I got up at 8:30 this morning to make a coffeecake. This is not normal behavior for me. Typically you’ll find me in bed well past 10 am on Sundays, particularly during the winter months when there’s no farmers’ market to attend. But I had promised to bring a sweet thing to church for the post-service coffee hour and so I was up, baking.

This particular task actually served two purposes, as I’m also writing about coffeecake for this week’s Weekender column over on the FN Dish and so needed to make Ina’s sour cream version to photograph. I try to arrange this kind of doubling up whenever possible, so that I can get my work done without the temptation of a giant confection taking up residence in my kitchen for an entire week.

I’ve been a member of the First Unitarian Church here in Philadelphia since my first month in the city. In just a week or so, I’ll have been here for ten years, so that’s a good long time. However, it’s been years since I attended the Sunday service with any regularity. Last year, I think I went all of twice. This year, I’ve not been even once.

There are so many reasons for this. Life is far busier than it once was. I married someone who has no interest in organized religion of any stripe. I started valuing the ability to go to the farmers’ market more than I felt a need to go to church. I don’t really enjoy the services under the leadership of the current minister.

Most vitally, church for me has always been about the people more so than a need to feel spiritually fed or re-inspired. In recent years, all of my close friends have moved on or moved away. Without them, all that was left was the experience. When those moments of grace occur for me in a sanctuary, I do feel grateful. It’s just that they are fleeting, precious and rare (and truly not limited to a church). With my many human tethers gone, I lost the ability to go week after week, in the hopes of capturing that feeling that happened with such mysterious infrequency.

Despite all this, I still maintain my membership. I pledge each spring and send money on a monthly basis (though I had to cut back this year after being laid off). And when I’m asking to participate in a way that doesn’t require long hours of committee meetings or full Sunday morning attendance, I do my best to say yes.

My continued but distant involvement stems from the time I served on the search committee for the current minister. Included in that group of seven was a woman named Billie Penn Johnson*. She was in her seventies and had been a member of the church for far longer than I’d been alive. Over the course of our search, several times she reminded us that a church is not the minister. It is the people. Throughout all the times when I’ve felt tempted to break up with this creaky, dysfunctional church, I remember her words. And so I stay.

This morning, when the coffeecake was finished baking and cooling and I’d taken all the photos I needed, I cut it, arranged the slices nicely on a pair of sturdy paper plates, swaddled them in plastic wrap and walked the two blocks to the church. As so often happens when I carry cake through the city, passersby grinned at me and asked for slices. Nothing makes city dwellers to friendly as the sight and scent of a freshly baked sweet.

I snuck into the sanctuary mid-service and put my plates down on the refreshment table. Standing near the door were three women that I’ve known since my first days at the church. Suddenly, the people merged with the grace and I remembered how good church can be. They all grinned and gave me hugs. One motioned to give me an order of service. I indicated that I wasn’t staying; she smiled and shrugged. Another was calming her hiccuping baby. He grinned with his whole face and lunged for me. I planted a kiss on his cheek and squeezed his mama’s hand. Then I slipped out.

I got more from those few moments greeting without speaking than I would have from the entire service.

*Billie Penn died on December 15, 2011. I didn’t start this piece as an intentional remembrance, but here we are, nonetheless.

Should you be interested in attending, simply follow @GMNortheast on Twitter and direct a tweet at them saying you want to go.

I woke up yesterday morning with a sore throat and by afternoon, was harboring a case of something cruddy. I stayed home from work today, and while I’ve been desperate for a bit of concentrated time in the apartment, this is not the way I wanted to get it. I had NO energy and so all I could do was stare at all the messy piles and half done projects.

However, by around 2 p.m., I had to do something. So, I did what you see above. Yes, that’s right. I separated out my rubber bands, twist ties and clothespins (I use them to close bags and clip notes together) by color and size into their own jars (I’m not entirely sure how I came to possess so many rubber bands – I think some have to be leftover from my grandparents).

Happily, after a day of laying around, which brief organizational breaks, I’m feeling much better. The cold (at least, that’s what I think it is) seems to be leaving (although my right nostril is a faucet I can’t quite turn off) and I should be back to work tomorrow.

It seems to me that this is an incredibly poor choice in company name. Because who says, “I’d like my onions to be as flavorless as possible. Yep, that’s right, give me the bland ones.”

One can only imagine that it’s the family’s name. Otherwise it’s just ridiculous.

After school was over, I moved home for a few months, just until I figured what was next. What turned out to be next was a move to Philadelphia, in which I entrusted all my worldly belongings to the Amtrak cargo service (a great way to ship large items from sea to shining sea for very little money). The pot was too heavy, so it was left behind. I promised it that I would be back for it, and my sister took it with her to the house she shared with friends in Portland’s Ladd’s Addition neighborhood. Sadly, when that housing situation finally broke up, my old pot was badly burnt, and the lid was missing entirely. Knowing just how much enameled cast iron cookware cost, I mourned that piece but good.

These days, I don’t find myself mourning the demise of that pot as fervently as I once did, as I’ve discovered that getting married has been the cure for this girl’s Le Creuset woes. The stack you see above represents my cook pot array and I’ve also got a handful of other pieces in different shapes and sizes.

Lest you think our friends and family showered me in hardware, I must admit that the top three pots have been mine for awhile. The very smallest pot at the top of the stack once belonged to my mother. It is the only remaining piece from the set of Le Creuset that her Aunt Doris gave her for her wedding back in 1970. Unfortunately, she learned the hard way that cast iron enamel doesn’t take kindly to regular bleachings.

The orange pot one level down was part of a lot of vintage Le Creuset/Descoware I bought on eBay about a year ago. I don’t know exactly why I did that, but I do so love that little vessel. Next down is a more modern 5 1/2 quarter that Scott bought me for Valentine’s Day the first year we were dating (actually, the pot you see there is a replacement. The first one was flawed and Le Creuset replaced it under their limited lifetime warranty). Nothing says love like heavy duty cookware. Only the bottom two have been a result of getting married. But that doesn’t make me love them any less.

I do believe I am now set for life when it comes to cookware. At least, that’s what I’m trying to convince myself to believe.

There’s a wall in my kitchen that, when rapped strongly, always sounded hollow. The storage space in my little galley comes at a premium and so I’ve frequently wished that I could bash into that empty space and add a few more shelves. Well, this week, my dream is coming true, thanks to my very handy father.

He was in town less than 24 hours before he’d cut a hole in the wall and developed a plan for building a shelving unit that is two feet wide, six feet tall and just six inches deep (perfect for jars of all stripes).

The gift of storage – it’s the best wedding present a girl could ask for.

About three years ago, having hear about potential issues with plastic bottles leaching chemicals that mimicked female hormones into their contents, I switched from using Nalgene water bottles for work/gym/school water toting, to Sigg bottles. Everyone said that the metal bottles were BPA-free and so I felt safe guzzling water out of those vibrantly printed canisters. Over the last few years, I’ve amassed quite a collection of Siggs, so that there’s always one around the apartment that’s clean and ready to go. I even convinced Scott to trade in his Nalgene for a silver Sigg.

However, it’s recently been found that the lining used in these older Sigg bottles also have small amounts of BPA in them, despite all company assurances to the contrary (for more about Sigg bottles and BPA, check out this Metafilter thread). When I heard about this on Friday afternoon, I was pissed off, as between Scott and me, we’ve got seven older Sigg bottles. That represents a fairly significant financial investment, that we made thinking we were buying safe, chemical-free bottles.

I sent an email to the address (liners@mysigg.com) I found online (I don’t remember where I found this exactly, I did a lot of searching once I first read about this) on Friday, inquiring about whether the company would be offering replacements. Amazingly, I got a response within two hours of writing and it was a completely positive and helpful email. They are willingly taking their old bottles back, and once they receive them, will issue me a gift certificate to buy a few new ones off their website.

I’m seriously bummed out that the old bottles have BPA in their liners, but I’m so appreciative that they’re responding in such a customer-friendly manner. If you’ve got some old bottles that you want to send back for replacement, just send an email to the address above and they’ll take care of you.

The actual segment was really, really fun. I had a great time chatting with Michelle Buckman and I could have talked so much longer about canning (it felt like it was over in a flash).

For those of you who missed it yesterday or who don’t live in Philly, here’s the link to where you can watch it online. My name is outrageously misspelled, but everything else about it is terrific.

I scurried with this chore and that scrubbing errand, not finishing and sitting down until 10:30 pm, at which point I was totally exhausted and had negated any of the relaxing benefits that the earlier day had possessed.

I don’t know why I do this to myself. I long to read books or fall back into the trance that comes when you write for extended periods of time. Instead, I write short blog posts, leaping up to wash each dish the moment it becomes dirty. My eyes dart over Twitter, a service that has increased my connection with other people but which has shortened my attention span to the point where I’m unable to absorb more than two or three sentences before needing a topic shift.

At work this morning, I find myself returning to a sensory memory from childhood. It’s a moment that contains a feeling of freedom and is one I’ve continually flashed on over the years. In it, I am driving along a Los Angeles freeway with my mom, heading towards Pasadena. It’s the middle of a weekday and I am aware that under normal circumstances, we should both be at school or work. Whether we’re playing hooky or just in the midst of a week-long break from school, I don’t know. I can feel the rays of the Southern California sun and the am excited by the speed and movement of the highway. There is something so joyous about the moment, back in the days when kids were still allowed to sit in the front seat and nothing was more exciting than going to a thrift store with my mom. I am desperate to feel that way again.

One of the things that came up for me (in a emotional sense) during this cold, was the amount of guilt I have around being sick and missing obligations. When I was growing up, I often pretended to be sick in order to have a break from the social demands and discomfort of elementary and middle school. My parents knew that most of my colds, sore throats and upset stomachs were the result of my insecurity and propensity to be the most picked-on kid in the class and so they allowed me the bulk of my “sick” days. However, despite a talent for convincing my body to be sick on cue, I knew that staying out of the classroom wasn’t entirely necessary and so I carried around a little bit of guit about it.

As the years went on, school started to get better and I found I didn’t need to stay away like I had before. However, that sense of guilt about staying home when sick (even when I really and truly was ill) stuck with me. I’ve found in recent years that I’ve felt a need to be given permission to be sick, dragging myself into jobs when I’m near-catatonic in the hopes that someone else will recognize my ailment and say, “Oh you poor girl. You should go home and take care of yourself.” I needed permission from an outside party to be sick and take care of myself.

I’m beyond the worst of that now. I recognize when I’m sick and I do everyone I work with a favor by staying home (no one wants Typhoid Marisa sitting next to them in a poorly ventilated office). However, traces of that guilt still remain and they cropped up like a mofo this time around, despite the fact that I could hardly breathe and my brain ceased functioning sometime Sunday night, only picking back up around 3 pm yesterday afternoon.

I don’t have a solution to this issue (although I do believe that it goes hand in hand with my feeling that I’m never working hard enough or doing a good enough job at my place of employment), but like most juicy internal hang-ups, recognition is always the first step, so I’m putting it out there. Does anyone else react like this when they’re sick? How have you dealt with it?