We used a vegetable peeler to core them.

After letting the cupcakes cool, we cored the centers and filled them with the whiskey chocolate filling:

You could reallllly taste the whiskey, so easy does it.

Laura expertly filled them:

Mmmm

Laura’s roommate helped us out and mixed the Bailey’s frosting:

Bailey's and powdered sugar-y goodness

And then her roommate iced them. I’d love to learn how to ice/frost cakes better.

Zip-lock bag, in lieu of piping equipment. Worked like a charm

And this is what we ended up with:

The final product

I haven’t heard yet how they went over on Laura’s end, but I know everyone who tried the ones I brought over last night seemed to like them. They were pretty time-intensive, but it was so much fun to make them with those two ladies. An afternoon well spent, and with something fun to share after.

Here’s the recipe. It made two dozen, although you could probably also make a dozen giant cupcakes. They’re VERY rich, though, so smaller like ours might be the way to go.

Chocolate chips vastly improve most things

I’m bringing Mrs. Coverlet’s famous chocolate chip bread pudding in to the office this morning. It’s a recipe from a holiday book my mom gave me when I was little that I loved to pieces and read multiple times each Christmas for years. She and I may have only made the bread pudding once, maybe twice, but it’s one of my favorite memories of her. Also, it’s delicious.

I got to Chicago three weeks before Nov. 11, 2010, the third anniversary of my mom’s death. I’d only known Christina for about two of those weeks, but she had the day off and she took me on a wildly awesome day of fun to keep my mind off things. I will never forget it; it meant the world to me to have, among strangers in a strange city, an understanding friend on a rotten day in my personal history.

Today, a year later, is the fourth anniversary. It’s weird to call it an anniversary at all, since that word is supposed to have such positive connotations. I have been thinking about her a lot lately, and especially this week. It’s really kind of hitting me that my life, and nearly everything about it and in it, is totally separate from her now. When she died, I was going to school at the college where she worked. I wanted to move to New York City and work for a major daily. I wasn’t with Brandon anymore, although we did get back together shortly after her passing. I had close ties to home and my college town and knew nothing of the life I was about to begin in Columbus.

Now, I’m here in Chicago, working for an internet company of national interest, and the people I talk to every day have never met my mom. I knew it was always going to bother me that almost certainly whoever I ended up marrying would never have met her, and, even more painfully perhaps, she’d never meet my kids. But this week it’s upsetting to me that I won’t ever have the chance to get to know her better.

I was 21 when she died. In the months before she was diagnosed, I’m sure we had plenty of petty arguments about inane things, because I was still very much an immature, arrogant college student, and she was just my mom. We never really graduated from a child/adult relationship. I didn’t see that until recently, now that I can tell that my dad and I have moved more toward an adult/adult relationship. I’m never going to have that with my mom, and that’s hurting a lot this week.

I wish I could ask her for advice in my relationships and friendships; I wish she’d be around to tell me not to freak out about whatever I’ll inevitably freak out about with my first kid. She won’t be there for my wedding, and I won’t be able to ignore that absence. These are the things that are occurring to me now, four years out from her passing. With each year that passes that she’s gone, I’m gaining a different perspective on this loss, for better or worse.

But while I’ve been feeling sorry for myself all week, what I’ve come to decide is, thank God for my dad. He can at least talk to me about my mom, and tell what he remembers about their shared experiences, from which he has three decades to draw. Maybe he won’t be able to remember everything, but he is by far the definitive guide to, and expert on, who my mom was. I’m so glad he’s around and here for me and my brother, for when we do wonder what she was like as a person, and not as our mother.

This is the first time I’ve had to work on This Day, since This Day coincides with Veterans’ Day, so that’s going to be strange. But I think I’m going to get enough done to be able to leave at least a little early. Then I’ll head home to Christina, where we can raise a glass for those who knew us better than we knew them.

Here’s to them.

The biggest way this affects my life, I believe, is my sometimes extreme romanticism of holidays, and the way-too-high expectations I inevitably build up around them.

A couple weeks ago I asked Kevin what we should do for New Year’s Eve. I asked him almost rhetorically if he wanted to hang out, as if to say, “Of course you do! This will be our first New Year’s Eve together and of course it will be the most awesomely romantic evening ever.”

So you can imagine my surprise when he told me he already had plans.

A month earlier, he and his friends bought tickets to a concert featuring someone I’ve never heard of. On New Year’s Eve. He wasn’t sure what time the concert starts, but I knew unless it was in the middle of the day, my New Year’s Eve plans that had yet to develop but had already created unrealistic expectations in my head were pretty much shot. When he realized I was upset he brushed it off, saying, “It’s only New Year’s.”

The grievousness of this offensive remark took a few seconds to sink in before I said shakily, “It’s NOT just new years, it’s a big deal.” This statement was followed by a wave of fury that hit me when I numbly realized he had not in fact lived my life’s experiences, nor had he read my mind and known that I am big on holidays, a couple’s first New Year’s Eve being no exception.

He asked if I wanted to go to the concert.

“Yes,” I whined. He nodded, satisfied with this simple solution.

But this did not fix things the way I expected it to.

The next day at work, he and I were talking on gmail chat. “By the way,” he said, and sent me a link to the tickets site for the New Year’s Eve concert by the band I have never heard of.

He did it, I know, as some kind of thoughtful gesture, as if to say, “I still remember you were upset last night and I am being the best boyfriend ever right now by showing how much I am considering your feelings.”

What I heard instead was, “Here’s the link where you can buy your own $20 ticket to a miserable night of bitterness and resentment. There will also be a band you don’t know, and everyone you will be with will be far more excited than you are about them.”

I took an afternoon coffee break with a couple girls from work and explained the situation. They agreed there was not an easy way to work it out, but one thing they both knew immediately was that there was no way I should go to the concert.

“Do something fun with us that night instead,” said one of my friends.

I told them, no, I wanted to be wherever Kevin was going to be, so the concert was the new plan, for better or for worse.

But I knew they were right. I was furious about this concert already, and it was over two months away. I didn’t want to go, but I wanted to be with him.

On my way home that night, I thought about what I would have done if my ex had announced his plans for NYE, and what I would have done if I was horrified by them. I hated to admit it, but Old Me would probably have asked my ex to abandon his plans and do what I wanted to do instead. I’m not proud of it, but I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what would have gone down. And the worst part is, he would have done just that, because I was spoiled and he bent over backward to keep me happy.

But. That was Old Me. New Me is a 25-year-old adult, and adults are willing to compromise.

And that’s what I was determined to do. By the end of my commute, I had a solution. It wasn’t perfect, but it was mature and fair and about as close as I was going to get to being happy with the situation.

I talked it over with Christina, and she agreed this was probably the best I could hope for. She asked me why I was so nuts over the idea of New Year’s Eve anyway, and I couldn’t even answer the question. All this stress, with no real reasoning behind it. Story of my life.

“I think you’ve seen the ending of ‘When Harry Met Sally’ too many times,” Christina suggested.

“You may be on to something,” I said glumly.

And so it was decided. Instead of going to the concert, I will find a party to go to instead, and it will almost definitely be way more fun than said concert. No offense to those going. Just trust me on this. Then, the weekend after NYE, Kevin is taking me out somewhere for Fake NYE, the terms of which being:

• I get to dress up.
• It can’t be in his apartment or at my house.
• There will be a midnight kiss, even though it’s Fake NYE and is therefore a sham.

I sat him down a couple days later to talk about it.

“I don’t want to go to this concert, and believe me when I tell you, you don’t want me to go, either,” I explained. “I will walk into it determined to have a good time, but by the end of the night I will be miserable and bitter and I will make sure you know it. No one wants this.”

I laid out the terms of my alternative, and he listened carefully.

“It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, and there doesn’t even have to be a restaurant involved. Just me and you, out on Fake New Year’s. Is that okay?”

He said it was, and I swelled with pride at my own mature handling of things. I am a grown up, dammit. I make thoughtful decisions and am willing to compromise. Bow before me and my badass diplomatic nature.

My dad says you’re not really a grown up until you start making your own dentist appointments. This might be a little bit true, but I think being an adult is more about thinking about other people, for a change. We can’t always get what we want, and more often than not, we probably shouldn’t. And that’s especially true when we have someone else’s wants to consider along with our own. I have a hard time with this sometimes, but this whole NYE thing may have actually been a blessing in disguise because it gave me a chance to really think about the concept of compromising. It sounds like an obvious thing to do, to compromise, but sometimes it’s harder than we expect. Kevin is a problem solver for sure, but it felt good to come up with this one on my own.

Any tales of compromise to share? I’d love to hear them. Bring on the win-win-win conflict resolution.

Cut from the same cloth, Christina knew my situation better than I did and, after a couple cans of Old Style at Tuman’s, a wonderful friendship began. Here I am still, and it’s thanks to her, as well as Cass, my dad, my family and my friends. Your support has meant everything to me for the last year, and I hope you know it.

To celebrate, I’ve created a video montage of the last year as well as a Facebook photo album. Take a look back with me and see how far I’ve come, despite myself.

Thursday
9 a.m. Leave Chicago
6-ish p.m.: Arrive in Columbus!
6:30: Dinner with Joe & Jessie
Stay with Brian and Cary

Friday
Breakfast at Tim Horton’s! Oh man.
9 a.m.: Visit Short North. Park on 4th street by my old apartment, walk down to North Market (open at 9), then back up to check out Surly Girl (open at 11). Unfortunately, Jeni’s doesn’t open until noon.
12:30 p.m.: lunch with Dennis and Steve by SNP
After lunch: tour Clintonville
7 p.m.: Dinner with Columbus/Muskingum friends at Aladdin’s in Dublin, including Abby, Stacey, and hopefully Christina, B.C., Dean, Rachael, James and Becca.
Stay with Brian and Cary

Saturday
9 a.m.: Breakfast at Spinelli’s! How I’ve missed Spinelli’s.
9:30 a.m.: Drive toward Caldwell.
10:30 a.m.: Stop at Muskingum on the way! Spend all of five minutes covering the entire campus via car.
12 p.m.: Lunch with Dad and LeeAnn, hopefully Owen, Jamie and Hannah
Spend the afternoon in Caldwell, showing Kevin such sights as Caldwell High School and the square.
6 p.m.: dinner at the famous Sandwich Shop.
Hang out with Britt, Steve, Cindy, Leah, etc. that night.

Sunday
Morning: visit Owen and Jamie and Hannah, if not the day before.
Hang out with Caldwell friends.

Monday
Daytime hike with Dad and Kevin
Visit with my uncle who’s coming down from Cleveland
Hang out with Caldwell friends that night.

Tuesday
9 a.m.: Head back to Chicago
10 a.m.: Stop in Dover to see my grandpa
12 p.m.: Lunch in Cleveland with Jessi D.?
7-ish p.m.: Arrive in Chicago.

Yay! I can’t wait.

source

In three weeks, I’ll have lived in Chicago for one year. I left Columbus early in the morning October 25, the week of Halloween. That was also the peak of Ohio’s beautiful leaves season, but I wasn’t even thinking about that at the time. Now that I can’t have them, they’re all I can think about.

I’ll be in Ohio later this week, but I’ll be ahead of the leaves by a good two weeks. I’m sad about that, but I’m really looking forward to coming home during this season that is so special to me and my dad. Kevin is actually coming with me, which is extremely exciting while at the same time slightly stressful. I can’t wait for him to meet my friends and family but I hope this six-day trip doesn’t bore the crap out of him by day two. I know I’d be exhausted if I felt like I had to be charming to strangers for days on end. But, I’m looking forward to showing him my hometown and all the people in it, as well as Columbus. I’ve got a list going of places I want him to see, and people I hope he’ll get to meet.

I’ve never really had a whole lot of experience introducing guys to my parents, but I have a good feeling Kevin and my dad will get along well. If you have any horror stories though, please share, so I can worry about them tirelessly for the next several days, and therefore prevent them from actually happening.

And finally, Kevin has been warned that, while in Ohio, we’ll be visiting a Tim Horton’s drive through at least once a day. Dunkin Donuts here just pales in comparison, and soon, he too will be a convert. I’m sure of it.

The DuQuoin State Fair

Christina invited Kevin and me to go visit her grandfather’s farm one last time over Labor Day weekend. He passed away last month and the family is selling the property. She’s spent a lot of time there over the years, and it was a thing of interest to me for that reason among others, so I was glad to take her up on the offer. Kevin was easy-going about spending a good part of a three-day weekend on someone else’s plans, and it turns out we travel pretty well together.

We headed down in my car Saturday morning, just me and him, to meet up with Christina and Big, who had left for the farm the night before. We drove over five hours past miles upon miles of corn fields and truck stops, stopping only to get gas and lunch. We made it to the house by 1 and Christina took us to the local bar to meet the cast of characters that make up Benton, Illinois. Everyone in the place knew her when she came in, some affectionately calling her “Red” and others politely nodding. A torrential downpour occurred while we were there, and after waiting it out, we went back to the farm to get ready for the main event: the DuQuoin State Fair.

As it turns out, the state of Illinois hosts two state fairs: one in the capital, in Springfield, and the other at the bottom of the state in rural DuQuoin. Complete with a demolition derby, horse racing, and apparently a Friday night performance by Willie Nelson, the fair is kind of a big deal.

We ate corn dogs and deep fried desserts and took excessive photos of moldy prize-winning pies and hilarious tractor warning signs; we sampled Illinois wines and bought kettlecorn and wore comically trashy tank tops, or at least two of us did. And I finally got to ride a Ferris wheel with a guy, something I’d sheepishly always wanted to do, ever since the early days of wandering around the Noble County Fair with my friends back home. It was a good day.

On Sunday we all slept in and then headed to the next town over for your standard Midwest-style buffet of fried chicken and some of the best pork chops any of us have ever had. Before we left, Kevin and I walked around Christina’s grandfather’s property. It looked to me like somewhere I might have stumbled on near Caldwell, like visiting a friend’s house for the first time, maybe out on 339. It felt like a small piece of home, and I felt for Christina knowing it was almost certainly the last time she’d get this close to it all. She took it in stride, as is her way, and we drove away in two cars toward town.

Kevin and I got back to Chicago around 6, and he shot some footage of us coming up on the skyline from the passenger seat. This trip was the first time I’d had anyone in my car when I was driving through downtown, since I only ever do it when I’m en route to Ohio or back from it, so I was glad he got some nice shots at sunset.

We edited both these videos that night, something Kevin had never done before. It was so great to be able to share my love of video editing with him and we had a blast cutting the footage. He picked out both songs we used, which I think were excellent choices. I’ve been listening to the Antlers one from the fair video practically since we got back.

Back in February, we started our jobs the same day, and I remember seeing him at our 100+ person orientation and thinking he was really cute. We saw each other a few times at work after that and talked, and then one day we got assigned to a project together and kind of hit it off.

It’s been nice spending time getting to know someone by letting him show me his favorite places in Chicago. He’s been here two years now and knows all kinds of fun little restaurants and shops in different neighborhoods. We’ve taken to touring record stores in Lincoln Park on weekends or running around Andersonville for an afternoon — sometimes meeting up with his friends, sometimes just the two of us. He doesn’t seem to mind going with me and my friends to our Friday night bar and I don’t mind spending time in his fun neighborhood. We both love going to the movies and neither is above spending a lazy Sunday on a double feature. He’s sweet and considerate and remembers things I tell him, or things about me like how I hate french fries but love mashed potatoes, or how I don’t like ice cream but am currently obsessed with frozen yogurt. He’s good at explaining things and is a wealth of information, Chicago-related and otherwise.

He’s also very thoughtful; Last weekend, we were in a bookstore in his neighborhood picking up the next selections for our respective book clubs (he’s in a book club, too — I kind of love that) when I mentioned I’d been meaning to pick up a copy of “Bossypants”. A quick scan of the biography section didn’t render any results so I gave up and checked out at the register. He followed me outside a few minutes later and said he had a surprise. He pulled the book out of his bag and handed it to me.

“I was going to wait,” he admitted.

It was sweet.

One day after work we were walking up some steps toward the Brown Line when my flip flop came off mid step. He stooped down and grabbed it and placed it delicately back on my foot, Cinderella-style, if Cinderella was dumb enough to wear open, rubber shoes in a major metropolitan area.

My roommates like him and he just joined our fantasy football league, after which Christina told me I better not break up with him any time in the next 14 weeks or it’ll just mess up everything.

So far, so good. Come visit me in Chicago and maybe you’ll get to meet him.

Summer music in Millennium Park

I mentioned the other day that I’ve been to a lot of concerts this summer. The first one was back in June, when I saw Iron & Wine in Millennium Park with some girls from work, as well as Liz, the one person I knew in Chicago before I moved here. The park was packed and it turned out we really couldn’t hear the band all that well, but it was still fun to sit and have a picnic on a blanket, and it felt like a nice kick-off to summer.

The second show I saw was Bon Iver in July, which I hadn’t planned on, but I’m so glad it worked out. It was a sold-out show, but the Friday before, someone at work wanted to get rid of a couple extra tickets. Kevin is obsessed with Bon Iver, and I’d been listening to both albums on a pretty steady stream the entire month prior. I snagged the tickets and gave them to Kevin for his birthday, which was way better than the impersonal, we’ve-only-been-dating-for-like-six-weeks-so-here’s-the-BBC-Office-on-DVD gem of a birthday gift I’d had planned. Even better, the concert was at the Chicago theatre, which I’ve walked by every day since starting my job and had tried to imagine the inside of ever since. It’s amazing; kind of like the inside of Radio City in NYC, but smaller. Just as beautiful, though.

Outside the Chicago Theatre

The third show I saw was the day after Bon Iver, when Ted Leo and the Pharmacists played a free show at Millennium Park. I didn’t know any of the music, but it was fun and easy to get into. They ended up playing a single album straight through and it happened to be Kevin’s favorite. We went with a couple other people from work and got to sit a lot closer to the stage than we did for Iron & Wine.

The fourth show I saw was the most surprising. I went with Liz to the Double Door to see her friend’s band one Thursday night. A guy at the door took my $5 and stamped my hand with the words “Paygoism Saves” and I stepped into the dark bar. I didn’t have very high expectations, but the second his band started I realized they were going to be way better than I thought. I got really into them, and Liz and I ended up sneaking back stage after their set to talk to the band. We got kicked out, but it took a while for anyone to notice. We hung out for a while, and when the next band started, I thought I might leave since I had to work in the morning. But then, the craziest thing happened.

At the Double Door, pre-power outage

Even though it looked like it was only threatening to storm outside, much like it had been doing all week, the power in the Double Door went out. The band’s amps shut off, but they finished their song anyway. After that, the drummer for the band decided to keep playing, and he did, for like 25 minutes. People in the crowd were going nuts, more so than they had during the set before it was interrupted. Liz and I danced to the sound of a single drummer in the longest drum solo I’d ever heard, and everyone clapped along in a single rhythm. We cheered the drummer on together, dancing in the darkness. After that, the rest of the band came back on and played an acoustic set, illuminated by cell phone screens and the light of the moon. It was the kind of story you knew people would be telling for years to come.

Finally, a couple weeks ago, I found out a little piece of Caldwell was making its way to Chicago, in the form of Saintseneca, the coolest thing to come out of southeastern Ohio. The band was originally made up of four people, three of whom went to my high school. When I found out they were playing at a place three blocks from my house here, I couldn’t believe my luck. It’s a small world, sometimes. Kevin went with me to see them and the guys were so surprised to see me. They played in a basement in a house in my neighborhood, alternating among an array of stringed instruments I’d never seen before much less heard, stomping in unison on a wooden platform and singing in harmony. They were even better than I remembered from last summer, and I’m so glad I got to see them again.

One other crazy thing about the Saintseneca tour is that days later, they played a show at a house in Olympia, Washington — and the house they played is where my oldest cousin lives. Mind blown.

I missed Death Cab and the Decemberists when they were in town, and I’ll probably have to skip Guster next weekend, but it’s been a great summer for music all the while. Besides, I’ve already seen all those guys. This summer is about trying new things, I think.

I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I am simply living out the busiest (best?) summer ever. My job is insane right now, I sleep four to six hours a night, I routinely bite off more than I can chew, etc. The usual excuses I offer for prolonged gaps in blogging, but I swear it’s all true.

So, here’s what you’re missing, and I truly plan on writing about these themes and events before it gets too cold out that I’m far too miserable to post. Just kidding. That won’t happen, right?

A list:

• Revisiting my Chicago Summer To-Do List and all that I’ve accomplished.
• How I’ve seen more live music this summer than I did in all of 2010.
• An update on the boyfriend.
• Getting to know my city much better and even kind of understanding where I am most of the time.
• Meeting new people and developing the most normal life I can in Chicago.

Meanwhile, I’m doing really well. If I could blog more easily from my commute, I totally would, but instead, I read in order to upkeep the too-many-book-clubs I’ve committed to.

So, hold tight — and remember, you can always call and ask because that’s probably a lot quicker than waiting for me to hastily write before going to bed way too late. Best wishes!