Suzy Q Homemaker

I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up but I suppose it’s time to decide.  Obviously, I’m not getting any younger.  There was a moment in time, before there were four children terrorizing my house, when I was sure I would have a successful music career.  I was going to be featured in concerts worldwide and perhaps appear on a recording or two.  That dream is only partially realized.  Only a few gigs roll in every year and I am featured on one recording.  It just doesn’t pay the bills, my friend.

Then I became a Creative Memories consultant.  That isn’t paying the bills either.  It enables me to support my scrapbooking habit, sure, but ever since Simon broke my camera, I feel like I’m struggling to keep up with my own albums.  I’ve done one custom digital book this year and am working on a custom traditional.  Those are the only two scrapbooking “gigs” I’ve had.

And the custom knitting…well, it’s kind of like CM in that it enables me to support my fiber habit!  I’m able to get yarn to knit for Timothy and my family but it only goes that far.

Jamie took a serious pay cut once he graduated and became a “real” teacher.  Now that we can’t live off of his student loans anymore, I have been trying to figure out what I can do to help.  My paid position at St. John really only pays for the gas it takes to drive there and back twice a week.  That’s not to say it isn’t worth it.  We love St. John and have had many blessings come our way through the church.  I want to start paying off my own student loans, though.

So I considered library school.  It would only take a couple years and I could do all the work online.  Sounds fabulous, right?  Except I would have to get more student loans to pay for it and I don’t want to dig our hole any deeper than it already is.  I have the rest of my life to be a librarian.

A few months ago, one of the Zumba instructors at the Y made a comment about me getting certified and I brushed it off thinking I could never in a million years get my heiny up in front of a group of people and shake it.  Then I seriously started considering it when one of my favorite instructors had to quit and we got stuck with the one instructor I really don’t enjoy.  Granted, this particular instructor is really super nice, funny, and highly energetic.  She just has a lot of trouble staying on the beat and is extremely difficult to follow even for the seasoned Zumba participant.  My sister had the unfortunate experience of taking a class with her last week.  Sorry!

Anyway, I’m up there at the gym shaking it at least twice a week anyway, so why not?  I bet with enough practice I could muster up enough confidence to become a bubbly little Zumba instructor.  I love doing it and much like singing, it would be a performance.  I would have to create a character for myself and become this New Person whenever I strap a mic to my head.  Certification takes one day.  After that, I can start teaching almost immediately (granted I find a gym that will take me) and hopefully start paying off these bills that are piling up.

The only thing standing in my way now is time.  Zumba workshops sell out so quickly.  Too quickly.  There are a couple workshops still open that are within driving distance, but those are not until January and February.  There is one in December in California near where one of my sisters lives that I would love doing, but I’d have to fly there.  Airfare is still relatively inexpensive for that weekend, but add in the cost of the workshop and it’s way more than we can afford.  Jamie asked if I want my certification fee to be my Christmas present and I’m going to take him up on it.  He just doesn’t know how he’s going to pull the funds together by himself (for the one in February).  I’m trying to pimp out my knitting and CM services in hopes of helping to contribute.

Maybe I shouldn’t do this.  Logistically, this is turning out to be a nightmare.  Financially, it’s impossible.  Should I just tell my family that all I want for Christmas is to be a Zumba instructor?

Should I have a telethon?

Set up a lemonade stand?

Hold a bake sale?

What should I dooooo?????

I will be thirty as of 12:14 a.m. tomorrow.  I’d like to have this figured out before then.

Help me out, internet.

Oh, how I wish I could have taken one of these sweet babies home.  SAFF was amazing.  So much fluffy, fuzzy, yarny, woolly goodness to behold.  It was definitely a birthday road trip to remember. Notably:

• SAFF was NOT the tractor show
• baby alpaca!
• goat with laryngitis
• fantastic foods and beers
• blessings from Sister Bad Habit:

Thanks Erin and Jamie for a most wonderful day.

This kid is something else.  It’s hard to believe that Simon came bursting into the world four years ago.  He hasn’t slowed down!  Oh, Simon.  You’re a clown, a monkey, and a sweetheart.  There are days that I’m frustrated with you because you are just as stubborn as I am, but at the end of the day, I’m still your mommy and you’re still my Simon.

Happy Birthday.

I suck at baking cakes.  Sometimes, I order cakes from a bakery just so I won’t go through the humiliation of offering my family poorly decorated cakes or cakes that I have pieced back together after accidentally dropping them.  The one time I tried to bake a cake from scratch, I couldn’t get it out of the pan and the entire thing ended up on the floor as a big pile of crumbs.  I cried.

If I opt for personally baking birthday cakes, I always get a cake mix.  I don’t have a favorite brand, so I usually go on whatever flavor the birthday boy requests.  Since it was Timothy’s first birthday, he couldn’t exactly choose his own cake.  After looking on the Betty Crocker website at the different cakes, I immediately knew that the Robot Cake would be ours.  I was going to make it work, by golly!

And I did.  I even tried to plan the entire Robots Rule Party, but there were many complications:

1. I went to a grocery store I’d never been to and couldn’t find everything I needed.
2. I got a flat tire on the day before the party, which was the day I planned to bake the cake.
3. I couldn’t find all of what I needed at the grocery store.

The robot cake called for black and blue food coloring with which to dye the icing a grey color.  Um, those colors aren’t available at your neighborhood Kroger.  I had to step on over to the Hobby Lobby and look in the cake decorating aisle in order to find some icing coloring.  It gave me a good excuse to get a fancy icing spatula, though, so I guess I can’t complain.

I never realized how much work goes into decorating a fancy cake!  I had to refrigerate the cake several times as called for in the instructions, so the assembly/decorating took a whole lot longer than I realized it would.  Of course, if one doesn’t spend five hours waiting on a new tire and alignment, I guess making the cake the day before wouldn’t seem so daunting.  I was able to bake the cake the night before, but all of the decorating took place the next morning.

Personally, I think my robot cake came out really well.  I didn’t drop it or mangle it, and I was so inspired by the first cake that I made Timothy a mini-cake from the leftovers.  He didn’t care too much for it, but we’re still working on the whole Solid Foods thing anyway.  In fact, he spit out what little cake we got in his mouth and didn’t really appreciate having icing all over his hands.

Case in point:

Now that you’ve read about our cake baking adventure, I’m happy to offer one of my readers a Betty Crocker “Bake Life Sweeter” Prize Pack (includes everything seen in the picture below)!

To enter, leave me a comment telling me which Betty Crocker cake you’d like to make.  Visit BettyCrocker.com to see all the different cake ideas.  For additional entries, leave me a comment for each of the following:

• Subscribe to any of my feeds (current subscribers count)
• Become a fan of Suzy Q Homemaker on facebook
• Share this giveaway with a friend
• Tweet about this giveaway

I will close comments and choose a winner on May 2, 2010.  U.S. only, please.