Time is on my oven

I’m struggling to be separate from the label of myself. Even though my label i want for myself includes the separation that i’m in need of. My list of things includes good mom, good baker, good partner and good person and everything in between. But somewhere… you realize good to yourself is included in that. But how? Where? I’m not quite sure that it fits anywhere.

Of course there is all that talk about how you can’t love anybody until you love yourself but also you still have to pay rent and get your kids to school. So naturally you make a list to figure out how to “be good to yourself”. It includes… affirmations and diets and exercise and sleep as if… you suddenly have time for that. Oh! All this time i was doing… other things… i could have been doing these things. I call bologna…

How come being good to yourself means giving up a bunch of bad habits and picking up a bunch of good habits as if it’s all a choice and you can control everything. And then i realized that’s the issue!!! Here i go again trying to control everything and also pretending that includes time. Anyway I’ll try sleep first.

Let’s do some living after we die

Running a small microbakery or cottage kitchen from a very very tiny and very very old home is a whole entire thing. Add to that 3 small children who aren’t in daycare or preschool. They’re just home with what used to be just me and a lot of baking, while their dad worked full time to support my passion and his passion alike.

We both chose careers that don’t pay well, don’t have a very high esteem and very little rest in between. But the cool part is we chose something we love to do. Finding the balance between loving your job and also loving your family is a tricky feat though. It’s hard to explain to a 3 year old that you’re in the kitchen all the time because you gotta pay the rent. To them I’m sure it just looks like we don’t have time to play. That may be the hardest part about working from home.

So we try very hard to take tiny family trips and leave the house and see extended relatives as often as possible. Brandon is a stay-at-home dad now, too. That’s a whole other topic that’s not always accepted for discussion. We definitely switched roles from your typical family dynamic. In our house, Mom is the bread winner and dad is the caretaker.

We regularly joke that when we’re old and our backs our bent and our knees are goo… we’ll retire to Paris and live off of cafe and croissants. Dreamy. You know it.

Come into your emotional rescue

When we first moved to Alexandria, we chose Del Ray because the old homes reminded us of Oakland. Where shelves are built inside walls and stairs and patios don’t have rails. The kitchens are really tiny and the neighbors are all so different from one another.

We thought: play ground across the street and food on the avenue? SOLD. Within a few months we made besties with all of our neighbors. We joined the neighborhood farmers market and began a relationship with the entire community. A very open and honest relationship. The kind where we felt comfortable and close enough to have days that suck and be willing to discuss it with everyone that lived in a 2 mile radius.

Fast forward 3+ years later: we received a written notice of eviction from our property management company. We had reported what we assumed was usual DMV mold accumulation and they didn’t like that at all. Suddenly we found ourselves desperately searching for a new home or new kitchen to save the biz and our family.

After a month straight of really intense back and forth, where we learned that she was definitely coming at us in a very personal way, the property manager finally gave up and cancelled the eviction threat. It turned out the landlord herself didn’t mind AT ALL that we were running our cute little business. As long as we had all the proper permits, etc. (which of course we did.)

This was a reminder, however… that living in Del Ray means living in a bubble. Outside of this bubble, cruel and ugly people exist. They only look out for themselves and they’ll take you down in the process. It was a weird and negative way to look at the situation but also a realization that we haven’t come as far as we’ve thought, as a people.

All you can do is try to be better, everyday, everywhere, with everyone.

Put your hands on the heat

When we first moved to Alexandria, the goal was the get fancy high paying industry jobs and to live closer to family. That we did. Brandon got a job as Sous Chef at Iron Gate and i got a job as Pastry Sous Chef at Buzz Bakeshop. We found a place to rent in the Del Ray neighborhood and hit the pavement, running.

Two weeks later, i quit my job and joined the farmers market. Brandon continued to work his way up at Iron Gate and became the main bread winner. That gave me wiggle room to bond with our two kiddos and take my time to rebuild Rolling Sloane’s in a whole new side of the country. It was slow to start but that helped me decide what kind of menu i wanted to present and exactly which direction i wanted to go.

We rode that wave for a couple years, got pregnant with our third, slowed things down, had a baby and promptly decided it was time to blow things up. Brandon had actually started working for Roses Luxury by then and was getting a little burnt out from crazy, yet typical restaurant hours and losing out on time with the kiddos. Once he finished his paternity leave we decided he needed to be a super dad for a bit and let me grow my business. And that we also did. Over a year later we were rocking a full time cottage bakery where even Brandon was picking up a few shifts, unpaid of course. But this was officially THE FAMILY BUSINESS.

Love and hope and butter and dreams

There used to be this pizza shop right on the border of Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville. My friends waited tables there and i babysat around the corner. I would bring Delilah there and grab a booth and day dream about the cute line cook, turning pizzas.

Those same friends waiting tables decided to open up a wood fire oven bagel shop after the pizza shop closed down. That shop was a block away from my oakland bungalow and i quickly learned it was the best bagel place in town and had that same very cute and unavailable line cook. But that was fine. If we’re just friends, we’re gonna be the best of friends, i decided.

I spent all of my free time outside of the bakery i managed in Alameda, sitting in the window doing recipe development, schedules and love scheming. I’d get a cappuccino, pull out my notebook and then gaze over until he said hello. This went on for months, until i started working at that very shop part time and began drawing up a business plan for what would eventually be Rolling Sloane’s.

I used to lay my head at the counter above the prep station and talk to him for 20 minutes or so about literally anything. I made him laugh. He made me laugh. Best friends we became. Long story short? Eventually i started running my business out of that shop, married that guy and lived happily ever after.

Sugar and spice and a lot of left curve balls.

When i was in high school, i wanted to be a teacher so badly. This was my plan and i was gonna hang out with children all day and be Jess from New Girl and rule the world. Then i took early childhood development for two years and found myself baking all the time. I baked for special events at my youth group. I baked everybody’s birthday cake. I scanned through millions of cook books and found myself wondering how everything works and really enjoying the process. The idea of being a teacher didn’t leave my brain, it just took a back seat to a greater plan.

I would go to a fancy culinary school, i would teach cooking classes on the weekends for extra cash. I would obsess over movies about bakers and i would dream of teaching baking classes to children and families on weekend evenings at my very own store front. I was gonna achieve it and rock it and own it and win win win win. Ahh to be young. Sound familiar?

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