The Domestic Life

I baked yet another cake today. This time for Johnny’s birthday. The cake looks much better than the first creation which was undercooked the first round and I had to keep putting it back in the oven, take it out, do a ‘chopstick’ test ( instead of a toothpick test) the cake is supposed to be done when the toothpick/ chopstick comes out clean, with no dough clinging on to it. I repeated it so many times I gave up in the end and went to bed. That cake turned out ok in the end, ugly but delectable. We’ll have to see how this one fares tomorrow. I didn’t bother with the icing or decoration since I personally dislike the creamy stuff on cakes anyway. So it’s a boring brown cake. Given that we normally don’t even celebrate our birthdays proper, this is already a step up.

It feels so strange though to be back in the US, living essentially campus life again but everything is so different now. For starters, I’m not even a student. I’m just another one of those wives who followed their phd- pursuing husbands here and taking care of the little one. I cook almost all the time now vs having takeouts/ boxed dinners last time. Sometimes when I see the young uni students on the bus, I feel so strange that I was once like that – youthful, naive and full of unfocused ideals.