Friday Harbor Rotary Presentation

I'm headed up to Friday Harbor today with my mom. I have a presentation with the Friday Harbor Rotary, and I'm really excited. It will be fun to see familiar faces, and hug people that I haven't seen in awhile. One of these days I'm going to video record a presentation to share here on the blog. I'm not too crazy about watching myself, but I'm sure it'd be a really helpful exercise.

For this presentation, I was wanting to revamp my whole process but I just couldn't pull it together. My mind is often cloudy and I feel like the synapses aren't firing at the optimum level. Sometimes my brain feels like Homer Simpson's.

I still feel like my brain is grasping for connections, and my thoughts don't work as seamlessly as they did before the surgeries. Last night, as Danny and I were talking about this frustrating little situation, he reminded me that I've only had one year to recover.

It's hard to be patient though. It's easy to feel like I'm plateauing, or even regressing. Sometimes I feel stupid. I do fine talking in conversations, the problem is the thoughts swirling in my head when I'm trying to organize large scale ideas. My inability of mental organization is incredibly foreign. I used to conquer all kinds of difficult mental tasks. I loved a challenge, and excelled at schooling. Now I feel slow, and inept. At times I still feel like a guest in my own brain, trying to navigate through thoughts. It's hard to explain.

Brain trauma is hard to explain to people. You can't see it. A lot of times, people can't tell the difference between Jessica before and after. I have a hard time when I'm exhausted or stressed, and that can be isolating and frustrating. I'm not able to just push through. It's not the end of the world and I'm incredibly grateful to have progressed so far already. I'm just sharing how I feel on the inside, the part that people can't see.

Mom's Cake or Lack Thereof

Friday's birthday cake baking didn't go exactly as planned. This is a photo from my camera phone. It's blurry because I instantly started tearing up. As the angel food cake came out of the oven, I burnt my finger on the rack and I lost my balance. The cake was not completely cooked and the top started shaking as if it was built with jello, quickly jumping ship onto my running shoes. I think the cake would have survived my lack of balance, but in my haste to get the batter in the oven I accidentally filled a cheesecake pan instead of a bunt pan. Oops. Sometimes I feel like the character Romona, in the Beverly Cleary's children's book series. It's frustrating to not even be able to use utensils right, or do what you used to do easily, or have it take so many times to get things right. It's like one side isn't talking to the other. I hate complaining about it, and I hide it, but life is hard. It's hard to try and get back.

I was able to make a lemon filling with fresh lemons which was the saving grace. I took the cake from the pan and stuffed it, spoonful by spoonful, into a ramekin. I cut out the center and stuffed it with the lemon filling, then grated lemon over the top. Not too bad in a pinch!

I was thoroughly upset with myself, but now that I've had time to look back the whole thing was incredibly funny! I had the best of intentions and I was trying so hard to make her the perfect cake, but sometimes all you have is just a great story.