~♡sure♡~

i taught a baking class for 12 year olds today and we made your garden variety chocolate chip cookies, but i’m a big believer in Questioning Everything and the who/what/where/why/when/how behind things, so the first part of the class was purposely letting the kids do things the wrong way, to show and explain why we do things the way we do.

“why do we bake cookies at 180 for 9 minutes when we could do 400 for 2 minutes?” -enter the godawful lump of coal with a still gross wet and uncooked inside

“why do we have to scoop out little cookies instead of doing the whole tray?” -ok well that one you can technically do if the spread is even. you just end up with one giant, structurally unsound cookie. “PLEASE CAN WE MAKE GIANT COOKIES” (we did make 1 giant tray cookie)

we talked a lot about why consistency is important, but i don’t think it really hammered home until i said “okay everyone gets ONE cookie, that’s fair, right?” and then handed out cookies of hugely varying sizes. + baked one fat lump of a cookie that still wasn’t done at the 9 minutes, vs the regular one i put in that came out charred by the time the first was actually done.

we also made a row of cookies where each one had one single differing ingredient omitted, like a cookie with no flour, or a cookie with no butter, and laid them all out on a single tray to bake together to see how each ingredient affects the outcome.

two of the little girls added cocoa to their cookie doughs until it matched the colour of each others skin to make best friend cookies, and that almost made me tear up a bit 🥺

got briefly distracted (…for over half an hour…) talking about how eggs form when someone cracked an egg and it had 2 yolks

expertly tolerated being asked how old i am (just turned 31 the other day) which was immediately followed by asking if i watched the moon landing live on tv

was so focused on keeping track of all the kids that in the end i forgot to make a cookie for myself, but it’s ok because one of the girls gave me this

tiny……….

the class went well and they asked if i wanted to do another one in a couple weeks and i said yeah, and they’re taking uh… fuck, what’s the word for inventory when it’s people?? attendance?? whatever, they’re trying to see who’s interested to get a feel of if it’d be 1 three hour class again or if there’s too many kids so we’d do a couple classes. anyways, i love the emails from Concerned Parents.

“will there be knives involved?” we are baking cookies.

“what temperatures does the oven get to/will it be hot enough to burn?” we are baking cookies.

“will there be [insert ingredient used in cookies]?” we are baking cookies.

“are you using fahrenheit or celsius?” ??????? d-does it matter?? it’s going to get Hot. (also celsius; this is ontario)

“are the ovens childproof?” no?? i’m assuming you’re asking if i’m going to let your kids reach into the ovens while i’m staring out a window in another room. i will not be allowing your children to use the ovens. they will not be left unattended. 

“why is the library baking class taking place at the high school?” the library does not have 10 ovens. the library does not even have 1 oven. the high school has many ovens.

“what if i don’t want my child to have cookies? can you let her make muffins instead?” this is a baking class for cookies. we are baking cookies.

“cookies aren’t healthy. why don’t you make [insert whatever]” do you know how many cookies i can make with a $40 budget and a trip to the bulk store? we are making cookies.

“who needs a class to bake a cookie, why not teach something more valuable?” IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT THE COOKIES, KAREN, IT’S ABOUT FAMILIARIZING CHILDREN WITH THE ART AND SCIENCE OF BAKING/COOKING/FOOD, ABOUT TRYING NEW THINGS, MAKING MISTAKES AND REALIZING THAT THE MISTAKES ARE NOT ONLY OKAY TO MAKE BUT VALUABLE IN AND OF THEMSELVES, FAMILIARIZING THEM WITH INDEPENDENCE, THE UNDERSTANDING OF HOW THINGS CAN COME TOGETHER TO FORM A NEW AND BETTER WHOLE, ALL WHILE HAVING TRYING TO INJECT A MODICUM OF JOY INTO THEIR LITTLE LIVES. SORRY THAT THERE ARE CONCEPTS AT PLAY YOU CAN’T SEEN TO UNDERSTAND HERE. MAYBE YOU SHOULD COME JOIN AND I’LL LET YOU MAKE A FUCKING COOKIE.

you will get up & you will make that to do list & you will be realistic about your limits & you will take it easy but steady & you will eat good food & you will get things done & you will move your body & you will do things that make you happy & you will limit your screen time & you will be the thing that saves you

do it now

are you up yet

lovely character. i need him to finally break down sobbing clutching his chest like it'll stop the pain crumpling to the floor begging God to either help him or let him die

I gave a victorian kid some sour patch kids and he sprinkled a little bit of cocaine on it as casually as you would salt before even taking a bite

he was biting the sour patch kids?

Yeah that's how you eat them

i stick them in my mouth whole. am i the weird one or is the victorian kid the weird one? about the biting, not the cocaine. i do that part too.

Do you. At least chew them

yeah i do chew them i just dont feel a need to take a bite out of something that's already bite-sized, yknow? it's like taking a bite out of a skittle, to me. could definitely just be me though

oy where do i get more of these nectar-sweet bastards what are colored like precious stones

fuck OFF thomas

He was biting them because he’s so much littler than you. Look at him. He can’t get a whole one in his mouth. You could lose him down a drain. When you put him up a chimney, even a small chimney, you probably have to give him directions like he’s on the Swindon magic roundabout. SECOND LEFT AT THE NEXT BRICK, Thomas. NO, OTHER BRICK. NO, THE OTHER LEFT.

You shouldn’t salt your sour patch kids btw it’s bad for you

Thank you for that important addendum. Putting cocaine on them is fine though, right?

Yeah yeah I’m not his mum

looking at your bank account is so scary...like when I spend money it goes away

"Kill them with kindness" wrong. 10 PLAGUES OF EGYPT!🩸🩸🩸🐸🐸🐸🪰🪰🪰🐅🐅🐅🐂🐂🐂🥵🥵🥵⛈️⛈️⛈️ 🦗🦗🦗 🌑🌑🌑🪦🪦🪦

This is cheaper than journaling when you think about it

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

Who the fuck is voting no and can you please give me your money? Sincerely someone who makes about $17,000 a year

Someone who makes $65k may not be "as poor" as someone who makes $17k a year but that doesn't make them rich. You're both still pretty damn poor.

They're only making about $31 an hour. This is how much my mom makes as a nurse, an "essential worker."

She has just enough money to pay her bills. She lives in a tiny, crappy house. Her car is ancient and falling apart. She doesn't have enough money to pay for all the healthcare she needs, including $20,000 of dental work she can never afford.

When I lived with her and she was a single mom, we could never afford the doctor and could barely afford food sometimes.

She will never be able to retire.

How tf do you think that is rich?

Frankly, my mom is still poor.

Your enemy isn't the person makes $65,000, or even some doctor or lawyer making $165,000. It's the people making billions off of everyone else's labor.

You can't eat the rich if you think every single person making more money than you is rich.

The working class is incredibly large. It's hard to survive on $65k and harder to survive on $17k. Neither one is comfortable.

The definition I tend to use is: if you lost your job and couldn't get another, are you fucked? If the answer is yes, you're not rich. Even if it's "I could last for several months on savings and whatnot, but yeah, after that I'd be fucked."

Rich people may have jobs and salaries, but they aren't dependent on them. "Rich" means you own things that make enough money by themselves that you don't have to have a job if you don't want to.

A pithy way to put it is: well-off people own things that cost a lot of money. Rich people own things that make a lot of money.

The only acceptable ads should be shit like "groceries on sale" and "free event at the local library"

this isn't to say that I'm not mad, but personally I think all paid entertainment is the enemy and yet I buy more videogames than most people I know. it doesn't matter

shoutout to all my people with invisible disabilities

shoutout to people who don’t feel disabled enough

shoutout to people who have been denied care because they don’t look disabled

shoutout to people who thug it out every single day because the world doesnt stop when you’re disabled no matter how much you wish it would

shoutout to people with no diagnosis but still have symptoms because you don’t need a diagnosis to have symptoms

shoutout to all my

people with invisible

disabilities

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

you know the drill, op disabled reblogs etc etc etc

normalize having more than one best friend. "best friend" shouldn't just be a title reserved for one person... best friend is a species...

#best friend is a CLASS of friend #one you can achieve #thru mutual embarrassment and hard work (via @pptiny)