10/29/19

would

                October 29, 2019

            10/29/19

            i'm thankful that the endlessness of my gmail archive means that i have the email where someone we went to grad school with shared a recipe for this excellent apple cake, which we had at a friendsgiving at her house
1 3/4 cups sugar, divided (I used white and brown, a mix b/c I was running out)
1 stick butter, softened (I used about 7 tablespoons--already had used some of the end)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 ounces block-style fat-free cream cheese, softened (about 3/4 cup)
2 large eggs 
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour  (I used whole wheat and like it better)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 cups chopped peeled Rome apple (about 2 large) I used jonagold. all are good, really
 Cooking spray
Put the oven at 350
Beat 1 1/2 cups sugar, butter, vanilla, and cream cheese  Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Add flour mixture to creamed mixture. I just add flour on top, and powder and salt on top of that. Mix the dry a tad while its on top and keep mixing.
Combine 1/4 cup sugar and cinnamon. Combine cinnamon mixture and apple in a bowl, and stir apple mixture into batter. Pour batter into an 8-inch springform pan (or a 9x9 square) coated with cooking spray
Bake 55 minutes. The recipe says an hour and 10 but I only do 55. It should be done then.
i'm thankful that yesterday afternoon d made this cake and i'm thankful, as i worked on a feature i had spent all day on because it ended up being more complex to code than i had thought but was increasingly questioning the utility and worth of as i went, in an environment in which my engineering time is a limited resource and is needed to solve big problems (and yet at the same time feeling that i had, because of the time i'd spent on it so far, to finish it, since otherwise all that time would be totally wasted, and maybe the feature would be useful), the warm smell of it wafted in from the kitchen, a balm

i'm thankful, from my desk, to have DMed d about how good it smelled and i'm thankful that my phone pinged a little while later with a message from d, telling me she had accidentally forgotten to put flour in the cake, fml.

i'm thankful to have come to the kitchen to comfort her and i'm thankful that the heavenly smell was stronger there and i'm thankful that she told me that she also forgot the baking powder (i'm thankful that i said that was a virtuous mistake, since without flour, there was no need for baking powder). i'm thankful to have comforted her and laughed with her and told her that this combination of butter, sugar, cream cheese, apples, and cinnamon would be delicious even if it wasn't technically a cake and that i was excited to eat it regardless. i'm thankful she decided to go get vanilla ice cream so we could use the "cake" as a topping, which was indeed delicious.

i'm thankful that when d was putting herself down because she'd forgotten the flour and baking soda, like saying how could she do anything if she couldn't remember simple things like this, and i'm thankful to have told her, so she didn't feel alone, that i had put down my expensive bluetooth exercise headphones somewhere in the house several days before and could not find them no matter where i looked, even though i knew they were in the house. i'm thankful that though i meant this as a gesture of empathy and solidarity, d started looking for the headphones, and within just a few minutes found them in the place i had left them, under the big billowing curtains of our front window beside a low chair where we sometimes sit together.

i'm thankful she found them and that i have them now for my workout, since it was hard hearing my podcasts on my phone speaker over the treadmill. i'm thankful that though in retrospect some of the things i've spent my time on the past couple weeks aren't the most important things, that's helpful (if unpleasant) for me to realize, and i'm thankful to know that, in the absence of someone else telling me what the most important things are for me to work on, i tried my best. i'm thankful to know that despite my negative feelings, i have done some useful things too, and have learned valuable things, and have impressed myself with my ability to write cleaner code. i'm thankful to have hope that sometime soon i will have more help and guidance with this prioritization and management work and i will be able to focus more on just writing code and not getting distracted by a meta-evaluation of its larger value (though also i think it is helpful to not always think of it as code qua code, since that and my ego have led me down a few rabbit holes lately).

i'm thankful for d's laugh, which is such a beautiful sound, and i'm thankful that she is generous with it when i try to make her laugh, and appreciates my perennial efforts in that direction, which are a form of love. i'm thankful for miso, who is such a funny little dog, even if she's sometimes a butthead and is gross. i'm thankful that though every day of live is, in some ways, a struggle, in others, it is a celebration, and i'm thankful not to forget that.

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