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Recipe: chocolate raspberry cake

I live in a snowglobe! It’s snowing beautiful, white flakes outside right now and for once – for once it’s falling vertically instead of flying past on its way to Kansas. Lovely. Really lovely.

looking up valley this morning

Folks may be sick of seeing pictures of the weather around here, but for me, weather is an integral part of nature and I love it – love to read it, study it, feel it. Weather is beautiful to me. If you don’t understand and respect the weather, you really have no business climbing in the mountains.

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Recipe: chocolate-dipped strawberries

What does the passage of a year mean? We read so much into the Earth’s completion of her tiny path around the Sun. A way to mark Time because it doesn’t stop for anyone. I never stopped to think much about how we recognize these temporal ticks and why. Not much until my sister died – out of the blue, just like that. No time for good-byes, I-love-yous, what-do-you-want-us-to-dos. That sick and empty feeling sucking the breath out of me every time I came up for air. Stepping out into the night thinking she’d emerge from the darkness and tell me it was a mistake. A terrible mistake, please. Numb mind. Racing heart, aching heart… broken heart.

Not 24 hours earlier, a blanket for Ben? Sure, I could knit one for him. He may tell you his favorite color is pink, but it’s really green – you know, four-year olds. So glad she loved the blanket I knit for Emily. Only 10 days and already full of piss and vinegar, just like me, just like her mom. Love you. Love you too. Our last words to one another.

Just like that.

kris and me

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Recipe: chocolate matcha earl grey cake

The date sort of snuck up on us. We are both bad about remembering dates, but my MIL called on Friday to say there was something special to look for in the post – something for our anniversary. Our what?! Oh that’s right… We celebrated 11 years of marital dorkiness on Saturday. Marriage was never something either of us really wanted. It was what our mothers kept asking about since we were living in sin for many years. We finally caved in since we realized our car insurance would go down – way down. Bargain! I think we would feel better about marriage if some of our dear friends could marry and enjoy the same rights we do.

We didn’t do anything special, just ran a ton of errands. We discovered that Chinese food on the flats is neither Chinese nor food really… The day was incredibly warm – 70 Effingham degrees? It was a cruel joke as far as I was concerned. March is when the weather flirts with spring then winter then spring then winter. You get those hoochie mama crop top days when you have to shield your eyes from the exposed white limbs of undergraduates on campus, chased down by those gorgeous spring upslope events that dump a ton of powder and send the ski whores rejoicing back on the mountains. Anyway, I promised Jeremy I would make a nice something or other in celebration of our day since this is my good week before the next treatment. He likes chocolate and I had matcha on the brain.

one caffeinated cake

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