I Interrupt my Previous Post to Say: Mideau. Parlour Hawk. One Night. One Stage

When I first met Spencer Harrison, he thought I was breaking into his house.

I wasn't. I swear.

I was coming over to study with his roommate, who told me to walk in and wait while he went to pull his car out of a ditch. True story, including the part about the ditch.

Now, Spencer, former bassist of Fictionist, has returned to the Provo music scene with Libbie Linton and a great new project: Mideau.

Their album release show last Friday SOLD OUT. As did the album release show for Parlor Hawk! So tonight, you have the chance to see TWO sell-out bands put on one great show at 8 p.m. at Velour Music Gallery (an all-ages venue and wellspring of knock-out music [see: Imagine Dragons, Joshua James, etc.]) in Provo (135 N. University Ave.)

I love seeing good people make great things, and even more so, I love when everyone else sees it too.

One Great Truth I'm Learning from Unemployment

Sadly, I did not get one of the jobs I was excited about because I was slow in turning in my application and the position had already been filled.

This is prime material for self-loathing and regret.

Before I had the chance to get deep into the loathing though, Super told me this:

"You don't have to beat yourself up about things in order to do better."

Until now, I don't think I'd ever really thought that the loathing was optional to progress. In some sense, doesn't that change everything?

The Necessity of Cheerleaders

When I think of cheerleaders, I think of a girl from my high school I didn’t know very well and the day she broke her nose. During a cheer practice in the gym, she fell when someone was supposed to catch her, shattering the tiny bones in her face, and spilling a lot of blood on the wood floor—according to whoever passed the story along to me in the hallway between class. I felt so bad for her and even worse for the person who didn’t catch her.

Ironic how that’s the image that comes to mind. Not pompoms or perky ponytails. Just someone else’s pain and the obvious truth that my body and I were never meant to do backflips. Nope. I am no acrobat. (I left that up to my best friend, who was such a gymnast that the boys at school called her Xena, after the one and only warrior princess.)

But I think I’m a great cheerleader. I decided that after my last shift at the Family Support and Treatment Center, where I work as a house parent in the crisis nursery.

When the other kids realized I’m too slow to make tag fun, they went inside leaving Nate (name changed) and I out on the playground. Though Nate doesn’t really notice, I’ve known him since he was four. Our friendship goes back to my early days of volunteering in the nursery. Now he’s six, and I still don’t know much about his past other than that he was adopted out of the system. This kind of info wasn’t really important to me though when I sat down on the grass, and he picked up a basketball.

I don’t think he made a shot until about the fifth try. But when he did, I clapped and shouted, and Nate smiled in the way he always does: with more sweetness than you can believe. A few more failed attempts, and then point number two. I repeated the cheering, and he repeated the smile. And on we went like that. I thought he’d get bored sometime soon, but when he had made the eighteenth basket, I reminded him that he was almost to twenty. He realized how close he was, “Oh yeah! Eighteen, nineteen, twenty!” Soon he scored that nineteen and the twenty, and I cheered and clapped each victory. All the way to thirty-one.

He declared a time-out and sat down on my patch of grass to discuss the events. He was very satisfied with the score. I was mostly surprised by it. Nate has always been resilient and patient, so I take no credit for that. But I was astounded that a little cheering kept him going for so long. Having someone tick off the victories and minimize the mistakes turned a few baskets into thirty-one.

In the haze of summer shade and the quiet of a nearly empty playground, I realized I am great at this cheerleading thing. It’s less messy than I realized, and I think I could do it forever.

Late But Tasty: Cherry Almond Cake

I finally finished Super's midterm cake! It was well received despite it's lateness.

True to my own musing, I ended up making the Cake Blog's Fresh Cherry Cake. They use goose berries, which are yellow to add some lovely colors. I originally intended on using bing and rainer cherries to get my reds and yellows in, but we only had red ones by the time I made it. Lovely nonetheless.

The almond whipping cream was truly delicious. I would double it. It looks nice put on sparingly, but when actually eating the cake, it was more tasty and less dry if you dump on an extra serving of whipping cream. Don't feel guilty. Do it for cake everywhere.

Now a confession: the cake fell over as soon as we finished taking pictures. I put it back together like this, and I actually liked that look for serving better.

I don't think you need to fear it falling over if you're using a more normal size of cake pan. I used little springform pans: a wedding gift from my Ever-Lovin' Bethany. They are so cute. I want to make everything in them. I cooked them at 350, as instructed, and they took about 15 minutes. My only trouble with them was that I didn't push them far enough into the oven on the second batch, which led to one side cooking a bit faster. So watch out for that. But truly, they are lovely.

I also now love to grease and flour cake pans. The railing outside our apartment is often coated in a light dusting of flour. I'm just waiting for the day when I drop my cake pans three stories. That will be both tragic and funny, and it's just the kind of mistake I'd make.

I'm glad this post is finally up. Lately I've been loving writing about deeper things, like my unemployment, and I have several posts I'm eager to share with you all next week. Feel free to like, pin, and share any of them.