Saturday 27 November 2010

Weird Cakes and Crazy Contortions

Cold! Cooooold!!!! I just arrived home and am trying to warm myself up on the sofa, curled under my lovely, fluffy, green wool blanket. The wind is coming in from Siberia, no, really, it is, and that combined with the -23C ( -9.5F ) temperature does not for a very welcoming weather make. Sure, it's very pretty out there for the few moments the sun is up, but damn, this is not the normal weather for this time of the year. Not even here. I just count myself lucky that I get to cuddle up in here surrounded by candlelight, a good book waiting to be opened on the table and some good, dry red breathing in the kitchen. 


And no kids. Yeah, you read right. No kids. And for the past 24 hours I've had two. I know, I know, now all of you with more than one kid of your own are shaking your head and tsktskking to yourself, but let me explain. Last night we had my cousin's almost ten years old Daughter for a sleepover, and while she is, I think, a very lovely, affectionate girl, she also comes with a host of issues which tend to make her, well, a handful. And I can only bow down to those parents of children with 'special needs' who just keep on going, keep on loving and doing the best they can. I am exhausted after only 24 hours. Granted, I am not healthy, but still. All I can say is, respect. 


So, now I haven't got a single kid here. How come? Well, my Daughter is staying over at her Grandparents, which is always fun for her, and tonight she was going to do some baking with her Grandfather... And let me tell you, this must be the only occasion and the only thing my Father bakes. And they make these...


...for which I don't think there is even a word in English. It's fish and lard, yeah, lard, baked into a crust of rye. Supposedly delicious, some say. And it's probably already obvious that it's not exactly one of my favourites. I've never made it and can't remember the last time I ate it. And I don't intend to, either. Should you want to make and taste it, however, the BBC actually has a recipe in English here. But, regardless of what they actually bake, they both love these baking sessions and frankly speaking I doubt if the end result is what matters here...

I had been meaning to take my Daughter and our sleepover girly out to play this morning, but the weather really thought otherwise, and seeing that I really had to come up with something for them to do if I wanted to have a snowflakes chance in hell of keeping the house in one piece 'till the afternoon, so foolish as I am, I suggested we bake a cake. My oh my. By the time I realised my mistake it was obviously way too late so I decided to just throw reason out of the window ( not exactly first time, that one... ) and just go with the flow. And what the flow brought us was this. The wondrous result of two pairs of hands dipping into all sorts of jars and bags and '' Can we put this in?'' being answered all too many times with '' Yeah, why not. Just dump it in.''


A heart shaped sort-of chocolate cake with pink cream cheese topping and four birthday candles. Why? Because the girls saw the candles in the cupboard and decided candles were in order. So birthday candles it was. And surprisingly enough the cake tasted rather nice, all chocolatey and squidgy, despite really having been, literally, thrown together from whatever happened to be lurking in the kitchen cupboard. So forgive me if I won't post a recipe here but it was indeed tasty, in a kiddy kind of way, and what's most important, the girls were mightily proud of their cake.

Besides the cold, weird chocolate cakes and even weirder traditional fishythingies I've been thinking a lot lately about genes. Well, not in the research sense of the word, but rather as how and what we transfer on to our kids. You see, my Daughter is a very beautiful child. And she is going to be a very beautiful woman some day, but she looks very little like me. Most of her looks she's inherited from her paternal Grandmother, and fine by me that is, she is and was a beautiful woman, but this my Daughter not looking all that much like me has lead to some mightily hilarious incidents. While people, even complete strangers, tend to comment on how beautiful she is, they almost invariably also tend to continue with ''...but she hardly looks like you at all!'' Yeah. Right. And after that they, depending on the level of brain action on the speakers part, either blush bright red or continue completely oblivious to what it was they just blurted out. Frankly, I have always found this hilarious, since I know fully what they mean. 

And with her growing older, getting nearer to the age of maybe starting a hobby, I have thought a lot about whether I tend to push her into a certain direction, or whether it is just that she somehow naturally leans towards the same things I like? Or is that due to what she's been exposed to? Does she prefer ballet over football because I do? Does she like gymnastics because I, unwittingly, tend to encourage her in that direction? I don't know, but I do know that she also shows a definite talent in those areas. She is naturally very athletic and flexible and loves music and dancing. But whether or not I want her to choose that path is an entirely different matter altogether. Let me show you something here. This is Rhythmic Sports Gymnastics. My thing...


Beautiful, huh...


And slightly sick too if I may say so myself...

You see, I do hold very fond memories of my time as a gymnast, but I think some of my biggest issues, bodywise, and yeah, as far as my previous and still somewhat existing attitude towards what could be considered 'human weakness' go, stem from that same time. What it is is a discipline I have not seen much elsewhere. Ballet yes, but other than that, no. We are talking about training schedules and weight regimes, not to mention the mentality building so severe that without it I would now be even quite a bit taller than I am and would have started puberty years earlier than I did. Not good. So not good.

 Esthetically, I still love it... but I am more aware now than I think I ever was about the truly dark side of this 'sport' as well, of what it takes to get there...


Been there, done that.
Unfortunately.


Yes, I remember.

I was lucky in not having problems staying thin, so while many, many others suffered from various eating disorders, I pretty much threw the prescribed diets out of the window. But that did not keep me from internalising the dogma of thin equaling good, and it has taken me decades to grow out of it. And to give myself a break from the ' you'll stop when you faint' attitude. But despite all that, there are lessons learned during those tough years that I can still say I am happy I got to learn. That I got to know that in the end, you can take much more than you thought you could. And if you don't try, you will never find out just how much you can take. I learned that I am strong, both physically and mentally, and knowing this has taken me through many a sticky situation and time in my life. I also learned that I have an innate sense of 'enough is enough' as was proven time and again when my Trainer just simply pushed me too far and received a ball, clubs or whatever happened to be in my hands thrown at her as I stormed out of the training hall. Sure, the next day I would be back as any a good little gymnast but never did I let her make me into a tired, crying wreck. Which I have, unfortunately, seen done as well and of which I fear she was not entirely above of.


So while I do appreciate the beauty, and the discipline to a certain degree, I do wish my Daughter never decides to want to become a competitive gymnast. Or a ballerina. Both, she will be allowed to try but I can only keep my fingers crossed and hope that she decides to choose to continue on something less punishing, like my younger Sister did by changing from gymnastics to competitive show dance. Dance, music, movement - good. Doing it until you literally can no longer move or think - bad. 


So, I don't know. Am I doing her a disfavor by even introducing her to these things? But how could I just shut her out of what is, still, such a huge part of my life? Sigh. Parenting. Lovely it is but I do guess no-one ever said it was going to be easy.

Now, however, that I think I have thoroughly been warmed by both my blankie and my red, I think I am going to cut myself a piece of some rather freakish choccy cake, grab my book and just sink deeper into my oh so soft sofa. No trainer here to admonish me now. No sound in my head telling me to jump higher, run faster, eat less and just 'bloody wrap that leg around your head now already'. And indeed, nobody here to slap my stomach for it being too 'bulging' either...

Bliss.


And the tunes for tonight come here...


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