Last week’s prediction was off by a day: the loaf of basic white sandwich bread didn’t last until Friday. I said “No problem! I’ve got this! I now know what I was doing wrong,” followed all the same steps, and wound up with a mixing bowl full of raw dough that stubbornly refused to rise after 180 minutes.
Correction: I followed all the same steps but one. Instead of using a random packet of active dry yeast that I found hanging out at the back of the spice drawer, I used active dry yeast from the bulk lot I’ve had stashed in a jar in the freezer since 2020. The yeast bloomed like it was supposed to (but no more than that) and gave up the ghost while rising.
I gave up hope for that yeast’s still being good or at least inconsistent on the side of evil and found another packet of yeast in the spice drawer. This batch bloomed vigorously. I had a very puffy first rise, and during the second rise, the dough spilled out of the pan. The loaf that resulted was very short, because the rise was so vigorous it ejected a lot of the volume. It looked like a bomb hit it.
Speaking of explosions, I finally lost it at my in-laws.
Yeaaah, I should probably provide some context here instead of jumping right into things after babbling about unpredictable yeast.
My husband and I try not to ask the universe for much. It’s got a lot on its plate, and we’re already stupidly fortunate. We did, however, ask for a child who was happy, healthy and smart. Happy was first in that list, because it is the hardest, even if someone is healthy and smart.
The Universe, in its infinite sense of humor, decided to quote U2 at us, specifically, I’ll give you everything you want/Except the thing that you want.1
Our son is happy, healthy and smart. He is also complicated. I won’t wade into the mud of it; it is his story to tell, and nothing on this earth could make me happier than if he decided to tell it out loud so everyone could hear it for themselves. Or type it, hey, I’m not that picky, except when I totally am.
We have needed more help than we anticipated. We have paid for much of that out of pocket, because we have been lucky enough to have that option. Unfortunately — though far more so for people who do not have the ability to even try to go elsewhere — some of the resources we use are partially publicly funded, and will cease to exist for everyone, regardless of their ability to pay, if those funding sources are cut.
It took about three years to get our son evaluated for employment transition support services, only to find out after a few months that there were no resources available for him in that particular program. We started the process over again in November with another services provider.
While I was mentally prepared for it to take at minimum another six months (but not three years: the majority of the wait had been to get the introduction to employment transition services from the Commonwealth agency that facilitates these things, and we were already in their pipeline), I was reassured back in November and again in mid-December that it would be early February.2
Until Monday, I had not heard a peep since mid-December. On Monday, also, through the noise of everything else that’s currently going on, I learned that U.S. Department of Education funding cuts had shuttered a high school to workforce transition program for a county just south of ours.3
That’s when I lost it at my in-laws. “Hi, I know you don’t believe the brontorocs you thought were so cute will ever eat your faces, but it looks like they have started going after young people who really would like to work for a living if given the chance. And could that eventually include your one and only grandchild? Why yes, yes, it could. Go sit with that, will you?”4
An hour after I blew up, I got a call from the new program. It wasn’t the call I was antici-dreading: it was the one I feared wouldn’t be happening any time soon.
My son had his first program intake session this afternoon.
I feel like a bomb hit me. I’m not sure if I should feel hopeful or not yet, but I do feel at least better, despite the messiness of having let myself rage.
- From “Original of the Species“, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004). Screaming along with this song while alone in a locked car, ideally parked, is therapeutic. I have been doing it with reduced frequency for the past twenty years. ↩︎
- Yes, being available for whenever this became available was Factor #2 in my leaving my job in late December. Factor #1 was my being the one who left meant that we take less of an income hit (at least for the next two years) if this becomes a longer-than-two-year process. ↩︎
- https://www.fxbgadvance.com/p/the-executive-order-project-education-960 ↩︎
- Paraphrased. I was more polite and I did not say either ‘brontoroc’ or ‘panther’. I do love these people, and so does their grandson. ↩︎
Modus Dementi 