You know the moment? The one where you’re supposed to come back with a witty retort or the perfect comeback or the snappy zinger that is so obvious 10 seconds after? I had one of those over the weekend when I stepped out of my bedroom at midnight onto the back porch to the sound of raucous laughter.

“Hey, would you guys mind keeping it down a little?” I called to the upstairs neighbor’s deck.

Silence fell swift and heavy. And then came two words, barely audible in the darkness.

“Fuck you.”

They hung in the silence, brilliant as a pair of malevolent fireflies. It was the moment. And I was frozen. In the space of a few seconds, a conversation played out in my head.

Anger: “Yeah? Why don’t you say that to my face instead of just muttering it in the dark?”
Sarcasm: “Really? That’s the adult response to ‘please be quiet’? Is that what they’re teaching in Behavioral Psychology these days?”
Pride: “Don’t be rude in front of their friends. It’s disrespectful.”
Spock: “It is highly doubtful that returning anger with anger will result in either your desired result or a productive conversation.”
Practicality: “Speaking of desired result, they seem to be quiet. Looks like whatever you said worked. Let’s go to sleep now.”

“Thank you.” I said and turned to go inside. As I opened the door, I was followed by some more muttering that ended with the words “Screw you.”

“I wonder if she thinks I can’t hear her?” I thought.

I’d like to say that I then fell right asleep and forgot about the whole thing. But I didn’t. I tossed and turned most of the night and woke up completely exhausted. A new group had joined the running conversation in my head.

Anxiety: “Maybe I should have said something. I don’t want people talking to me like that.”
The Oracle: “You already decided what you should do. The question is whether you know why you did what you did.”
Oprah: “She must be full of hate to act like that. I kinda feel sorry for her.”
Sofia Vergara: “Why are jou spending all jour time theeenking about her? Jou should be theeenking about jourself and how JOU feel!”
Me-at-Fifteen: “Finally, some validation that the whole world really DOES revolve around me.”

Completely disgruntled by my utter failure in the moment, I consulted my friend Sherin, a writer, a child of the genteel South and one of the gifted few who seem to always have a politely witty retort at the ready.

“Well, I might have said ‘Thanks for the offer but, as I’m trying to get some sleep, I’d appreciate if you’d just keep it down for now.’”

Sherin SMASH! I think I might have just added a new part to my repertoire – InternalSherin, can I introduce you to InternalSpock? Here, let me get you some wine.. just make yourself at home…

Hey, it’s not schizophrenia until I start talking back. Out loud. And somebody notices. Repeatedly.

Yesterday, I got on my bike to do a 15k training ride I’ve been doing 3 times a week for the past two weeks. One moment, I was clipping my right foot into the pedal and the next, I was lying on my back surrounded by EMTs, car mechanics and antique dealers from the shops nearby.

Huh.

We had a brief but factual conversation:

EMT: “What’s your name?”
me: “Christiana.”
EMT: “What’s the year?”
me: “2010.”
EMT: “Can you tell me what day of the week it is?”
me (cringing inwardly): “…uh, Tuesday?”

Side note: I remain firmly convinced that folks with M-F 9-5 jobs can’t understand the mental gymnastics this freelancer goes through to remember the day of the week. Sometimes I work on the weekends. Sometimes I go shopping on a Thursday. For a whole year, I spent every Saturday shooting 10 hour weddings and Sunday sure as H-E-Double-Hockeysticks didn’t feel like a weekend.

A man’s voice called out from my left side:

“Don’t worry – I’ve got your bike right here. In Onslow Antiques. The cop’s getting all this information down. It’ll be right here for you when you get back.”

My bike! It’s ok! I turned my head to find it. A man was holding it by the frame. It was missing a wheel and the front fork looked like a pair of shiny black broken bones – cruelly snapped and splintered beyond repair.

I groaned audibly and the EMS guys looked at me, “Does that hurt? Where is the pain?”

Is there a bike bone? I heard myself wondering cuz that’s where it really hurts. My bike… my beautiful bike…

Part Two: The Emergency Room

At the hospital, they set my stretcher under the portable x-ray machine. A blond nurse peered down at me. We had a brief but factual conversation:

Nurse: “What’s your name?”
me: “Christiana.”
Nurse: “What’s the year?”
me: “2010.”
Nurse: “Can you tell me what day of the week it is?”
me (semi-confidently): “Tuesday.”

I must have passed the test – she and two other nurses lifted my arms and shoulders gingerly. I heard one of them say, “We’ll try not to ruin your expensive shirt.”

“This shirt? I found it in a box on the street.” Did I just laugh? I must be ok…

The blond nurse and I locked eyes briefly before she whipped out a pair of scissors and declared, “I’m cutting this thing off!”

They took a round of x-rays and a tall man with glasses, a white lab coat, and the slow, steady gaze of someone who’s seen it all came to my side. We had a brief but factual conversation:

Doctor: “What’s your name?”
me: “Christiana.”
Doctor: “What’s the year?”
me: “2010.”
Doctor: “Can you tell me what day of the week it is?”
me (knowingly): “Tuesday.”

He sent me off for a CAT scan. Have you ever watched a hospital scene that was filmed from the patient in the stretcher’s point of view? It was EXACTLY like that – white acoustical tiles punctuated by fluorescent lights and mesh panels for the HVAC – except for the ceiling-mounted Cisco wireless points every 50 feet or so.

Part Three: Waiting

After all the tests, I was wheeled into a staging room where I was greeted by Kareem:

Kareem: “Hi, I’m Kareem. What’s your name?”
me: “Christiana.”
Kareem: “What’s the year?”
me: “2010.”
Kareem: “Can you tell me what day of the week it is?”
me (resignedly): “Tuesday. Is everyone going to ask me that?”
Kareem: “Yep.”

At this point, a female doctor bearing a clipboard swept in and announced, “I’ll be taking over. Dr. Blair is really worried because you have a lot of dry stool in your belly.”

What?! Is that why I fell off my bike? Have I been constipated lately? My BELLY? What am I, five years old? What on earth is she talking about?? I’d been cracking jokes with medical staff since I arrived but I had no witty comeback for that one – I was utterly unprepared and completely speechless. My look of utter confusion must have said what my tongue could not – the doctor double-checked her clipboard with a frown and swept out of the room as breezily as she had swept in.

The rest of the day was fairly boring. I received a new discharge bracelet (with my maiden name misspelled – Rodriguz?! Who makes that mistake?) and several documents (also with my name misspelled – Christiniana?! I don’t even know how to pronounce that…) with instructions on how to clean my wounds and who to call with questions. I was back at work to collect my things by 5 and home by 6 with plenty of time to mourn my bike and nurse my wounded pride.

My admittance bracelet – they didn’t take my name officially until discharge. Hospital staff explained that, in lieu of names, they use an alphabetical system to track patients admitted to the ER. You know you’re dating an engineer/nerd, when they say, upon inspection of the bracelet, “Oh, so you must have been the 17th person today.”

• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 5 apples, preferably a baking variety
• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 stick unsalted butter, straight from the fridge

Canon EOS 5D with ST-E2 transmitter. 180 sec @ f/6.7, ISO 200. 580EXII @1/8th power bounced off back wall.

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 450°F. Peel & core the apples and cut into thin slices. Grease a 9×9 baking dish or similarly sized pie pan (or 3 small IKEA baking dishes). Combine brown sugar and spices in large bowl. Add apple slices, toss until evenly coated and put in baking dish/pie pan. See apples with coating and without in topmost pic.
2. Mix flour, sugar and butter in medium bowl. Using a food processor or your fingertips to blend ingredients until they resemble a coarse meal. (It is worth fighting the urge to just plunge your hands into the bowl and knead that dough into a textureless, sticky blob. It’s great fun but doesn’t produce great pastry.) Spread flour mixture evenly over apples. See pic above for example.
3. Bake on oven middle rack for 20 mins. Reduce oven temperature to 350°F and continue baking until the crust is golden brown and apples are bubbly, about 30 minutes. Let stand 15 minutes before serving.

Postprandial Notes: The apple part was a little sweet for me – next time I make this, I will omit the sugar for the apple mixture (and use better quality apples!). I will also make the crisp part in the food processor – I think I made the dough too consistent for a nice crumbly texture. I thought these apples needed a bit of lemon juice for tartness but a nice baking apple might not need it.

You could also definitely experiment with adding walnuts, dried ginger, dried cranberries or raisins, or mixing in other fruit like peaches or rhubarb (ok, not exactly a fruit but…).

Camera Notes: Canon EOS 5D with ST-E2 transmitter. 180 sec @ f/6.7, ISO 200. Background flash: 580EXII @1/8th power and wide angle diffuser. Cutting mat for gobo. Key light: 580EXII, gridded and zoomed to 108mm @1/4th power. White bowls for stand-ins.

Learning to draw is pretty much as frustrating as learning to walk or learning to read or learning to ride a bike. The trouble is, learning to do anything (and subsequently discovering that you really like doing it and want to get better) is really a continuously ongoing process of making mistakes. Sometimes the mistakes reveal a path towards something really cool and undiscovered. And sometimes they don’t.

Just like today’s picture.

(The recipe, by the way, is much more delicious than this picture indicates. I swear it on a stack of old, treasured comics.)

Mr. Vilppu was full of inspirational things to say when I would bring him my frustrations. One of the best (albeit over-quoted) was something Chuck Jones used to say, which went something like “Every artist has 10,000 bad drawings to make before they make 1 good one. The sooner you get through the bad drawings, the sooner you’re making good ones.”

I myself used to use this quote to remind my English students that making mistakes is not just ok but necessary for success. Of course, it’s a lot easier to say that as a teacher who’s already made the mistake than it is to hear it as a student who’s just made the mistake.

Canon EOS 5D 1/180th sec @f8.0, ISO 200. Main light: LumoPro 120 @ 1/4th power. Key light: 580EX II @ 1/16th power. Tin foil reflector.

I baked the cake in a 9×9 cake pan and planned to serve it as a single layer with icing. I even photographed it that way, using a folded handkerchief as a stand-in for the icing while I got the light just right. For some reason, I decided to do the final photograph as a double layer square cake. I’m generally happy with the light but I think the shape of the cake is just well, WRONG.

A typical triangular piece of cake would have a nice tapered point that the back light could shine through slightly, giving the cake a light, fluffy feel instead of the dense, asphalt-carrot texture it’s got going on now. Time to clear the plate err, slate – can’t serve cake that’s been sitting out under hot studio lights to guests.. that’s just plain rude.

The recipe comes from this recipe on Epicurious. I halved the original recipe, omitted the walnuts, replaced the oil with apple sauce, used on 1/2 cup of sugar, omitted the marmalade spread on the cake below the frosting and made a non-dairy version of the frosting (recipe below).

Non-Dairy Cream Cheese Marmalade Frosting

Ingredients

• 8 oz Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese, room temperature
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• A heaping 1/4 cup of orange marmalade

Preparation

1. Throw it all in a mixing bowl and mix it with a whisk or a mixer, if you’re lazy or a perfectionist. Slather on cake immediately or refrigerate until firm-ish, put into a pastry bag and pipe frosting on in a delicate basketweave lattice pattern. Eat on small dishes with tea, silver forks and pinky finger extended.
2. Freezes well for longer-term storage. Makes about enough frosting for the top of a 9×9 single layer cake

Canon EOS 5D 1/180th sec @f8.0, ISO 200. Main light: LumoPro 120 @ 1/4th power. Key light: 580EX II @ 1/16th power. Tin foil reflector.