of feedback. I think that was mostly because they didn’t know who made them. I made the strawberry, the lemon poppy seed, and I tried my hand at a regular vanilla cupcake with buttercream frosting. Those didn’t turn out as well. They were certainly edible, but not as delicious as I had hoped. I will be making some slight changes to those recipes when I decide to make them again. I think I will be diving back into cookies more often. They’re not as tedious to make and I just enjoy baking so it doesn’t make much difference to me what the end product is. The family reunion was also nice in itself. I saw some people I haven’t seen in a while and it’s always so good to see them. I miss them all, and wish some didn’t live so far away so I could see them more often. I’m still liking my new job although it does get frustrating at times, and there’s a couple guys there that flirt with me every so often so it’s a nice boost in my low self esteem. I’ve been trying to feel better about myself, wearing make up, dressing nicer, stuff like that, and I think it’s actually helping more than I thought it would. Anyway, enough of the catch up, on to the topic at hand…

My Chemical Romance is my second favorite band (currently at the top since my favorite band isn’t doing anything right now) and many people get confused by this seeing as how I’m normally a metal head. So let me explain. I will admit that the first time I saw this band on tv (hadn’t even heard a song yet) I fell in love with them. Mainly the lead singer Gerard Way. He’s gorgeous, of course, but it was all in his personality. Shy yet outgoing, nerdy, funny, just overall awesome (and he had green hair!). Then came the music video for “I’m not ok (I promise)” and I thought it was pure genius. The song was ok, not the best, but certainly catchy. The video though was done like a movie trailer for a random teen movie and it was just so ridiculous and funny and I have loved them ever since. I bought their album, loved it. Found out they had an indie album, bought it, loved it too. What I loved the most though was the lyrics. They spoke to me profoundly. I related to them so clearly, it was frightening. It was like someone had taken all the things that I had in my head (or had jotted down myself) and turned them into something worth while. A lot of it depressing, maybe a little emo, although I have never thought of them as an emo band, but I needed someone to say these things, and just didn’t know it. I have always vented and relieved stress through music but I was not prepared for what this band did for me. I suddenly wasn’t as depressed anymore, I guess knowing for certain that there was someone else out there that felt the same things I did helped. They helped me get it out by singing it as loud as I could, and just crying about it. But there is one song, above all others, that is close to my heart. When my grandmother died, I never really mourned her. Yes I cried at her funeral, but not as much as I needed to, and it was mostly because it broke my heart to see my dad cry. I knew she was sick, and I knew her death was coming, and I braced myself for that. I just kept all of my feelings bottled up and tried to be strong about it when I was really just hurting myself by doing that. “Helena” was written for Gerard and Mikey Way’s grandmother who had also passed. When I originally heard this song, I thought of her, and when I found out what it was really about, it meant even more to me. And I cried. Because of this song, I finally truly mourned my grandmother, and every time I hear it, I sing it, and I sing it just for her. The first time I saw them live, before they played this song, Gerard told the audience to do him and Mikey a favor and look up to the sky and say “Hi, grandma!” I immediately started crying because I wasn’t talking to their grandma, I was talking to mine, and I cried through the entire song. This band, as silly as some people think they are, saved me. Really saved me. And for that, I got a tattoo for them, but also for my grandma. On my wrist I got “So long and goodnight” which is a lyric from “Helena” and on the inside of my wrist I got a heart with a bullet in the middle for their first album “I brought you my bullets, You brought me your love.” I will be getting another quote on my other wrist from their newest album, maybe this weekend. The concert is finally only 10 days away and I can’t wait! Anyway, I just felt the need to share why I love them so much, and to answer the coming questions about my newest tattoo. I’m not sure if anyone will even read this far, but if you did, thank you.

I brought you my bullets, you brought me your love

So long and goodnight

So my new job so far is pretty cool. I know, working in produce at Wal-Mart doesn’t sound too exciting, but I didn’t realize before just how little I work I did. I’ve been working my butt off (my whole body is freakin sore!) and the days have gone by very quickly. I think it will help me lose some more weight and gain some muscles too. Not only am I walking a lot, but I’m having to lift and carry and stock heavy things constantly, which is why I’m sore! Also, we got our treadmill last week and the past few days I’ve been walking a mike and a half every day. Saturday will be my first day to go overnight and apparently the guys that I’ll be working with are lazy, which sucks because I’m not. I like to keep busy and get things done. But on the other hand, my department manager said he was gonna try to get me on the day shift. We’ll see how that goes. As far as cooking or baking goes, I haven’t done much lately. I made some pretty good baked chicken the other day but I just got a couple cans of cream of chicken soup, mixed in salt, pepper, rosemary, and thyme, poured it over the chicken, and let it bake for 45 minutes. It was really good, nice and moist, and the herbs really made it flavorful. Anyway, I don’t have much else to say here so I’m gonna go shower and head up to my friend’s mom’s bakery. Later!

I’m doing orientation at my new job today, which is long, boring, and amazingly stupid. I’ve worked at Wal-Mart before but didn’t have to do this crap then. I’m on lunch right now, just wanted to update. I originally got hired for bakery which obviously is something that I want to do, but it’s only part so I’ll be doing over night produce instead. Mostly just glad to get away from the prison. Wasn’t the offenders or the job that I had issues with, but the ridiculous, overdramatic retards that I was forced to work with day in and day out that made me leave. I’m not the first person to leave because of the same reason, and I won’t be the last. Anyway, gonna get back and hopefully this day won’t be much longer.