skip to main |
skip to sidebar
That this cake ended up looking exactly as I'd envisioned was one of the sweet things about a wonderful weekend with my family. It was a simple two-layer yellow cake--gluten-free so Mom could enjoy it, of course--but the filling and frosting marked my first desserts made with either ricotta cheese or edible flowers. Now I want to sprinkle flower petals over everything I bake. :)
I played around with a recipe I'd found online until all my own frosting/filling had in common with the original recipe was the 16 ounces of ricotta. My own, then: 16 ounces ricotta cheese, 8 ounces cream cheese, 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream, a generous splash of vanilla--you may remember how I love my vanilla--a pinch of salt, a pinch of cream of tartar, about a tablespoon of honey, enough powdered sugar to help thicken it all (maybe a cup here), and a few diced strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and edible flowers to add some texture, color, and flavor.
I pressed a few extra petals and berry slices into the sides of the visible filling-layer to add extra color there, as well. The frosting had set nicely before I'd even refrigerated it--no berries or flowers puddling around the cake. I added some petals to a few sugar cookies for Mom too, but the cake thrilled me more.
And everyone raved about it--even Dad who isn't much of a cake person and Mom who actually prefers cookies and pies--which was so satisfying, of course. The cheese/cream mixture gave this cake a more sophisticated flavor than my cakes usually have, and between that and the edible flowers, it was nice to branch out a bit with this one. A sweet end to a sweet Mother's Day and weekend. I miss everyone already but get to go home again next month, which does my heart good.
 |
| ♥ |
Tonight I tried this recipe from Kim over at "Cravings of a Lunatic." Oh! So good! So good! The sweetness of the carrots with the tartness of the vinegar. . . .I roasted these for about an hour, and they were perfection. I've never really liked the taste of cooked carrots, but I eat them anyway, but these--these!--roasted--are truly good. Thank you, Kim. :)
'Not the most appetizing picture, I'm thinking, but since I didn't think to take one after the nut roll was baked, this is the only shot I have of it. Mom loves nut rolls but hadn't had one in a few years since going gluten-free in 2011 for various health issues, so I decided I'd bake her a gluten-free one and "Priority Mail" it to her for her birthday this week. It reached her about twenty-two hours after I'd taken it out of the oven, which was the best I could have hoped for, and she loved it, but may I just say what a messy process this was! I used this recipe but with a different gluten-free flour mixture, and while it did taste quite good, it seemed like surely, this was twice the amount of filling needed?! I was smart enough, at least, to have decided from the start the other day to divide the dough and filling into three nut rolls, considering the first my trial one and whichever was the best of the other two the one I'd send Mom. 'So glad I did it that way--three cheers for thinking ahead, yes--because the filling I added to the first roll seeped through the dough and stuck to the baking pan I used. The nut roll I ended up mailing with Mom's other birthday gifts was not messy-looking, but even though I'd spread a little less filling into that one and tried to wrap it more tightly than the first, and even though I'd rolled the dough between sheets of parchment paper too, the dough remained so sticky (as gluten-free dough always seems to be), it just didn't roll up into the beautiful log I'd envisioned. (And by the time I baked the third roll, I hardly cared, since Mike doesn't eat many sweets and still had Christmas morning cinnamon rolls here anyway and I'm not a fanatic about these the way Mom is.) Mom loved it, regardless, and was tickled with the tea pot address labels and stickers I'd included with it, as well, so all's well that ends well, and happy birthday, Mom. :) Of course, a few days after I'd made and mailed it, I found a magazine article that suggested using ready-made gluten-free pie crust and the same walnut filling to make gluten-free rugelach, which tastes--to me, at least--just like this nut roll did anyway, and yesssss, that will likely be the way I do this next time. Given the large amount of dough that this recipe makes and the cost of the gluten-free flour mixture, and since it's a just-at-Christmas treat for (really) just one person anyway, going the easier route may be the way to do it next time.
Mike and I decided Monday afternoon to have a Thanksgiving dinner together on Tuesday. Since I work this Thanksgiving and Mike will be home with his family for the holiday--their first Thanksgiving without his dad--we hadn't made plans to have a just-the-two-of-us dinner at all, and I had kind of figured I'd just miss Thanksgiving this year. Monday afternoon, though, that seemed stupid: I had the next day off and wouldn't see Mike again until next week, so why would we not just celebrate on Tuesday?! Last night was our little Thanksgiving, then, and it was a sweet one.
It was the second consecutive Thanksgiving for this favorite vintage tablecloth of mine, a brown patchwork print that looks like something Holly Hobbie would throw onto her own table for the holiday. I love it so, and it survived Mike's red wine with no damage, so all the better.
As I did a couple Thanksgivings ago, I went with paper plates, which made things a bit easier. I think 2013's simple orange-paper-plated dinner remains my favorite Thanksgiving table setting so far--the orange was just so warm and vibrant, as it was when we had an orange Christmas breakfast table last year--but this year's table was cozy even if a bit muted.
We had turkey cutlets--neither of us like dark meat, so we never bother with a whole bird--Marie's zucchini gratin, our mushroom stuffing--that I just realized the recipe for is still in my list of posts as a draft, so I'll have to hit "publish" on that one soon--quinoa with just a bit of butter and salt and pepper stirred in, buffalo cauliflower because Mike wanted to try it, and green bean casserole. Neither of us cares much about potatoes or gravy, so we skipped them, and since Mike was diagnosed with diabetes this fall, we went easy on flour-filled foods and bread products too. Our mushroom stuffing was mostly mushrooms instead of the more equal bread cube-mushroom ratio it's been before, and we had no side-bread this year. For dessert, we split a slice of chocolate tuxedo cake from the bakery. Mike will be having his mom's apple pie and pumpkin pie tomorrow, so he'll be splurging a little more then anyway.
We watched Planes, Trains, and Automobiles over dinner, as has become tradition during our rather informal Thanksgivings here. This was one of my and my younger brother's favorite movies when we were kids, and it continues to be, and now we all find ourselves quoting lines of it to each other throughout the year. It both tickled me and struck me as poignant to hear a few years ago that my brother and his wife were watching the movie while she was in the hospital to give birth to their dear Bianca--that this sweet film from our childhood was a part of those moments for him and his own family so many years later. ♥
Stuffed didn't come near-enough to the table for pictures until after Mike and I had eaten and cleared things away, but he was his usual impossibly soft and adorable self all day, napping in just about every chair and even softly snoring while he did. Love, love, love. ♥
I added a chocolate turkey to our cake, as I did with our pumpkin pie on our first Thanksgiving together in 2007. It took forever to find this tiny candy-turkey in the store; What seemed to be a hundred huge solid milk chocolate ones were displayed more prominently. Is eating--or even just gift-giving--solid chocolate turkeys a thing that people do at Thanksgiving now? At a Thanksgiving dinner I attended during my internship days in Wisconsin in 2004, one of the women invited arrived with a number of little foil-wrapped turkeys for all the children present, which struck me as such a thoughtful and fun offering, but the big--at least 6" tall--solid chocolate turkeys are new to me. I'm sure they'd be gorgeous on a big-enough dessert or as part of a centerpiece, at least. (And you can tell I work with children when Elsa's bust-topped Coronation Day cake is the first "big-enough dessert" that comes to mind. :)
Mike did the dishes while I put away the leftovers, and another Thanksgiving had come and gone.
When I took my iced tea glass out to the kitchen sink, I found a soap suds heart dissolving before my eyes. 'One of my favorite found hearts, this one, and a fine finish to this Thanksgiving.
A happy holiday to everyone celebrating, and a good day to you all. ♥
This deli-bought penne salad with grape tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella balls has been one of this summer's small pleasures. I have tried to replicate the taste by looking at the ingredients list on the deli label and at various recipes online, but the store-bought version still beats them all. So far. It seems like keeping it simple would be the way to go here, but the dressing and cheese mixture are evidently more complex. Waistline-wise, it is probably for the best that I'm as yet unable to make up a big batch of this here at home. This portion was my supper tonight, with a chickpea salad on the side, and my ever-present iced tea with lemon. Ah! So good! ♥
I work tonight, so we celebrated the holiday yesterday here. This recipe for berry crisp got a thumbs-up from Mike, and we enjoyed it while watching Jaws, a July tradition for us.
While I was making the crisp yesterday, Mike told me to look at the baseball game on TV and see if anyone looked familiar. Yessssssssssssssss. The man pictured above looks exactly like Mike's dad, and we paused the game for awhile so we could marvel at the resemblance. If I had a picture of my father-in-law in-profile, you would see it instantly. So strange. We watched for this guy every time a player batted left.
And sweet Stuffed finally seems to be back to himself. ♥ He's even been sleeping in the bedroom with us again, after almost two months of keeping to himself elsewhere. Dear little cat.
A happy day to you all.
This Easter weekend was sweet, just the bit of fun and family-time we've been needing here. Our dinner at my in-laws' home was Saturday evening. I had worked Friday night so was going on no sleep by the time Mike and I arrived at his parents' house Saturday afternoon, but his mom had a bed ready for me--(Is there anything more inviting to a weary traveler than a cozy bed with a soft old comforter prettily folded across the foot of it?! Saturday afternoon, at least, I thought not. "Close the window blinds if you want to," my mother-in-law said as I headed upstairs, and ohhh, bliss! It felt like The Best Nap Ever)--and even those two hours of sleep in it were enough to revive me for the day ahead. By the time I got up, my brother-in-law and his girlfriend had already arrived, and soon, we were all visiting and cooking.
I had volunteered to make macaroni and cheese and a couple desserts, Mike arrived with snack mix and pink beet-pickled eggs, my brother-in-law's girlfriend made green bean casserole (love! ♥) and brought a giant chocolate fruit/nut egg and graham crackers to go with a dessert dip, and my mother-in-law baked the ham, a beef roast, potatoes and gravy, rolls, and this amazing tossed salad (minus the curry powder that's called for in the recipe). Oh my goodness, I finished my first serving of salad and refilled my bowl twice more, and I would have happily eaten even more of it. The recipe sounds so simple, and the dressing sounds like it would be too sweet or just not flavorful enough--just mayonnaise with sugar?!--but all the salad ingredients go so well with that simple dressing, this has become one of my new favorite foods. ♥ I ate another bowl of it for lunch yesterday afternoon after Mike and I helped sort and clean his parents' basement. Love, love, love.
Since I'd known I'd be going on almost no sleep Saturday, I just made a couple quick and easy desserts: Chocolate-covered jumbo bunny-shaped marshmallows topped with mini chocolate chips, Easter sugar pearls, and chopped nuts, and Easter bark-type candies/layered bars. The jumbo bunny marshmallow had no discernible shape by the time the melted chocolate and toppings covered them, so I'll probably just neatly pipe chocolate onto them next time, then add the toppings, but everyone seemed to love the Easter bark, and for something that only took about five minutes to make, that was especially sweet. There are countless photos of Easter bark online, and they're all gorgeous. The layers of pastels and the textures of all the different ingredients people use: Just gorgeous. For these, I mixed a bag's worth of melted white chocolate chips with about three cups of mini Easter bunny marshmallows, some broken-up pretzel sticks, more of the Easter pearl candies, some chopped-up pastel chocolate-covered egg candies, a splash of vanilla, and a sprinkle of salt, spooned it all into a 13" x 9" pan, added a bunch of mini marshmallow bunnies to the top, chilled it in the freezer for about twenty minutes, then cut/broke it into pieces right before we got on the road Saturday morning. The pretzels and salt cut the sweetness just enough, the milk chocolate candy eggs cut some of the strength of the white chocolate chips, and it was just textured enough to be interesting and was certainly pretty enough to satisfy me. It would likely look neater spooned into pretty cupcake papers, and I have seen photos of the bark cut out with cookie cutters, as well, but the rougher cuts suited me, and doing it this way was so fast and easy Saturday morning. Mike's mom made Rice Krispie treats with Easter egg and grass sprinkles on top too, so there was no shortage of charming desserts. And charming desserts always tickle me, so seeing everyone make up little paper plates of pastel bars and candies and marshmallows and crackers and dip made me happy.
Sometimes a holiday is just what you need, with all its inherent family silliness and childlike fun, and indeed, this weekend with all its pastel prettiness did our hearts good. There was a shared crying jag over my father-in-law's absence at the table while we said grace Saturday, but as I pointed out, he would have loved it that we had all gotten together instead of skipping or ignoring the holiday this year. Life goes on, and we will continue to show up for it, indulging in naps and tears when needed and sharing Rice Krispie treats and chocolate-covered eggs along the way, as well. ♥
I finally got my driver's license yesterday. When my best friend died in a car accident in 1995, I don't think my friends or family or I had any inkling that it would scare me away from driving for so very long. My dear Sommer had been on her way to pick me up for school on March 1st of our senior year of high school when her car went off the road. The investigators never determined what caused it to happen, and that fact left me uncomfortable in cars at best and terrified in cars at worst, even as a passenger.
I tried in 2002, when I was 25, to get my license. My dad taught me to drive, and I spent more than thirty hours in practice that summer, but I failed the test twice--parallel parking mistakes, both times--and wasn't comfortable enough even then, so I didn't bother taking it a third time. In the summer of 2003, now 26, I tried again. I renewed my learner's permit and went out to drive with my dad a few more times. One evening, I didn't navigate a turn properly and almost hit an elderly male driver. I could have killed this poor man, not to mention my dad and myself. That was only about ten minutes into that evening's drive, but I turned the car toward home and never went driving with my dad again. I let my permit expire, and until last fall, that was the end of that. My parents tried to tell me to "get back on the horse," and my aunt Laurie continued, for the next few months, at least, to ask about my progress, but it would be eleven more years until I would try again. After awhile, no one asked or mentioned it anymore. It was just an awkwardly understood subject: Val Doesn't Drive, It Freaks Her Out. It was the one aspect of the entire trauma of Som's death that I wasn't able to work through and get past.
Until yesterday. ♥
In 2013, I decided that I was going to get my driver's license before the twentieth anniversary of Sommer's death, which will be March 1st of this year. I studied for my learners' permit--the written test--again, researched local driving schools and sent one a long email that September to tell my story and see if any of its instructors were up for the challenge of helping me.
"Please know," I warned toward the end of that first email, "that I don't get behind the wheel at all without thinking of [Sommer] and imagining her last moments, so this is still a tough road ahead of me." The founder of the driving school promptly wrote back to say that she would be honored to work with me and that another student of hers with a similar story had just gotten her license, and to please call so we could talk and arrange my first lesson. But I was still too scared, and I put it off another entire year. Another entire YEAR, you guys. Bah! And then I realized this past summer, now September 2014, and now 37 years old, that the twentieth anniversary of Sommer's death was only six months away and that if I didn't start now, I'd never get my license by then. And twenty years, it was now clear, was more than long enough to have this particular monkey on back. In a fit of bravery, I found myself calling Cindy--Just do it, before you chicken out--and before I knew it, we were talking and laughing and had made appointments for my first two lessons. I quickly renewed my permit yet again, rewarded these small acts of courage with a bouquet of pink roses--the pink roses would become a tradition throughout this process--and hoped and prayed that I could somehow make it happen this time.
My first driving lesson with the wonderful Cindy from the driving school was September 23rd of 2014. I hadn't told anyone--not my parents, neither of my brothers, none of my friends, not even Mike--that I was attempting to get my license, so no one knew--until yesterday! ♥--that any of this was happening. No pressure for me that way--or no additional pressure, I should say, and much less stress. I met Cindy in a neighborhood store's parking lot (after Mike had "safely" left for work), and she immediately had me sit in the driver's seat. That alone was sickeningly scary to me. To anyone walking past us as we sat inside this car in the store parking lot, it was just a student having a lesson with a driving school instructor. I knew, though, that I was terrified that I was going to die in a car accident during this first lesson and had actually written a goodbye letter to Mike and left it on our dining table for him. I was that scared. After reviewing the controls and features of her car, Cindy had me drive around the neighborhood to see how much I'd retained from 2002 and 2003. "You're doing beautifully," she encouraged me and added that it was clear that I'd retained a lot of what I'd learned with my dad twelve years prior. "Usually during a first session, the student's veering all over the road and stopping and starting really abruptly and the whole car's bucking and jerking. You're doing none of that." As in 2002 and 2003, though, my driving may have looked okay to the people in the car with me, but I myself felt nauseous with fear. "I feel like I'm going to cry," I confessed, and Cindy asked if I wanted to pull over. "You won't be the first student who's needed to stop and cry," she reassured me. I didn't stop and cry right then, though. I waited until I got home. :) And I forced myself out again for a second lesson that same week. I rewarded myself for those first two lessons with another bouquet of pink roses, and I scheduled another session for October.
On Halloween, my third time out with Cindy, I drove on the parkway for the first time. I drove on the parkway! And drove in rain (and on wet leaves) for the first time. And through a restaurant drive-through for the first time. (Cindy wanted a diet Coke.) :) And drove through my first roundabout. All the cars in Cindy's driving school are equipped with accelerator and brakes on the instructor's/passenger's side too, and I think knowing that if I couldn't control the car, the instructor could, is one of the biggest factors in my success at learning to drive this time. With some of that specific fear finally removed, I was finally able to absorb what I was learning instead of going through the motions while really focused instead on the Oh-my-God-it-will-be-just-like-what-happened-to-Sommer-I'm-going-to-kill-someone-this-is-life-and-death-it-will-happen-again-because-of-me-this-time the way I had been in 2002 and 2003. "I've got you," Cindy would remind me. "I'm right here." When I returned home from that session Halloween afternoon, I wrote in my journal: "It started raining as I was getting ready to meet Cindy, which added to my anxiety--I was almost nauseous before this lesson--but now I'm glad it was raining because it makes me feel that much braver and that much more accomplished. Today changed things. I can picture myself really driving after today. It's going to happen this time, it really is." I ended that journal entry by doodling a driver's license cake,
and it would be a vision I would hold on to, some positive visualization of the celebratory cake I was determined to make the day I finally got my license. And after this lesson, I treated myself to a small china bowl with pink roses I found at Goodwill, a twist on the pink roses tradition for this turning point in the process.
In November, I had two more lessons, one being a review of parallel parking and the other my first official highway lesson during which I drove to the airport and back. Cindy told me then that if I were to take my driver's exam that day, she thought I had a pretty good chance of passing it. She would still want more time to do a mock driver's exam with me, but this was the first time she had mentioned my being even somewhat ready for the test. Later that month, I dreamed that my older brother and I were in a car and I was driving us somewhere, and we were laughing and talking while I drove. This is the first "driving dream" I'd ever had that wasn't a nightmare, and when I woke from it, I realized I wasn't afraid to drive anymore: That stage of my life had ended. ♥
My sixth lesson was December 19th and was, indeed, preparation for the exam. (Gah! I'm really doing this!) And on December 21st, I decided to (be optimistic! and) go ahead and schedule it. Unlike in 2002, the Department of Motor Vehicles now has a road test-scheduling feature on their website--no more walking in and taking a number as I had before--so I was soon scheduled to take the exam the morning of January 6th. I spent Christmas and New Year's sick with dread, although Cindy said I was ready now. And finally, after four months of "sneaking around" and keeping all this a secret, I told Mike what I'd been up to. I still didn't want to tell him, but Cindy had said that she was going to pick me up at 6 am--6 am!--the morning of my exam so that we could repeatedly run through the road test route and practice in the DMV's official parallel parking space--it is off-limits during business hours for anyone not taking the exam--before my test, and I couldn't come up with a "story" for why I would be leaving at 6 am, so I finally had to tell him the truth. On January 3rd, I had my final lesson with Cindy--more test preparation--and I mentioned while we drove around the DMV lot that a storm was supposed to hit in the next few days. "Ugh!" she groaned, then added, "Do you want to see if they'll just let you take your test today instead? They might be able to squeeze you in." I didn't like what I was wearing, though, and I knew that if I passed the test that day, that would be my outfit on my driver's license for the next few years, so I told her I'd wait for January 6th. And then I laughed as I realized that if that was my reason for not wanting to take the exam, I really was finally ready for it. :) The city was hit with snow and ice the night before my exam, though, and in the wee hours of the morning, I texted Cindy to let her know I wanted to reschedule it. I hadn't driven on snow or ice before, and the idea of doing so for the first time the day of my driver's exam didn't thrill me. Later that day, I rescheduled my exam for 8:30 am January 27th, and I've spent the past few weeks alternating between nausea and panic and tears as the clock has counted down to Test Time.
I got absolutely no sleep--not a single second--Monday night. The city, like much of the northeast, was hit with a mess of snow, and Cindy had told me to let her know by 4:45 am at the latest whether I wanted to cancel or take the test. All night, I wondered what I would decide. At 4:02 yesterday morning, I sent her a text message: "Unless you think the roads are too bad, I will try the test today." I figured that even if I didn't pass the exam, at least I could consider it a driving-in-snow lesson. (I had still never driven in snow.) And Sommer's birthday was last week, and part of me wanted to do it this month for her, as a gift of sorts. And I was just tired of having this dread hanging over my head since December 21st. And a defiant damn-it-I'm-going-to-DO-this part of me had begun to burn: I wanted it. Wearing a locket with a favorite photo of me and Sommer inside, and carrying Dad's handmade fishing lure in my bag as a good luck charm, since he had been my first driving teacher, I woke Mike at 5:45 yesterday morning to tell him that Cindy was here and I was leaving. "Hopefully, we'll be having a celebration cake tonight," I told him as we hugged goodbye.
Although Cindy did not agree with me, the practice before the exam was horrible. I messed up something every single time I tried to parallel park--and the parallel parking is what had thwarted my first two attempts to pass the test in 2002. I repeatedly drove the route well, but I only managed to try to parallel park correctly over and over and over again right until 8:24 am when Cindy said I really needed to go inside to check in and start the test. The man who would be my examiner asked me to sign my name at the check-in desk, and my hand was actually shaking. Then my arms started shaking. The examiner tried to joke with me--"That's a nice Irish name," he said sarcastically as he looked at my signature--but I was so nervous and nauseous, I could barely smile at him and was just trying not to cry. I turned to Cindy and whispered, "Cindy, I'm SHAKING. Even my ARMS. What am I going to DO?" She said I would be fine and tried to distract me by showing me some vacation photos on her phone, but I have rarely been as big of a mess as I was in the moments before the exam began. I couldn't bring myself to make eye contact with Cindy again as the examiner and I headed outside, but Cindy told him as we walked past, "Val's good. She is. She's ready." Cindy, Cindy, Cindy. :) ♥ The examiner walked out to the car with me and said that I could start the car and get situated for a second because he needed to walk down to the lot's parallel parking space to make sure the cones were set up properly and the space wasn't too messy from the snowstorm, since I was the first exam of the day. While he checked out the space, I got myself sorted out in the car and prayed--and to Sommer specifically--for courage and calm. I have to do this this time, please help me, I just have to do this, I need to pass this and get on with my life, I need this stage to be over, I need to pass this, please, PLEASE. . . .The examiner returned, and after he was done explaining a few things about the exam, I told him, "I'm almost forty years old, I hate being this nervous!" He looked stunned and said that he hadn't realized that I was that nervous. "You hide it really well," he added. Ha! (Cindy said later that he told her the same thing about me after the exam, while they were waiting for me to come back inside: He wouldn't have known that I was nervous at all if I hadn't mentioned it. To me, it was beyond obvious, but apparently not.) And then, just like that, just like a switch had been flipped, all my nervousness went away, and I thought, I've got this. It was like I could see the entire test and day before me--Val passing the exam, Val posing for elated pictures with Cindy after the exam, Val at the grocery store buying ingredients for her celebration cake after the exam--like it had already happened. I've never felt such a strange and sudden calm.
I demonstrated all the vehicle controls correctly, the examiner got into the car and asked me to use the horn and windshield wipers for the final part of the vehicle controls section of the exam, and then I backed up--dodging a snowplow driver who was a little too close to our car for comfort--and drove us down to the parallel parking space. Before putting the car into reverse, I took a second to think through the steps, and then I did it. I just did it, as smoothly as an expert driver in a driver education video. I just did it. I asked the examiner if he wanted me to apply the parking brake "just to be official," and he said no, and then he added, "I actually just want to sit here and savor this a minute because I know I'm not going to see anyone else do as good of a job parallel parking the rest of the day." ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ♥ I calmly thanked him--although I felt like cheering and giddily clapping my hands--and off we went for the road test part of the exam. Part of the route was a snowy and somewhat slippery hill, now in even worse shape than when I had practiced on it with Cindy just minutes earlier, but I controlled the car well, and the examiner complimented me on that too. "As long as YOU know that I've come to a full stop here. . ." I said at two different stop signs, "But I'm going to have to inch forward a bit. I can't see anything." As if the examiner didn't understand how to drive and wouldn't have comprehended such amazingly advanced skills. ;) But I wanted to make sure that he knew that I knew. . . since he had warned me before the exam that he is a "stickler for stop signs." "Of course," he replied both times. "You do whatever you need to do to drive safely, especially in these conditions." While waiting for traffic to clear at another point so I could make a left turn, another driver flashed his lights to signal that he was letting me go, and when the the examiner saw that, he quietly said, "Oh, NICE." :) He was mild-mannered and quiet and the perfect fit for me for the exam. 'Back onto the main road, and thank God, no icy patches on it--just snow and slush. Before I knew it, I was pulling back into the DMV lot and parking the car. The exam was over. And after twenty years of being terrified of all things driving-related, I was told that I had passed my test and could go inside to get my picture taken for my license.
On no sleep, in the city, and on my first day ever driving on snow, I got my driver's license. ♥
 |
| Click to enlarge. :) |
The examiner talked with me for a minute, answered a couple of my driving questions--I asked him what advice he had for me as a new driver--congratulated me, and went back inside to start the next person's exam. As soon as he left, I got out and went to the back seat for my bag--letting in a bunch of swirling snow when I opened the door--and took a second to reach inside and grab my phone to send a quick text message to Mike. Without waiting for a response, I zipped up my bag, locked the car, and turned around to see Cindy waiting for me outside the DMV's door. "Can you BELIEVE it?!" I cried out, then really started to cry. "Yes, I CAN!" she replied, and we hugged before I headed over to the counter have my picture taken. And it is, like most driver's license photos, a hideous picture of me that looks nothing like any of the other pictures taken of me yesterday. :) But it's my DRIVER'S LICENSE picture, so how could I complain?!
My examiner kindly took a couple pictures of me with Cindy before he began the next person's test,
 |
| ♥ |
and when Cindy and I got back into the car, I pulled out a couple thank you gifts I had made for her: A vintage car-shaped planter with a Hyacinth bulb inside,
and a card I'd drawn to look like a license plate.
On the way home, Cindy said that maybe it was Sommer who had "magically" calmed me down as the exam began, and I have to agree. She also admitted that while she had believed I would be fine and would pass the exam, she had also been really nervous for me (with my trembling hands and arms) right before it: "I've been doing this so long, I don't really get nervous anymore when my students take their tests, but I was almost SICK over you!" she told me, and we laughed over her "You make me sick, Val!" for awhile. After more picture-taking and some goodbye-hugging, Cindy dropped me off, and I soon found myself in the grocery store, just as I'd envisioned, buying ingredients for my celebratory cake--this one is a Hershey's recipe actually named Celebration Chocolate Cake. I couldn't stop sneaking peaks at my driver's license--"my driver's license," I just wrote! I have a driver's license! ♥--as I walked around the store.
Back at the apartment, I immediately called my dad. ♥ I mentioned his good luck fishing lure, of course. And I sent messages to my brothers and their wives. My secret was now out! I answered text messages and phone calls and emails as I baked my cake, crying again as I reread that first message I'd sent to Mike right after the exam.
Oh, life is so sweet some days. So perfect and down-to-the-last-detail SWEET. ♥ After all three cake layers were out of the oven, I took an hour-long nap--my first sleep in twenty-nine hours---and woke to a congratulatory phone call from my mom after she'd gotten home from work. She couldn't believe I'd kept it a secret, and for so long, and that even Mike hadn't known until I scheduled the exam. She sounded just as shocked by my accomplishment when we said goodbye as she had when we'd said hello. :) She doesn't even drive in the snow, so she was really quite stunned by all the story's details. :)
And finally, after supper last night--Mike ordered an extra-cheese pizza with mushrooms, my favorite--I got to enjoy the cake I'd begun drawing sketches of months before. Positive visualization at its finest. ♥ To complete the roses tradition, I used the pink roses tablecloth I'd been saving for this occasion. And was in bed by 9 pm, for the best sleep I've gotten since before I'd scheduled the exam last month. :) Ahhhhh! I did it! Six days after Sommer's birthday and with just five weeks remaining before the twenty-year mark of her death, I did it! Mike and I don't have a car--we can walk or take the bus to everything we need in the city--so for now, the driver's license is more a symbolic gesture and an accomplishment than it is everyday joy rides, but I told Cindy I would continue to schedule sessions with her just to get more/regular driving practice, and sometime this spring or summer, I want to rent a car and drive home to my family for the first time. One step at a time. Today, I'm still basking in the accomplishment, marveling at yesterday's sudden serenity, and looking forward to another piece of my cake. ♥ I did it!
