Couple of Victories

Dear Cat,

I had a couple of pretty good victories in the last 24 hours. Yesterday at 3:50 I woke up realizing that I had to walk out the door by 5:15, and before I could I needed to pack all of us for the weekend, plus water the lawn, feed the worms, check the house, pack all the supplies for the great cake experiment, pack all the boys' presents, and make sure the lawn was clear to be rototilled this weekend. I staggered to the kitchen table and started writing to-pack and to-do lists while my eyes were still bleary from my nap. It was a long list, completely covering both sides of a sheet of typing paper. And you know what? I made it in time plus I had enough spare time to fold and put away a load of laundry.

The reason I was able to get it all done was because of my rage the other day. Remember the rage? Well the rage kicked the house's fanny into cleanliness, which is not that unusual, but what is unusual is that that house has somehow stayed clean. I was able to whisk through it gathering up the items we needed and tossing them in the suitcase. I was pretty impressed with myself. Made me wonder what else I can do if I keep my environment clean.

So that was the first victory. The second victory was the cake.

This cake is pretty cute. It's not phenomenally adorable (the frosting needed to be a deeper green), but it is pretty cute and I made it entirely on my own. See, last year I bought a store-frosted cake and decorated it. It was adorable, but it would have been even more impressive if I'd actually done the whole thing--baked, frosted, decorated--myself. So that was my goal for this year. I watched tons of how-to videos and make three cakes to practice the flat-cake technique and in the end I was rewarded by many oohs and ahs when I brought the cake out.

They were pleasant victories. They made me glad that I decided to keep on fighting.

Here's a picture of my happiness.