Weekly Blog Feb 15 to 21: Baking and Waking, No Not That!
Tags: Dads, Blog, Life, Cooking, Retail

Weekly Blog Feb 15 to 21: Baking and Waking, No Not That! Cordilius Feb 22·12 min read

Look at that tasty skin!

Feb 15, 2021

Hello again, today I made a batch of my Famous Honey Babies, if you don’t know what those are, let me enlighten you.

They are little almost donut-hole-type things. But they are more of a bread than a doughnut. So they end up firm on the outside but super soft on the inside. And as in the name they are sweetened with honey. I also brush the outside with honey and sprinkle a lil cinnamon sugar on the outside, before they go in the oven.

I am working on a glaze I can put on them when they come out of the oven that doesn’t make them go a bit soggy if you let them sit too long. Right now I have to glaze before serving, I want to be able to store them with the glaze on so it is easier to sell them.

I plan on testing a couple of honey glazes, or maybe a chocolate glaze. I also want to see about maybe doing a peanut butter or chocolate filling.

But anyway the reason I made them was one because they are my son’s favorite snack. And two because I am selling a dozen of them to one of my staff members. I even made them without using my stand mixer cause the motor sounds like it’s gonna die any day and if I am going to be selling these with any regularity (wish me luck). I need to be able to make them without the mixer.

I should also be writing my short story but I am kinda not feeling the current scene. Not that it’s too bad, I don’t think anyway, I am just not in the mood to write it, I am thinking of doing a segue to the scene after just trying to gloss over the rest.

I am worried if I just straight-up skip it I will forget and miss it in editing. This is ridiculous considering how often I go over things. But that’s anxiety for you.

Other than that, not too much happened today, it was my day off. I cleaned up, took care of some laundry. My son actually let me read a couple of books to him. Which doesn’t happen often, so that was a highlight.

Well, I should probably get back to my short story and see you in a bit.

Feb 16, 2021

Last night was rough. My son had a nightmare or something and half woke himself up. He has the magic ability to get fussy and wake up exactly when I am trying to go to bed. So I spent at least two hours trying to snuggle and get him to go back to sleep.

The little dude would settle for a bit then spin about the Tasmanian Devil. I mean legs apart full whirlwind kick.

So I didn’t get to bed until after midnight, and now I am up at six this morning. Cause that’s about when he wakes up every day.

I love my boy with all my heart. But I wish this dude would sleep. Ah well, such is the life of a parent.

— -

Today was a long boring day, I had no sales myself but my staff was able to sell today. I managed to get some work done on my short story. Which I will have to copy and paste over as I typed it up at work while waiting for customers.

Speaking of work one of my staff tried to receive the item I was shipping to another store. So I don’t think anyone had enough coffee today. I am wrecked so I am going to go hit the hay.

Feb 17, 2021

Last night was rough again, kid not sleeping he might be going through a growth spurt. I attempted to snuggle him down. I was in the room with him from 12 to 1ish. It’s hard to tell when you’re half asleep. Then I could not fall back to sleep due to some weird anxiety about there being a fire in his room.

There is nothing that can burn easily, and the apartment is water heated (which sucks) and the pipe is shielded so things can’t possibly get hot enough to catch flame. I know this but, I was still unreasonably worried. I did manage to fall asleep but then I had a weird dream that my apartment was run by some sort of small-town mafia family and broke into my apartment to threaten me and then threatened to evict me if I called the police. So, I woke up at 3 in the morning angry and upset for no reason.

So now I am exhausted at work. And it seems my cheque coming this Friday is less than I was expecting. So now I am seriously looking for a second job. Or switching to another career entirely. I can’t even apply for rental assistance until after mid-March because I haven’t lived in the Province for long enough. (For any American readers a province is like a state except bigger and Canadian).

So now I am sifting through scam get rich quick schemes, in order to find anything that might allow me to make a profit. To clarify I don’t expect to “make it rich” which is entirely unlikely unless I get lucky. Any little bit I can make on the side to support my family will help.

But I need to factor in time vs income because it needs to be worth the time I am taking away from my family. The ones that have the best chance of being successful require a time or monetary investment that I just don’t have right now. Especially not when my daughter is going to be born soon. I planned on adding book reviews to my blog, but I don’t know if I will have time to do any reading, unfortunately.

I will probably have to stick to my first option which is to write and ‘finish’ short stories and sell them on amazon. Then bundle them in a collection and repeat. This requires me to be bulk writing and while I will probably get better at writing with this method I am afraid the story quality will fall fairly quickly.

It also requires me to regularly put out 5000-to-10000-word stories or do collections of smaller stories. I have a bunch of plots I can work with, for now, it’s just sitting down and banging them out with any degree of rapidity.

As it is, I will be bulk applying to any work from home job I can find as soon as I am on my home computer (typing on my phone for the win, thank you Samsung-Dex).

The only reason I am writing this out now is to open the stress release valve. The more I do this the more I find the release of writing about my day helps me manage my stress levels. Though when I want to write but can’t come up with anything it is a different sort of stress. Anyway, I think that’s enough for now.

Wait never mind I have to help some grumpy old rigger, remove the late payment fees on his account. $2.58 off a $130 bill. That was a huge waste of time. Seriously, almost an hour on the phone for this. Now I think I am done. I got jobs to apply for.

Feb 18, 2021

Morning, or afternoon it’s morning when I am writing this though. 6:33 in the morning for me right now. I have been up since about 4:45, which isn’t bad considering I passed out at a little after 9:30.

I am sitting here snuggling my son before he wakes up. He had a lil upset this morning so I helped get him back down.

I did manage to bulk apply to some work-from-home jobs last night, probably including stuff I am not qualified for but we will have to see. I have a bunch of assessments to do for a few of them. 10–20min tests, they say.

I will take care of those today, usually, they’re almost always the same things. You just answer the questions in the way that the company wants to improve your chances of being hired.

I only got to do a little bit of writing yesterday but I did make a few sales so that helps.

— -

Wow, I was moderately busy today. Not with sales but with changing the programs on all our computers. I also received a bunch of stock, nothing useful, unfortunately. A lot of stuff we already had. This time of year we have the post-Christmas lull, so the shipping of stock is not the best this time of year. Then I spent most of my time in the office going over reports the few times I managed to get out on the floor, there were no customers on the floor.

In good news, I booked an interview for a work-from-home job on Monday and I have another one to call back tomorrow.

This evening I started a pork picnic shoulder roast in the slow cooker. It’s got a fantastic 18h cook time so it will be ready tomorrow at around 4 in the afternoon at which point I will carefully remove it and the excess liquid(separately), peel back the skin, scrape off the excess fat, and crisp the top under the broiler.

The only seasoning used is salt, I changed it up a bit and used seasoning salt instead of kosher, I also added some pepper so hopefully, the flavors incorporate well. You will find out shortly I guess lol. I actually have to wait for the full 18hrs. I will hopefully remember to take pictures for you and the gram. I think it will be my second ever upload to Instagram at that point. The first one was also food.

Now I am going to do a bit of writing for either my short story or what I am going to call micro-stories. If I find the legitimate name for them I will let you know.

I think I mentioned earlier that all my stories and such would occur in the same universe and that is the point of these micro tales. They are idea generators. I grab a random/appropriate writing prompt and with each little tale, I build the background and lore of my world more and more.

Part of the self-imposed rules for this includes that I can’t plan them out. I have to pick a prompt and just start writing. I am hoping that this will let me improve my thought process when writing as the constant practice creates/enforces my thought process to operate better.

Wish me luck

(Pork picture up top!)

Feb 19, 2021

So good news I managed to get some writing done bad news not as much as I would have liked. But every little bit adds up. It wasn’t a writing prompt I did, I just added more to my short story.

I plan on doing a writing prompt from start to finish today.

That might also get posted today so you might see it before you see this message.

Or it didn’t get done, or I decided not to post it. I am sure you will find out lol.

Oh, and the 18h pork roast turned out fantastic, perfectly tender and moist. I turned the fat and drippings into gravy and made it a pulled pork.

I had to throw away the skin because it tasted fantastic but every bite legitimately made my heart hurt. And I would have eaten it all in one sitting, like the fat bastard I am.

Feb 20, 2021

So I did manage to get a first draft of a short story done. I sat down in the evening and wrote it up in a few hours.

I am pretty happy with it overall. I do have to go over it, as I just wrote without any sort of structure. So it wanders about a fair bit and doesn’t flow super well. But it has a beginning and an end.

Endings are usually the part I have trouble with. But with the ending done everything else is gravy.

Woo, morning for me at the time of this writing 435am and I work at 1130. Being a parent is something let me tell you. Speaking of gravy this morning I made myself a pulled pork waffle. (Today is diet cheat day, as long as we have this pork tomorrow might be too).

Belgian Waffle, pan-seared pulled pork, top with an over-easy egg, green onions, and pure Canadian Maple syrup.

Today was not too bad. I was actually busy at work today. I managed to get a few sales but this is pretty much all the writing I was able to get done today. As it is I am kinda wiped. I don’t have the brain for anything creative, I spent most of it working on a stupid “motivation building” sales track for my staff, I only did it because I had to send a picture of it to my boss who is also spending the next week at my store. But as a whole, it is a useless concept. This sort of motivation might work for some but it's just an annoyance for the staff at my store.

Feb 21, 2021

Hello again, another Sunday morning playing with my toddler and his Paw Patrol toys.

I say playing but he is mostly doing his own thing. I am just here to help when he gets frustrated and keep him company.

And putting his Rocky plush back on the $3 imitation Tonka toy digger he loves.

In fact, I am pretty sure the only reason he wants me here is to put the plush on the digger.

Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

I kinda cheated my diet this morning with a pulled pork omelet. But we got a fair bit of pork to eat. As long as I watch my calories and do the workout I have planned it should be fine though.

Gotta make some bread and such today. Gonna do a couple of loafy boys for the week and a couple for the freezer.

I am kinda wrecked today. I am still gonna do what’s gotta be done. But I did not sleep well at all last night. Nothing but bad dreams.

But I didn’t wake up till this morning. So I just kinda feel exhausted. But I can’t slow down as stuff needs to get done and my wife is almost ready to pop. My daughter could legitimately be born any day now. So I am managing my stress the only way I know-how. I am probably not going to write anything today but I will do some editing of the story I completed, and I may rewrite parts of it that I am unhappy with.

— -

Does it seem like I alternate between writing and editing styles? I think I do. Mostly because how I write seems to change based on my mood. I imagine that as I do more, I will settle into my own style. When I am typing these blog segments I try to write how I would talk, sometimes I get it sometimes I don’t. I do find that I subvocalize as I write these segments which helps because I am trying to keep this conversational, I guess? What doesn’t come across are the long pauses between some words as I try to get the wheels in my head to turn. I am trying to structure everything so you can tell when I write at different times of the day.

I am debating on whether I should edit my short story now, or work on a new one. Editing is something I can do from my phone, but I do it better on the computer. However, I need to be working on new material. Alternatively, I could work on my other short story project decisions. I might have to just roll a d6, and play the odds. Also yes I play DnD when I can find the time, which right now is never. Maybe when the kids grow up.

I think I will try something new and if I can’t come up with anything I will work on my unfinished project. I find finishing stories is more important than editing them, cause you can edit all you want but if the story isn’t done you have just wasted your time.

Anyways good night from me you will see the next post on Monday.