Category: Uncategorized

Long after it has conquered everyone else, I’ve become obsessed with The Great British Bake-Off, which is now airing in the U.S. as The Great British Baking Show. (I don’t know why the title was changed; was “bake-off” too confusing a title for American audiences?) I could try and explain why, talk about the fact that it manages to marry what I enjoy about reality contests like Top Chef and Project Runway — neither of which I’ve seen in years, admittedly, and so may be entirely misremembering — with a kindness that’s surprising and pleasant, or that I find Mel and Sue’s hosting to be particularly charming. The truth of the matter is, though, that it makes me want to start baking again.

A couple years ago, I was big into baking, and experimenting with what I baked; a new (and eager) baker, I’d get books from the library and devour them, thinking well, what if I did this…? or maybe if I took this method and matched it with that recipe like an eager scientist. It was fun, and new; I enjoyed doing it a great deal. And then… Well, I’m not sure what happened; I want to be glib and say that 2014 happened, with its bad vibes and oppressive worldview, but I’m not sure that’s true. Somewhere, I started feeling as if I didn’t have time, or I was always too tired, to bake. I just stopped.

Watching The Great British Bake-Off, I feel — inspired isn’t the right word, but I feel excited about the prospect of baking again. This might end up being the year I get fat from baking cookies again. Watch out, world.

It sounds like boasting to write this, but I don’t really have anxiety dreams anymore. It’s not that I’m not anxious about anything — little could be further from the truth! — but merely that I don’t tend to dream about that, for some reason. When I was younger, those would be the kinds of dreams I’d have on a worryingly regular basis, waking up nervous and convinced that I don’t measure up, but something about growing older meant that those faded, to be replaced by stranger (and generally, more entertaining) dreams.

I say this because, last night, I had an anxiety dream, and one about the strangest, least likely thing imaginable: a podcast. Specifically, I had been drafted in to help out on  particularly popular podcast I listen to, and was convinced that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong personality and just very much not what the fans of this particular podcast wanted. What was particularly amusing to me, though, was that even in the midst of this feeling of pressure and being seconds away from letting everyone down, I remember a clear sense of this is ridiculous, this is the Internet in my head. It was as if my subconscious wasn’t really willing to entertain the scenario it had generated itself.

I put this down to working online every day, and that giving me a sense of perspective when it comes to expectations. That perspective being, “Well, of course you’re going to disappoint someone. It’s the Internet. Get over it.”

I am not a gardener, but I am married to one, which allows me certain insight into gardening knowledge and schedules and the like. Yesterday, Kate was talking about the growing season starting in earnest next month as she pointed at New shoots appearing in the ground, and I found that a very… exciting isn’t the right word, but a very winning concept to get my head around. It seemed early to me, almost; haven’t we just started winter? Shouldn’t everything be dormant for awhile longer?

But, no. The cycle is already beginning again, the growth is already underway. After the harsh start to 2015, it was tempting to think Well, this is just More of the same and surrender to the dark and the cold inside and outside of our heads, but knowing that the greenery is already making a comeback offers hope in some way.

Waking up this morning, my first thought was genuinely an excited “Have I turned into someone who can sleep in on weekends?” It was only 7:30 when I woke up, but as someone who tends to wake up closer to 6 during the week, that extra 90 minutes feels luxurious. Part of it, I know, is that it wasn’t entirely dark when I awoke; as I get older, the prospect of waking up with no light outside becomes increasingly bleak, as if it’s a metaphor for something I can’t understand but recognize as bad. I start to long for summer, when “daytime” starts around 5am. Then, I feel, it’s safe to get an early start to the day.

My second thought was to wonder why Wyclef Jean’s “Gone Til November” was playing in my head. January, February, March April May, something I can’t remember about not being able to stay…

Sirens outside, streets away but sounding oh-so-close. It’s not even 6am when I hear them, and my first thoughts are Who is even awake right now to need sirens? and I hope everyone is okay, because concerned confusion is becoming a default, it seems. If you’d look outside the window right now, everything is pitch black and absent, so the sirens feel like reminders that there’s really a world out there and it’s filled with trouble. (There are two different sirens, one that takes longer to cycle around and another that’s choppier, faster: Two different types of responders? Fire and ambulance?)

It’s been a hell of a week, one that’s just seemed to burn through all the psychic goodwill left over from the holidays and leave me exhausted already. Something about waking up today and hearing sirens in the distance feels appropriate.

And then there was the time when I dreamed that I was in the middle of preparations for a wedding — my sister’s, I think, but not the marriage she actually had, close to two decades ago. She was getting married to the same man, I think, although both he and she only made cameo appearances at best in the dream. Instead, it was a wedding that was happening that afternoon, and guests were still arriving at the airport, which just so happened to be directly outside the house we were all in, which was somehow a country house in the middle of a shopping mall that, of course, doubled as an airport. Such things happen in dreams.

The part I remember most clearly, though, was being told by one of the guests I had just met — a man who looked like no-one as much as Lou Ferrigno, thank you subconscious — that it would be rude not to drink the milk that had been provided for me. I drank the milk, and it tasted amazing: refreshing, full, creamy, the whole thing. I can remember the taste even now, awake with all the other parts of the dream either fading or entirely gone. I feel as if, the entire day, I’m going to be haunted by how great this imaginary milk tasted.