my stereotypical year of confinement

 happy 2021, everyone! also happy st valentine's and st patrick's, and happy easter for some, and, unbelievably, happy spring! by this time i am confident that there's no turning back, and it's rare in montreal that the real beginning of spring should coincide with the calendar beginning - so let us savour small graces: a spring that started in march. we are now hiding our boots and jackets, and there are some violets in the garden yay. 15 degrees today. 

so ! it's been one year since whatever-it-is started, and we are riding a third wave now in montreal. hopefully i get the vaccine some time this summer so i can drop the small child at daycare and return joyfully to the prospects of commuting-by-bus-to-work plus working-in-multiple-schools. oh hallelujah.

 anyway, to start off the yearly blogging, i thought i'd do what everybody online was doing (last month) and list stuff i did during this past year. one problem: i kind of lost the habit of talking to people. honestly even on the phone (i.e. absolutely necessary communication) these days i launch into a looong sentence and notice myself start slurring words. i want to talk, but it's started to feel a bit meaningless and like i don't have anything to say, which usually was no big deterrent, but...i want to grow back into talking normally. so maybe this blogging jump-start is about taking that back.

and yes, what i did was what most everyone did, my personal sort of survival. last year it didn't seem so bad, but it's been a long winter. i want to laugh abut everything a bit.

1. i let my hair grow out.

everyone who knows me will recall that my hair is thin, soft, and grows extremely slowly, to the point that i always give up and get it cut once it reaches shoulder length. i've wanted long hair ever since i can recall wanting something, so it's a bit ironic that i finally have it now, i.e. careful what you wish for. it wasn't as much hair salons being closed (i mean, i'd go to a hair salon twice a year at best) as just inertia. my whites are starting to grow in and i wanted to see what that would look like, but obviously it's going to take some more time, i.e. my hair still looks mostlydark brown, and will for a while still. then you know, i was pregnant and thought that would mess with the hair anyway, though i'm not sure when it's supposed to fall, i think postpartum; always wore it in a ponytail so actual length didn't matter, blah-blah. now i'm sort of waiting for a good moment to have it cut, so there.

how long it is: middle of my back. although i never wear it down (it's not practical at all; my kid uses it like a rope anyway) i can clearly see that it's not a very good length for me - it just emphasizes how small my head is (I KNOW) and how thin the hair. if i had time to maintain it, i could try some sort of curly hair treatment, to encourage the curl that is still in there (i believe in it) to come out of its shell; that would give it volume and make it look shorter. but again, time. investment in some grooming process. nope. 

the shocker was how hard it is to actually do even minimal maintenance on it. it may sound absurd, but before this summer i had never had my hair get tangled. even up in a high ponytail, it somehow gets tangled and needs to be combed, and a lot of it comes off, and my scalp hurts. ugh. bonus points, i'm able to braid it now, but it's only a slight satisfaction. 

so it will be back to a mid-length bob soon, which sounds boring just thinking about, but apparently is also trendy these days?!?! i don't even have a proper picture for before-afters, let me grab something for you though. 

so this is end of january, and now it's two months later. i think i will ask b. to take one right before hairdresser's, because i'm making it into a big deal. also, ugh i am now a middle-aged woman with a double chin and jowls. it might be the winter weight though, but we won't know until summer, will we? it might also be the angle, BUT my worst angle is my truest angle, i say.

 2. i did the baking thing

i just want to stress out that this wasn't even gradual. all through 2020 i thought i did just fine, minding my business and moving along. carried the baby, had the baby etc. but then winter came. so i think the past three months were rough, so it's not 2020's fault. 

again, background on me and baking: always loved it, always was inept at it. at 32 i wasn't able to make a tray of muffins or cornbread without burning the bottoms. i didn't have inherited recipes, or a proper oven and implements, or much common sense either. so it just took longer than it would take for the average human, but in the past year i can say i've gotten closer to getting it.

my purpose always is to find the easiest recipes, that take few steps, nothing complicated, nothing that requires precise tools. basically at the beginning of this year i was unable to cream butter properly or make dough rise and i didn't understand why my cake layers always came apart. so all this has been apparently solved within 2 months, but i think it's an accumulation of observation from previous failures and decision to finally get serious about some stuff.

i was inspired and reenergized by the easiest carrot cake ever, and it might sound weird that i hadn't tried to bake carrot cake before, but i guess " it's not traditional in my culture" is a real excuse that people use to themselves. so i tried it, it tasted great, and because it goes with cream cheese frosting i ventured a bit into the world of frostings, i.e. beyond simple ganache. a very important step was to finally buy 2 round 8 inch trays, because you don't want to know what i was using for baking before (reused aluminum foil trays, thanks a lot ). and currently i'm restricted to 1 cake/ month (or "special occasions" because i was exaggerating; but i have a list of stuff i want to try up until June i think. 

things i learned how to do in the past 2 months (this is how i know winter has been rough!): 

- flavoured buttercream (it's about how long you keep the butter outside, and at what temperature)

- caramel sauce (melt the sugar together with the butter! too easy to burn it otherwise)

- shortbread (keep 10 minutes maximum in the oven, otherwise they get too crispy)

- donuts (instant yeast powder is a win for me)

- ready-bought pastry dough, with all sorts of fillings: i found one that works for me, i.e. is not the too thin kind that becomes crispy in the oven and needs a lot of butter/syrup to just be edible. i do sweet (jam or chocolate plus or minus chopped nuts) and savoury (spinach-feta)

- and for the savoury part, i'm also doing a casserole with everything-in-the-fridge, where the base is potato patties. 

this was the cake for b's birthday: coconut cake with coconut buttercream and caramel topping. normal two-layer cake is 12 slices. next photo shoot :) i'm going to try for a contrast between crumb and cream

3. i bought clothes online! me!

i mean, i don't have an intelligent phone yet, so it's still me. and also the whole household would have fallen apart this year without b. ordering diapers online and the occasional walmart groceries delivery. but clothes, it's just a different planet altogether. i see fashion bloggers ordering entire hauls of stuff and trying it on and returning 80% of it, which obviously i wasn't going to do, cause that's their job and it's not mine. but also:

in my lonely hours (i.e. between feedings , lol)i had compiled an amazingly mature and restrained shopping wishlist for 2021 (one item per month). i was going to wait until summer when stores would be open and both babies would be in daycare or alternately someone would be able to watch the babies (but not for too long, because the small one will presumably be still breastfeeding, dang). 

i knew i'd reached breaking point when i grabbed a 10$ pair of jeans while we were out grocery shopping, just because they were there and i hadn't let myself have anything nice in more than one year (last year i bought 5 items of clothing and they were all utilitarian). anyway, after that i just caved and ordered a pair of high-waisted straight leg Levis, size 31, and they came and are perfect! though i haven't worn them out yet.

and my latest folly was this: rudsak leather sneakers, because why have a normal sneaker when you can have a pink leather one?! they are wonderful, but a bit large on me (i ordered size 38 european, which is what i wear, = a canadian 7.5. i think a size 7 would probably take wearing in, so better too large than too small.)

https://rudsak.com/products/womens-footwear-sneakers-tirin-rose-en-ca

i think this can stand on its own as an update for 2021. not going to lie, i'm not a big fan so far, but the kids are growing and it's spring, so i'll just hope for the best.