I honestly didn't know whether to make this a baking post or a mental health one, if there was a way to combine the two and make a TOTAL disaster out of it in one afternoon, I found it.
To give you a bit of background, @MerenLudick turned 12 recently. He's been aching for a trip to the aquarium since his sister's Birthday in 2020, just before Covid hit South African shores. That year, I totally broke/bent Covid regulations and smuggled a chocolate cake to @ZakLudick's house (we weren't living together yet). This was also my 1st birthday celebration with Meren, and in an effort to win him over, I baked THE BEST chocolate cake I have ever made.
Last year's birthday was at our local hobby shop, Swords and Boards, our local hobby and board game shop, but this year, we decided to follow through on the promise we'd made to make up for the missed aquarium birthday. So, this year, I was determined to make an awesome aquatic-themed/ octopus-shaped birthday cake, to go with his theme and to simultaneously honour the really cool movie: The Octopus Teacher, that we had all just watched together as a family.
This is the week I realised that my ridiculous and never-ending pursuit of being the perfect mom (I need to stop doing this 🙈) was becoming unmanageable and was frankly turning me into a nutjob, but before I get ahead of myself and start self-diagnosing, let's start the story at the beginning... as chronologically as possible.
As it goes with three kids and two working parents, things never go according to plan. Meren's actual birthday was on the Thursday and his party was on the Saturday. On Monday, before things went pear-shaped, the plan was simple... sort of.
I was going to make a "test" cake for his real birthday, and then make a really cool one for when his friends came over after the aquarium outing on the Saturday. Between @ZakLudick needing to work overtime and me spending, like, HOURS after work on Monday and Tuesday trying to buy a bra to wear with my pretty dress for my upcoming show this Friday (that's enough of a story for another post: but seriously, why are big booby girls stuck with such hideous bras?). This all lead to me having to do all the things, in one night, at the last minute on Wednesday evening, because that's how I like it, apparently. What's life without a sprinkle of
PaNiC?
So the plan was to make chicken casserole, coordinate visits to our local counselling centre and check homework, all in time before the power was scheduled to go out at 6pm. For those of you reading from other countries, South Africa has been experiencing a power crisis for about the last two decades, and every now and again, we have rolling blackouts. There's a schedule, but it's sort of like having a birth plan - nothing goes according to it.
13h00 - The @Matthew-Williams school run
I fetched our youngest from school, who is usually the most excited to see me, and I was prepped and ready to give him the low down of the help I needed for the afternoon. This did not go according to plan at all and we ended up having a glorious fight in the car about school work. Fights with my kids are always hard on me because it's really just not in my nature, but sometimes, boundaries need to be set. This one was surprisingly loud and emotional and had us both in tears. I'm quite good at making us both cry, apparently.
13h30 - The shopping
So some tears and harsh words later, we made it to our local supermarket so we could buy the ingredients I needed for the cake and some extra ingredients for my casserole. Shopping with a crippy-leg is "fun" at the best of times, but with a grumpy 10-year-old, it was extra spicy.
14h30 @MerenLudick's pickup
The next step was to fetch @MerenLudick from school and then speed home to get chores done, veggies chopped and cake layers into the oven, all before 18h00. We had a plan. We had the tasks delegated and we set alarms to make sure @MerenLudick didn't miss his appointment at our local counselling centre (we're all taking turns going this year 😉). What could go wrong?
AAAAhahahaahahahahahahaha cries
15h00 panic cleaning and food prepping
Between the three of us, we managed to get dishes washed and laundry done and all the prep for dinner and the cake batter. I will take this opportuity to boast about my fabulous children and their eagerness to help with household chores. We did something right there!
15h45 - @MerenLudick's walk to Hope House.
So the counseling centre is no more than 600m from our house - approximately a 7-minute walk. Glorious. At 12 years old, I let Meren walk himself there and back. But then it started raining and I started worrying. I called the counseling centre to check what time his appointment was ending so I could some how juggle the only cake tin I currently own to make two layers of cake and try to make sure the casserole is still cooking without making the cake flop. Oh my hat.
16h30 @AimeLudick arrives home
And like my knight in school uniform my 14 year old came home. Seeing how frantic I was, she offered to pop on her raincoat and brolly (umbrella) and to go and fetch Meren for me. FANTASTIC! Problem solved. AWESOME........
nope......
16h45: The disappearing @AimeLudick
As I was trying to pop out the 1st base from the oven and swop around the casserole, the counseling centre called to say that Meren was still waiting. The walk is only between 7 and 10 minutes from our house, so now I started to grow concerned about Aime. Was she dawdling? Did she stop at the shop? The very nice lady at the counseling centre told me they'd hang on for a few minutes and call me as soon as she got there.
17h00: The journey starts
Having not heard from the counseling centre, I jumped in my car, leaving a half-cooked dinner and one half of a two-layer cake along with my 10-year-old @Matthew-Williams at home, in order to go in search of my two older children. With only one hour to go until the power was scheduled to go out, I desperately hoped that Aime would be waiting with Meren at the counseling centre.
She was not.
17h05 The Hunt
It was now raining cats and dogs as I loaded @MerenLudick into the car and explained to him what was going on. It was at this point that it dawned on me, what Aime had said to me as she left.
"Mom, I'm going to fetch Matthew from SCHOOL......"
School.......
School......
School.....
Oh lord, surely she wouldn't...
She Couldn't...
She didn't... did she????
She wouldn't walk ALL THE WAY to Meren's school: 5.5 kilometers away? Would she?
So I hoped she'd perhaps misunderstood and gone to fetch Matthew from school which is only 500m from our house. Meren and I circled the school a few times and then headed home in a last-ditch hope that Aime would have gone home.
Nope. No sign of Aime at home. Now 17h15, Aime had been missing for half an hour.
I start looking at the abandoned house next door to us as I panic-reverse into the road. Some scary-looking vagrants seem to have moved in. Did they drag my child inside?
There is no word in any language that can accurately describe feeling of not knowing where your child is.
I started speeding down the road with my brights on, frantically looking for Aime in the bushes, contemplating if my tiny car could make the jump onto the bus lane, where she may be walking as it's better lit than the sidewalk. Pouring with rain, and getting dark this evening was turning into my worst nightmare. I continued down the road, on the most logical of the many many routes she could have taken to the school. All the while I had Zak on speakerphone. He told me he had an incoming call and had to go. A few seconds later, he phoned me back to say:
Aime had been found!!
A " local" restaurant (3.3 kilometers in the wrong direction) had phoned to say our drowned rat child had sought refuge there and was safe and sound. Oh my heart!!!!!
So, I went to go fetch her and was told by the lovely lady who'd been looking after her that she was still, bless her soul, trying to get to Meren's school. This nice lady had almost called her an Uber, but thought better of it and phoned us first (Aime was able to recall her dad's number from memory, which is a rare skill these days). Thank heavens, because Aime would have been stuck outside the school, deserted in the dark. Thank God this guardian angel called us and we got our daughter back.
17h30 Homecoming
After lots of hugs and tears and a short drive home, We arrived JUST in time for me to throw in the last layer of cake and zap the last stage of the casserole. As the power went off at 18h10, 10 minutes after the scheduled time, literally everything was just perfectly cooked!
Oh my goodness gracious me.
As soon as we got home I sent Aime upstairs to bath and get into warm jammies, and I wish I had done the same. Shock creeps up on you fast. It wasn't until I was standing outside in our laundry area, trying to have a ciggie and a glass of wine (which I don't normally do midweek) and my legs suddenly gave way under me. Matthew came running to my aid and shoved a chair under me before I collapsed onto the cold wet concrete.
All was well that ended well though, and we enjoyed a beautiful candlelit dinner, I decorated the cake and we had lots of hugs.
Of course, the next morning I realised that the cake was terrifying, and octopus cakes are probably better made in the daylight, but we also discovered it was bloody delicious! I got to remake the cake two days later, and got a much better result by staying home while the kids went to the aquarium and binge-watched 10 episodes of Working Moms Meren had a glorious birthday after all.
