Ladybug Studio

Masterpiece(s)…

It just wouldn't be an Amy Baking Project if I didn't stay up super late working on it. I went to bed around 1:30 this morning so I'm feeling a bit droopy. But! The cookie tarts turned out great! I love them so much!

As soon as I got home from work, I started on the cookie part. I did everything exactly as I always have – sugar cookie mix, 1 stick of butter and 1 egg. But the mixture was really moist. Too moist. I checked, double checked and triple checked the recipe, but it still jived with what I had used. I kept thinking maybe it should have been a 1/2 stick of butter, but the recipe clearly says a full stick. Hm. So while the tops of the cookies were a perfect light golden brown, the bottom part wasn't cooked well. Since the tarts have a chewy texture anyway, I hoped it would all work out in the end.

At this point is was 6:30, plenty early enough to get to bed at a reasonable hour. But, once I made the icing and started the decorating process, I didn't want to stop for a dinner break, so I decided to wait until after dinner to start on phase 2.

Sometime later I mixed the strawberry cream cheese and the powdered sugar. Instead of spooning it into the cups, I put the mixture in a bag, and using a fairly large round tip, I piped the filling into the cookie cups. What a great idea that turned out to be. So much cleaner and easier than trying to spoon in the filling.

Next I made my own vanilla cream cheese frosting. (I bought a can of ready made just in case the recipe didn't turn out well) It was delicious! Tom taste tested it for me and declared it better than the store bought frosting. I concur. Now for the fun part! I tinted the icing a pale yellow, piped it on top of the cookie tarts, and decorated with fondant flowers and sugar pearls. That probably took longer than it should have because I was being all picky about the exact arrangement on each cookie. But it was fun, so who cares.

Well, I should have cared, a little. Because after the cookies were decorated to perfection, I had a heck of a lot of cleaning up to do. And I'm not one who can leave a mess in the kitchen, planning to clean up the next day. No way. Got that from my mom. So I'll manage to get through the day somehow and sleep in tomorrow morning.

I'm not one to brag about myself, but I am really quite proud of these cookie tarts. :)

The nerve test…

The short story: I do not have radial tunnel syndrome.

But I do have cubital tunnel syndrome. That's the other possibility I shared with Dr. P and was shot down. Strange though, because the ulnar nerve runs along the inside of the elbow and usually causes the pinky and part of the ring finger to feel numb. I haven't had that happen at all. My guess is that I have lateral epicondylitis (fancy for tennis elbow) as well as a compressed ulnar nerve. My next appointment with Dr. H is a week from Friday. So I'm still in a holding pattern.

The test itself was not as bad as I had feared. The needles are quite tiny and I barely felt them. The doctor performing the test felt very sure of the results. His equipment is the latest model and cost more than his house, according to him. Out of the two doctors in the office, he is the upper extremity specialist so I'm really glad my test was with him.

Oh, and I absolutely do not have carpal tunnel syndrome. He always tests for that while he's checking for the other two syndromes.

* * *

After this Friday, my boss for the last 10.6 years will no longer be my boss. The company is restructuring management. First, we are down from five managers to three. (two self nominated) Second, managers are being shifted around a little. My new boss, strangely enough, was my boss at C&R Designs 15 years ago.

Employee layoffs have been put on hold for now and hopefully the budget can be managed without staff reductions. Fingers are crossed that we don't lose our newest artist.

So, for my boss's last day, I am making Strawberry Cream Cheese Cookie Tarts. I have brought them into the office in the past and he loves them and keeps saying he's going to make them. I thought it would be fun to use some of my new decorating skills to fancy them up. I spent some time over the holiday weekend rolling and cutting flowers out of fondant. Last night I assembled some and tonight I will need to finish them so that they will be ready to go on the cookies Thursday night. They're actually very easy to make. I learned a bit and will do a few things differently the next time I make any.

Needle!

My nerve test has been scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. It's not exactly the test I wrote about yesterday. It will be the EMG test which involves a needle inserted into a muscle. Ouch.

The nerve…

I saw Dr. H yesterday. Quite a different experience than the last visit. My appointment was in the afternoon this time, so the waiting area was fairly full. Still, I didn't have to wait too long before being taken to an examining room. Now I realize that Dr. H has only seen me once, four weeks ago, and probably only had a few seconds to look over my chart to reacquaint himself with my situation. But I was still a little disappointed to feel like we were starting over from scratch, but without the New Patient amount of time.

He no longer seemed as interested in the radial tunnel syndrome possibility (though I still am) and definitely leaned strongly toward tennis elbow. He explained that the surgery (from his point of view) is a very simple one that only takes about 20 minutes, but that the healing process would be slow and would take several months.

My feeling is this – I can have surgery and be pain-free and back to my activities possibly in the fall. Or, I could continue to wait and see, then after a few months of no progress, have the surgery and not be back to my activities until early spring. Because I have had no further progress in the past four weeks, I do believe that would be the scenario.

Well, anyway, Dr. H wants me to have a nerve test, just in case. Unfortunately, nerve tests for RTS are rarely conclusive. A negative result wouldn't necessarily rule out the syndrome. Seems like a waste of time and money, but I suppose a positive test would prove RTS. So that's the next step. He indicated that I should be able to have the test next week. Now I wait to hear back from his office.

I did some research on the test and learned this:

Nerve conduction velocity (NCV) is a test to see how fast electrical signals move through a nerve. Patches called surface electrodes, similar to those used for ECG, are placed on the skin over nerves at various locations. Each patch gives off a very mild electrical impulse, which stimulates the nerve.

The nerve's resulting electrical activity is recorded by the other electrodes. The distance between electrodes and the time it takes for electrical impulses to travel between electrodes are used to determine the speed of the nerve signals. Electromyography (recording from needles placed into the muscles) is often done at the same time as this test.

Sounds… intriguing.

Break…

Tonight is the last lesson for the second decorating course. I'm pretty glad, too. I enjoy the classes, even if I do find the art difficult and frustrating, but I'm tired of having an obligation every Monday night and I'm really tired of having "homework." Like a typical student, I always wait until much too late on a Sunday evening to get started. Last night I was making buttercream icing at 10:30. Just ridiculous and I have no one to blame but my own procrastinating self.

As far as making a cake or cupcakes to decorate? Not participating. I want to learn the reverse shell and basket weave technique, but I'm really not that interested in decorating a cake tonight. I'll just watch my classmates decorate theirs and I'll have more time to practice my skills.

I'm not going to take the third course (gum paste and fondant) at this time either. I know the other three aren't taking it, so maybe we can all sign up again later in the summer.

I am SO looking forward to Memorial Day weekend. The extra day off is going to be wonderful. I don't have anything fun planned though. In fact, the only thing on my list right now is yard work, since I didn't get any done this past weekend. Partly because I had already decided that next weekend would be better and partly because I chose to wash my car instead.

I spent two hours laboring over my car yesterday. It was just hideously dirty and embarrassing. When I was done it was beautiful. Of course, now it's too clean to drive.

More royal flowers…

Before we get to Lesson 3, let me say that while I'm enjoying the classes, they are causing me a bit of stress. We generally have to make something to bring to class, be it a cake, buttercream or royal icing. This week we needed to make more royal icing, divide it and tint it into several different colors. I had every intention of making my icing on Sunday. But of course, my plan went awry. Suddenly it was late in the evening and I had a heck of a headache. The season finale of Survivor was also on and I wasn't about to miss any of that.

Since I didn't get the icing made on Sunday, I took an hour of personal time on Monday and left work early. I used pretty much the whole hour getting all of my icing mixed, colored and sealed up in containers. My mixer has started to act wonky and that didn't help. The top of it rocks a bit a it which makes me nervous. Tom took a look and decided something or other needed tightening. After he was done, the mixer rocked even more and I could hear that the paddle was hitting the sides of the bowl. I complained and he put things back as they were. When I mentioned the rocking thing to the instructor, her opinion was that my icing was too stiff. And since we had to thin out all of my icing, I'm thinking she may be right.

In Lesson 3, we were taught how to make more flowers. The rose was touched on again, then we moved on to daffodils, violets and lilies. The daffodil was a pain in the butt. It starts out the same as the primrose and I felt that I got a better handle on that technique, but the petals have to be cupped and the center has to be created and then this tiny zig-zag is piped and I hated it. Mine definitely reflect that too. Violets are tricky because they are so small. The lilies were actually the most fun.

Next week we have to bring in a cake (or cupcakes) which will be decorated with the flowers we have made. I'd better spend some time practicing and making better flowers or I'm going to have one very ugly cake.

Royal flowers…

My respect for pastry chefs grows every week. I am again humbled by their amazing talent and skill.

Lesson 2 involved creating flowers using royal icing. We attempted to make roses, apple blossoms, primroses and rosebuds. The lesson actually only called for making the base and center of the rose, but the instructor went ahead a taught us the whole flower. I probably spent a good hour just getting a decent base. I had all sorts of ridiculous problems. It didn't appear that my classmates were having as bad a time as me, but they sit across the table from me so I really couldn't see what they had going on.

This particular royal icing isn't very tasty. I know that when we make decorated cookies at Christmas, the icing is pretty good. I wonder what the difference is. At any rate, one thing I really do like about royal icing is that it dries hard, due to the meringue powder. Flowers and other decorations can be made ahead and kept for months in an airtight container.

The sun came out…

Big surprise, the weather forecast for a wet weekend was a bit off. Saturday was cloudy and gloomy, though not rainy as predicted, and Sunday turned out to be just an amazingly beautiful day. I was able to take my long walk and ended up doing about 8.75 miles. I didn't have a plan, just turned down one street after another, occasionally checking my map to decide where I wanted to go next. The walk did tire me out for the rest of the day though. Now I wish I had somehow found the energy to work on the plants in the front yard. They are super shaggy and unkempt, but it's been hard to get out there with all of the rain we've had lately.

For tonight's cake decorating class we need to bring in two recipes of royal icing. I made one batch early afternoon on Sunday. It came out perfectly, as far as I can tell. Might be a little stiff, but that's manageable. I had to buy more powdered sugar so I made the second batch Sunday evening. It didn't go well at all. I couldn't understand it. The mixture was crumbly and wouldn't come together at all. I was sure I had measured everything correctly as the recipe is really simple (1 pound confectioners sugar, 3 level TB meringue power and 5-6 TB water). I added a tablespoon of water and it started looking better, so I added another. Finally it seemed pretty good. Thinking back, I believe I only added 3 tablespoons of water the second time. Must have had that in my mind from the meringue powder measurement.

I did spend a bit of time on Saturday playing with the gum paste and fondant "dough." I remade the same button flowers using the fondant press and managed to get a little more of the pattern on them, but still not as much as I had hoped. I also practiced ruffling the petals for the pansy and had better results. Like most anything, it's a matter of practice, practice, practice.

…

The truck is gone! Hallelujah!

Ages ago, Tom's father asked him to do some work on his old Ford Ranger. Tom wanted to do the work from home because it would be so much more convenient and he wouldn't have to haul tools and stuff over to Dad's. I distinctly remember Tom saying that he would use my side of the garage, but my car would only be in the driveway a day or two. (God forbid his precious Corvette should have to site outside)

I didn't like it, but a couple of days would be okay. Unfortunately, it turned into a couple of weeks. For one thing, there was more work than Tom had realized. Plus he had to order some parts and wait for them to arrive. And then he hurt his back, and then he didn't feel well, had a headache, couldn't sleep at night so he was exhausted all day, etc.

In addition to the inconvenience of having my car in the driveway, the truck just barely fit in my space in the garage. We practically had to squeeze around it in order to get into the house and I literally had to open the garage door and go outside and around the truck to get to the trashcan in the garage. What a pain it was getting to be.

When I got home from work yesterday, Tom was working on the truck and Dallas was there, keeping him company. About an hour later they were taking it out for a test drive. Awesome!

Now, the truck isn't literally gone yet. But Dad is supposed to get it today, so it's as good as gone. And good riddance!

Today was a perfect day to have my car back in the garage because it was raining quite a bit when I left for work this morning. What a week we're having. Every day has been rather gloomy and rainy. The forecast isn't looking nice anytime soon, either.

Moanday…

Naturally, a "not the best" of weekends was followed by an even worse Monday. It started out with a tummy ache in the morning. Not too bad, but still not fun. Then I began to get a tiny headache and felt slightly nauseated. Again, not too bad that I could justify going home, but a miserable way to spend the rest of the day.

After work all I wanted to do was go home and lay down, but the second decorating class started yesterday and I couldn't miss the first lesson. So I hauled myself down to Hobby Lobby and attended class. We used gum paste and fondant to make button flowers and pansies. Again I was amazed at just how difficult all of this stuff is. It sure looked easy enough, just roll out the "dough", lay it onto the flower press set, press down and voila! Flowers! Similar to cut-out cookies, or so I thought.

But after reading over the instructions in our lesson book, it seems that I may have skipped a step. My flowers didn't pick up the pattern at the bottom of the press. As I read it, after the first press, the flowers are left in the press and then pressed again. I'm thinking that's how they really get imprinted. I'm going to practice making these again and see if that's correct.

Speaking of books, even though the instructor had ordered enough books, they didn't come in, so she only had two. She gave them to the other three ladies (mother and daughter will share) and I am borrowing hers until next week. I'm disappointed though because I like to highlight and make notes and I obviously can't do that in her book. Since I was the first one there, I should have been given a new book, right? Okay, I'll stop whining now.

There's no photo of my pansy because it was kind of a disaster. The technique to thin and ruffle the edges of the petals isn't easy and since my dough was drying out a little, things didn't turn out very well, so I'm just not going to show it to anyone.

One good thing about last night's projects is that there was very little clean-up. Buttercream flowers are quite a bit messier. Next week we'll be using royal icing to maker flowers. Going to get messy again, I suppose.