The Cake Whisker[er]: Disclaimer, Dentures & Drives

Disclaimer: I just opened and downed part of a new bottle of medication. This may get interesting. Please accept my apologies in advance.

This week was just as much of a blur as last week, and I'll start the commentary by closing out the shuttle saga. I've told you about the lady who I stopped driving to class (and therapy sessions) for various reasons (including but not limited to she has a long history of mental disorders, carries very sharp knives and my car is a small confined space). I called and gave the news to her on a Sunday and struggled with it on Monday. You've read that story. What I have failed to share up to this point is that she didn't show up to class on Monday. Or Tuesday. In fact she didn't show up all week. When another student got the number from me and called to check on her early in the week, she stated that she didn't have gas money. None of my classmates volunteered to pick her up, and I stood firm in my reasoning that if your unemployed husband has money to drive to the casino on a daily basis, then you can find a way to class. One obvious solution could be that if neither you nor your husband have teeth (which is the case here), you could allocate the money saved on dental hygiene and care toward fuel expenses. Well, that last sentence isn't completely true. She does have a set of teeth that showed up for two days during the second or third week of class, but she decided that they were too painful to wear. (There it goes again - that pang of guilt that jumps at me whenever I say something mean and tacky. I know that I could be right there in her situation if not for the grace of God [insert Clint Brown song here], and I should watch my mouth). I just think that you should try to help yourself first. Persevere. Wear the teeth. You'll build up a resistance to the discomfort, you won't stand out as much in a crowd and you'll be more likely to get a job. That's all. As a result of the missed week of class, the lady was so far behind that there was no way she could pass. She has to stay home and rejoin when the next class starts. This is a good thing and brings us to the next topic.

When we started working with Hitler (I need to come up with a nicer nickname for her), we were assigned teams randomly. I was assigned the lady that needed transportation, an 18 year old fresh out of high school girl and the 17 year old kicked out of high school boy with the lip ring and attitude. The no transportation lady's absence was welcomed by me, because I wanted to avoid the awkwardness of having to work with her after dropping her. So we had a group of three - for a few days anyway. The body jewelry guy had attendance issues and was removed from our team so that he didn't weigh us down. A few days later his attitude got the best of him, and he got into an argument with the chef, left and has not been back. I believe that college can now be added to the list of places that he is no longer welcome at. Unfortunately he left before I got a chance to ask him for the paring knife from his kit. I've misplaced mine (or someone snatched it), and he won't be needing his any time soon.

When things settled down, we made bread. We will have an entire class on breads later in our curriculum (pronounced kricklem according to one of my old bosses), but in my unlearned opinion, I thought what we did was pretty good. We made scallion rolls, breadsticks, brioche (pronounced bree-oh-ssh) and foccacia on the first day. My favorite was the pepperoni foccacia. On the second day of breads we worked with challah, a braided bread. Challah is pronounced holla and led to a full day of shouting 'Holla!' and corny reworkings of songs like ChallahBread Girl (which led to a walk down memory lane to the 1215 building where a friend first played the original version for me years ago. It was a fond memory - not of the profane song, but the old friend). The braiding of the challah was easy enough. Getting the bread (of any variety) to roll out into strands to braid is what I struggle with. I haven't figured out what makes it more difficult than play-doh, but there is some elusive trick. Rolling the breadsticks was the same misery.