The People Have Spoken

You get an updated blog.

The updates are not so big, though. It's winter. I finished all my grad apps. My arms still hurt all the time.

I haven't had a migraine since I stopped drinking red wine and champagne. This is both great and terrible news. Not too important, though.

I made the no-knead bread today, and, perhaps because I am a multi-generational and amazing bread-baker, it was really good. And my arms do not hurt. And my 8-quart stainless steel stock pot survived being in my miniature oven at 450 for an hour and a half. Nothing died! I made bread!

So ... I haven't wanted to update because I want to tell you all about a terrible thing, but I don't want to, but I do, and I am. One of my cousins in Texas was killed in a car accident the week of Christmas--it was the morning, he was driving, he got distracted and swerved into oncoming traffic and collided with a gravel truck. He was killed instantly. He was 26. 500 people went to his funeral. I did not go; I stayed in Missouri/Illinois. We were close in a way; I'm closer to his immediate family, but he's in the group of cousins I'm closest to. His mom has been battling pancreatic cancer for half a year; I heard Danny, her youngest, had been killed and figured she would die within a month. Instead, her doctors can't get any visual confirmation of her tumor. As in, her tumor disappeared the week after he died. Her doctors told her it was a gift from God and to accept it. He was my responsible cousin, the one who had a professional driver's license and drove trucks full of explosives for a living, who was quiet and handsome and tall like his dad and loved his niece and nephew and was nearly engaged and ... was 26.

I want you all to be safe, and not swerve, and not be killed.

Okay? Okay.