March 8, 2024
Cake Life
My wife and I both slept great, with no evening interruptions. The sun was rising, so we made coffee, grabbed a couple of small folding stools, and went out into the front yard to sip our brew. The sky lit all around us in bright strips of pink and blue. It was chilly outside, but what a fantastic way to start the day.
After the colors faded from the sky, we went inside the house to eat breakfast. As I made another cup of coffee, my wife served up a large piece of chocolate cake, with its light white icing. A morning sunrise with my best friend and cake for breakfast? This Friday morning started off on the right foot. The cake was excellent, with its layers of moist dark chocolate dressed with fresh strawberries, blueberries, and dark purple grapes. This, I thought, was the breakfast of champions, or possibly future diabetics.
After breakfast, my wife and I walked into the woods, making our way to the trail cameras on the north end of the property. Yesterday, we placed cake and other goodies for the animals and we wanted to see if we captured any videos of the animals eating. When we arrived at Beaver Tooth Rock, the entire piece of cake was gone, and only the paper plate remained. The animals ate the apples and most of the fruit, leaving only the vegetables. I pulled the SD card from the camera and we continued to the second location. The morning was quiet, and the air in the woods felt clear and cool.
The cake by the creek was also gone. I pulled the SD card from the camera and we walked back to the house, taking our time, soaking up the feeling of freedom the forest brings. When we arrived home, I grabbed a card reader and my iPad, setting everything up at the dining room table. The camera by the creek failed to capture videos. We set up the camera low on the ground, aligned with the food. Unfortunately, the ground must have blocked the motion sensor, so the camera never triggered. Boo.
The camera facing Beaver Tooth Rock was more of a hit. A wary fox entered the frame and sniffed around. Just as we thought it would dive into the cake, the fox suddenly left. The poor fox looked hungry but was too nervous to eat. It was apparent it found the whole setup to be suspicious, as if it had never seen a plate of freshly baked and meticulously decorated cake in the forest.
A large raccoon showed up and stole the show. It was not cautious and immediately started eating small bites of cake. Within a few minutes, it grabbed entire layers, flipping them upside down with its dexterous hands, licking the cream off the cake. The raccoon left a few times, while the fox made more appearances. By the end of the video series, the fox barely got any food while the raccoon had eaten the entire piece of cake and hoarded all the apples.
I took a shower and started work while my wife studied. Later in the day, she prepared herself a beautiful salad, presumably to balance out our morning meal, and ate it outside under the pergola on the back porch. I was happy she was soaking up the outdoors. While I’m a little sad winter has gone, she is super excited for summer. Girl is trying to summer my spring.
My wife had to work nights for the next three days, so she tried to rest and nap throughout the day. She’s not a big napper, and I could usually count the number of naps she had taken in a year on one hand. Today, she earned an A+ for effort.
At one point she grabbed a picnic blanket and took it out into the front yard, where she lied down, wanting to rest in the sun. As luck would have it, the sun disappeared, so she pulled the sides of the blanket up around her to stay warm. To shield her face and eyes from the sun, she pulled her beanie straight over her entire face. The result? It looked like I had a dead body in my front yard, wrapped in a blanket. I hoped no neighbors or helicopters would see because they definitely would have called the police. The entire situation was so funny that I took a video of her. We had a good laugh later and hoped Google Earth had captured the crime scene.
When lunch time arrived, I was still full from breakfast. A spark of inspiration hit me and I grabbed some earthworms from their bins, kissed my wife goodbye, and drove straight to the lake to fish. I had one hour off work and the ten-minute round trip to the reservoir would leave a full fifty minutes on the water. I fished from the pier, still in my work clothes.
The weather at the reservoir was perfect for fishing. It was sunny, but it didn’t feel hot. A cool breeze evened out the sun’s heat and made the time on the lake feel comfortable. The bright sun made the water look silver, like shimmering mercury. And the sky looked bigger than usual, reminding me of the vast Texas skies. Layers of horizontal clouds extended as far as my eyes could see, glowing bright white on top and charcoal gray underneath. I had a couple of good hits on my line, but didn’t catch any fish. In another month, I’d be pulling out blue gills and bass by the dozens, but although spring was in the air, the reservoir’s water had not yet warmed.
I was happy I took my hour break and did something spontaneous and fun. There was a memorial service in Texas this evening for my aunt who recently passed away. A few minutes before work, I received an email confirmation that the flowers we sent arrived at the funeral home, so the topic of life and loss weighed on my mind. And with these thoughts came the continued realization that losing someone we cared for taught us to embrace the time we still have. I sped away to the lake, realizing the best way to honor another person’s life was to grab our own life by the horns and live it fully. The Zen teachers of old said we should live as though our hair was on fire. To me, this meant staying fully awake and living each moment completely present.
Later, my wife and I had lattes and more cake while sitting outside. I wondered if this lady knew how crazy I was about her. She led me away from a hard, monotonous life, and into the woods of North Carolina, where we found a slice of paradise as big and as delicious as the cake on our plates. Truth be told, I’d follow her anywhere, but as fate would have it, we were right here in this perfect place.