Some of you may recall that, back in 2017, we adopted this asshole dog. We named him Gilfoyle because, like his namesake, he had amazing hair and a shit attitude.
He was estimated to be about 9 at the time, and I said if I could have 5 good years with him, I’d be happy. When I started typing this, it had been a couple of months over 7 years.
When I started typing this, it was the day after we had him put to sleep. It’s been almost 6 months now. 6 months of saying goodbye in a thousand tiny ways before I could sit down and say it this way.
Back in 2011, I made my first original recipe cake in observation of National Bundt Day, and it is now the longest creative streak I’ve maintained in my life.
About 2 months after my 2023 Summer of 1000 Tomatoes post, we found out my husband had cancer and pretty much our entire lives revolved around nothing but that for about 8 months. I managed to keep all the plants from dying and they gave us a better harvest than we deserved based on how little I gave them in return.
November 15 of 2023 found me looking back over a streak that began on that same date in 2011, the first year I was aware of National Bundt Cake Day in time to do something about it.
Unfortunately, November 15 of 2023 also found me looking 5 days into the future, when my husband would have his second round of chemo.
Not the same husband. The other husband I had who had cancer died in 2001, four months after we got married. It sucked. A lot.
Now, 22 years later, my husband has cancer. If I hadn’t already been to one “husband with cancer” rodeo in my lifetime, or if it weren’t the same type of cancer my father died from last year, I might be processing the situation differently.
But for the past 3 months, I have been deeply entrenched in a state that mental health professionals commonly refer to as “freaking right the fuck out over pretty much everything”.
We started observing the 25 Days of Drinkmas in 2020, a year that called for a booze advent calendar if ever a year called for a booze advent calendar.
We repeated the event in 2021, another year that absolutely warranted nightly cocktails for 3+ weeks straight, but it was cut short by some unexpected holiday travel.
And here we are in 2022. I’m trying to keep this light and fun, but this season started challenging me at about 10:00 a.m. on December 1st and shows no signs of letting up. But at least there will be fancy cocktails.
This was my 12th time observing National Bundt Cake Day by creating an original recipe cake. I woke up in the wee small hours of the morning of November 11 realizing I had no idea what I was going to bake, and almost immediately thereafter knowing this was the cake.
Quit job, sold house, drove
Looking for America
Finding mostly bars
-Jerry Seeger
The above haiku was written shortly after Gabby Reece’s Mom’s Harp went into a storage pod in San Diego in 2004, where it languished as the author did exactly what he described in that 17-syllable masterpiece, before he moved to Prague and left Gabby Reece’s Mom’s Harp even further in his rearview.
