Let Them Eat Cake, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Make a Cake

For anyone who knows me, you know how much stress I've been enduring lately. I have too many fingers in too many pies. . . my plate is overloaded. . . a bee has got nothing on me. . . I arrived home from our trip to North Carolina and I hit the ground running. I immediately had to work on curriculum for the Milwaukee Film Festival. Then I had to meet with some district colleagues to complete a Literacy Department District Assessment. It was the first week back at school, which was full of all the staff meetings and trainings and things like that. Then. . . the first week of school. I started a new club for Tabletop Gaming. I'm running the school newspaper. My weekends have been stacked with traveling down to Milwaukee for events.

Throw into the mix that I'm trying to relaunch the school paper with a brand new staff. I'm also trying to get a field trip organized for the Tabletop Gaming Club so that they can participate in N.E.W. Game. . . I've got my PDP (Professional Development Plan), 2 SLOs (Student Learning Objectives) and 2 PPGs (Professional something Goals). . . sigh. . . and I'm on the Academic team at my school developing a school-wide goal of improving students ability to apply close analysis with citation support for claims. . .and just the normal ins and outs of being a teacher.

Then there are money issues and I have the whole mommy-wife thing going on. Meal planning and "life" planning. Did I mention we have a puppy?

Do you feel stressed yet? I haven't even mentioned everything. It's no wonder to me why I'm ready to crash at 8PM every night. And I've been lamenting to my husband that I need a zen weekend where I am not worrying about lessons or grading papers or anything. Lucky for me, I finally hit my stride with being comfortable with my lessons and my Thursdays and Fridays are a bit more relaxed.

So after I kicked my husband out of the house. . . and off to a gaming night with the group we've joined, I had some time to relax with my daughter a little bit. After she went to bed, I had some time to just. . .scroll endlessly and blindly through Twitter and Facebook. Something caught my eye. It was posted by Epic Reads and it was about a Divergent Read-a-thon!

I've never read the Divergent books, but I know a new one is coming out very soon. So I went to the Epic Reads website and I started reading about this Read-a-thon. From October 1-6, you have to read the entire novel. Then there will be another week to read Insurgent and, finally, the third release, Allegiant. I'm heading upstairs now to read as much as I can before I fall asleep.

Yet, a link caught my eye on the page. Recipes that relate to books? I am intrigued. What could this mean? I clicked the link and all of a sudden. . . there it was. . . a chocolate layer cake. . .inspired by the book I was going to attempt to read in three days. And that is how stress becomes a chocolate cake. . . I will be reading Divergent and making a chocolate cake this weekend. What better way to eliminate stress than with reading a new book, baking a cake, and then eating that chocolate cake WHILE reading that new book?!? (Just see this from a girl's angle where Star Trek, Asimov, and Bradbury don't exist. . . haha!)

Thank you Epic Reads! I am so looking forward to reading this and enjoying the cake recipe! Who knew you could have your cake and eat it, too!

UPDATE: Epic Reads gave me some love for a tweet I made when I started the Read-a-Thon. Check out their daily updates!