{Recipe} Cake Batter Pudding Cookie Bars

I will admit, I am a cookie addict. Chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, cookie cakes, you name it, I'll probably eat it. So when I found this recipe for a cake batter pudding cookie bar (say that five times fast!), I couldn't wait to try it.

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 (3.4 oz) box INSTANT vanilla pudding mix, dry
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 cup yellow cake mix
• 2 cups bread flour
• 1 cup white chocolate chips
• 1/3 cup sprinkles

Directions

1. Combine baking soda, yellow cake mix and bread flour into a bowl and set aside.
2. Cream butter, I find it best to use a stand mixer, as the dough is reaalllly thick. Cream sugars into butter.
3. Add dry pudding mix and mix until well incorporated. Add vanilla, almond extract and eggs to the mixture and beat well.
4. Add flour/cake mix mixture and mix well. Add white chocolate chips and sprinkles and mix until evenly distributed.
5. Press dough evenly onto the bottom of a greased 9x13 inch baking pan. Note: dough will rise up, so use a deep-dished pan. 
6. Add more sprinkles, if desired. 
7. Bake at 350ºF for about 20 minutes or until top is golden brown.

Original recipe was found at Chef in Training. 

I recently made the cookie bars for a work potluck, and I got rave reviews, despite the odd flavor. What odd flavor?, you ask. Banana cream. 

Yes. Banana cream.

I grabbed the wrong pudding mix at Kroger. But in my defense, both boxes look the same! 

So children, always remember to read box labels before dumping them into your dough.

Generation me me me

Earlier today, I stumbled across this post on the Wall Street Journal - The Most-Praised Generation Goes to Work. 

For those of you in the dark, a "millennial" is also considered Generation Y, a generation born from 1980 to the present, a generation who is just now getting their feet wet in the job pool.

By that definition, I am considered an Yer, but when reading about what constitutes a millennial, I am aghast at how selfish and clueless my generation is, and saddened by how our parents have raised us.

Employers are dishing out kudos to workers for little more than showing up. Corporations including Lands' End and Bank of America are hiring consultants to teach managers how to compliment employees using email, prize packages and public displays of appreciation.

I hate to break it to all the other millennials out there, but showing up for work should not earn you instant praise. It's a requirement of your job that you show up in a timely fashion.

As he sees it, those over age 60 tend to like formal awards, presented publicly. But they're more laid back about needing praise, and more apt to say: "Yes, I get recognition every week. It's called a paycheck."

I agree. If I do my job well, I get to keep said job. I work maybe 30 feet from my boss in a large corporate environment, I receive daily emails from him on tasks to do, but I might go a few days without talking to him. Why? Because I'm doing my job. I don't expect praise for doing the mundane. Do I like praise? Yes, especially when I've gone above and beyond in some obscure project. But I'd be happier with a yearly bonus, honestly.

Mr. Nelson advises bosses: If a young worker has been chronically late for work and then starts arriving on time, commend him. "You need to recognize improvement. That might seem silly to older generations, but today, you have to do these things to get the performances you want," he says. Casey Priest, marketing vice president for Container Store, agrees. "When you set an expectation and an employee starts to meet it, absolutely praise them for it," she says.

Quite frankly, I find the entire concept of praising someone for doing what's expected of them childish and contrary to a good work ethic. It's like training a dog, you don't praise them every single time they sit, especially if they've known the command for years.

Many companies are proud of their creative praise programs. Since 2004, the 4,100-employee Bronson Healthcare Group in Kalamazoo, Mich., has required all of its managers to write at least 48 thank-you or praise notes to underlings every year.

When you require someone to give kudos or praise to an underling, it cheapens the praise itself. Praise should be spontaneous and truthful, not forced and trivial. 

The problem isn't with the millennials, it's with their parents. It's been proven time and time again that praising your offspring for every accomplishment, or for just being "special," over-inflates their ego and causes a disconnect between what they are and what they think of themselves. Do we all want to be special unique little snowflakes, brilliant at everything we do? Of course. Are we? No. I couldn't sing a note on key if my life depended on it, and I have no delusions about that. Nor could I pull a MacGyver out of thin air. But I do have my own skill set, one which has served me well throughout my career. 

Throughout said career, I have run into people from every walk of life, and I must say, working with millennials is the hardest. I can excuse an older generation for being incompatible with current technology, that is something they were not exposed to at an early age. I remember getting nearly indecipherable text messages from my mother when she first learned how to text.

While I expect college graduates to be a bit clueless on how the real world works, I do expect competency in basis tasks. I've run into people who were truly confused on how to address an envelope, didn't see the point in setting up their work voicemail, and would tell customers they were wrong.

There's also the mindset of those who are lucky enough to land a cush job straight out of college, with no real work experience, and their mindset is "this is good enough for me." Why should they expend themselves outside of their 8-5 hours, when someone else is willing to pick up the slack for them? Why should they continue to better themselves, professionally and personally, when everything is handed to them on a silver platter?

I might come off as a litter bitter, yes. I am constantly asked by millennials, "Where did you get your degree?" and they look shocked when I tell them I didn't receive one, that my college experience is minimal. I started working full-time when I was 18, and my job history has been varied. I've worked at jobs that only required 8-5, and jobs where 40 hours a week was considered a light week. 

This rant doesn't really serve much of a purpose, other that to reiterate what other like-minded people already know. It would not occur to the millennials in which this post reference that they are a problem, that they need to look within themselves and grow up. Nor would it occur to their helicopter parents that their parenting skills have led to a narcissistic generation who is only motivated by constant, meaningless praise.

On a side note, I took the "How Millennial Are You?" quiz at the Pew Research Center, and was told "Your Millennial score is 60." I'm halfway between a Generation Xer and a millennial. What's your score?

Smiles, scars and goslings

It's early evening, and I am sitting here, listening to my ceiling fan hum its favorite tune, not knowing where to start, where to begin. I don't even know if this will make sense to anyone.

I was reading up on the origins of "May you live in interesting times," curious to see if there is any history of this oft-quoted phrase, one that we attribute to an ancient Chinese curse. According to Wikipedia, the first evidence of the phrase in use was in 1936, by the British ambassador to China.

The saying does not appear to have a direct equivalent in Chinese. The only traditional Chinese idiom which even seems to be in the ballpark is translated from the original language as: "It's better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a man in a chaotic period."

Agreed. I envy my dog Stormy, how she can just curl up in her bed, ignoring the world outside, content to lounge about all day, beg for pet-pets and treats, and go chasing after the goslings at the pond.

Listening to Marilyn Manson's song "Leave a Scar" has had me thinking recently, especially the line "Whatever doesn't kill you...is going to leave a scar." Physical scars, emotional scars, mental scars, they haunt us all.

Life doesn't necessarily make you stronger for suffering through it, things don't always get better. The scars left on the heart never go away, we might be able to ignore them as time goes on, but they are still there, hiding, lurking, waiting to be reopened.

Our hearts are like broken bones, they will heal, but they will never be as strong as they were before, they will be more prone to pain and breakage. Essentially...what doesn't kill you leaves you weaker.

Things that hurt us weaken us over time, make us more fragile, but things that we love, things that bring us joy can help paste over the wounds in our hearts and minds.

I try to focus on the small pleasures in life. Dinner with a close friend, a dog's bouncing when you walk through the front door. Someone letting me cut in line at the grocery store. The sound of the ice cream truck driving by.

We worry too much about our legacies, what we will leave behind when we are gone. We want monuments built to our memories, our names to be written in textbooks for years to come. While a select few might be so lucky, it is those that cause the greatest harm that are memorialized for eternity. Pol Pot. Caligula. Attila the Hun. Hitler.

I want my legacy to be small but meaningful. I want to brighten people's days with a smile, lift their mood with a joke. I want that happiness to be spread to the next person, and the next person after that, and so on. I want this world to be full of smiles and happiness, not hatred and vengeance. I want children to grow up without fear, without bigotry.

The best way to start that is with a smile.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Earlier this week, a friend posted a link to Hyperbole and a Half's post on depression (here), and something in it struck home. Every word, every sentence, every bit of it was what I go through on a daily basis.

It is hard for most people to understand how soul-sucking depression is. Everything seems muted, dull, less shiny. What once entertained us now sits in corners collecting dust; those who we call friend drift away because we retreat into ourselves. We go through the motions of eating, sleeping, working, waiting for something to get better, but knowing it won't.

Reaching out is hard, because we do not think anyone will understand what we are going through. We fear that people will look down on us because we aren't normal or right in the head.

And you know what? Sometimes we are right.

We are constantly told everything will be okay, that everything will work out in the end. Well-meaning friends suggest finding hobbies, family members encourage us to go out and meet people.

They don't understand that none of it matters to us, the broken, the depressed, the lonely. We are trapped in a prison that has no walls, no doors, no guards. There seems to be no escape from the monotony, the apathy.

To some of us, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Our mental walls collapse and the only way to end the pain is to end it all, because who would miss us? We don't fit in with our families, our friends don't understand us (if we have any friends left at all), and our beloved pets would be better off with people who would play with them.

So we give up.

People tell me all the time that suicide is the easy way out, that living is hard. From our point of view, living is easy because we're just existing and going through the motions. Making a conscious choice to end our lives is hard, following through is even harder. We are consumed by pain that never seems to end, and we just want to rest.

Since I tried to kill myself in March, my life has seen some improvement. I am seeing a psychiatrist on a regular basis, and a therapist weekly. Medications have helped stabilize me, balance out my mood, but I'm still far from whole and normal(ish).

I have good days where I can clean, cook delicious meals, talk and laugh with my friends, and I have bad days, where I just curl up on the couch and cry, ignoring the world. Today was a better day, but who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Sad Songs and Lullabies

Sunday night, I tried to end my life.

I was overwhelmed with past decisions and felt my life was spiraling out of control. I tried to drown my sorrows and pain with a handful of pills and some tears. I then went out to the car with my favorite teddy bear and cried.

A bit later, I realized that I didn't want to die. I called the Ex-Boyfriend (previously the Boyfriend), crying, sobbing, repeating over and over, "I don't want to die, I don't want to die."

He rushed home and took me to the emergency room, where I spent 28 hours feeling like a freak show. When a person overdoses, they can either pump the stomach or give the patient activated charcoal to absorb whatever medication they took if they are unsure if it has been digested.

The ER staff went with option B for me.

After several unsuccessful attempts at drinking it (and spewing it all over the walls), a feeding tube was inserted into my nose. Three times. I fought them the first time, there was no numbing and a good deal of pain. They switched to my other nostril after realizing my nose had been cauterized at a young age. The second time, they numbed the back of my throat and nose and slid it in, only to discover they had slid it into my lungs. It finally made it into my stomach, where the activated charcoal was pumped in and left to sit.

I was then left to wait until the hospital's counselor/shrink/etc. was available to talk with me. Four hours later, the decision was made to admit me involuntary to a mental health facility, as required by North Carolina law.

I arrived at the hospital at 10:30 p.m. Sunday night and did not arrive at the facility until 2 a.m. Tuesday. I spent nearly 27 hours under watch, wearing only a paper gown.

The three days I spent at the facility was life-changing, to say the least. The nurses and staff treated me like a human being, albeit a human being under constant supervision. The other patients were there for a variety of reasons - schizophrenia, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, etc. Some handled it well, participating in therapy, etc., while others fought and demanded immediate release.

I will never forget that feeling of helplessness. Every movement monitored, recorded, observed. Staying in a small room for 12 hours a day, with four hours for therapy/group activities and eight for sleeping. Having to check out toiletries between 6 and 7 a.m., sleeping with my door open and bed checks every 15 minutes. Spending hours upon hours staring at the wall or coloring, because there was nothing to do.

It was strange going home; though I only spent three days there (four total, including the hospital), it felt like a lifetime. I was overwhelmed when I got home, being able to open doors whenever I wanted. Privacy when showering. Choosing my own food.

I will say this now: I will never attempt it again. Not just for the experience of attending a mental health facility, but how I was treated by others on the outside, including medical professionals.

I realize that working in the emergency room can be difficult, even more so if you work the third shift. I realize that you see people from all walks of life, all ages, all needing some sort of care. But what these people need most is compassion, especially those that try to end their lives. We are lost, lonely, confused. We think we are worthless and unloved. Burdens to society and to those we care about.

We come to you because we need help, whether we realize it or not.

To treat us with apathy and disdain only makes us hate ourselves more; we feel like burdens, drains, leeches. To tell us a procedure "isn't that bad" if you have never experienced it only makes us distrust you even more.*

To sit there and laugh about a mentally disturbed patient who was lying in bed drugged and handcuffed because he was a danger to himself and others is abominable. You have been entrusted with our lives, our mental well-being. How can we trust you if you mock us behind our backs? 

*The young doctor who treated me Sunday night had received a feeding tube through his nose, it was standard practice at the medical school he attended. If you do not know what your patients are going through, how can you empathize?

I am aware that they deal with suffering, pain and death on a regular basis, that it drains the heart and soul. I am aware that the only thing you can do during those times is laugh, but if you must laugh about your patients, do so behind closed doors.

Additionally, if you are a nursing student visiting a mental health facility and choose to interact with the patients, please show some tact and decorum when talking with them. Do not call them "nutty" to their face, or tell them you do not want to "worsen" their condition by winning a game.

You do not know the circumstances around their arrival, or what their illness is. You do not know if they are bipolar, schizophrenic, manic or going through withdrawal. You do not know what insults they have put up with by those who do not understand their condition.

So do not insult them to their faces.

According to the CDC, an estimated 25% of adults in the U.S. reported having a mental illness in 2003 (source). As of 2010, there were 308 million people in America, 231 million adults, so nearly 60 million Americans suffer from mental illness. While some of the numbers are skewed to the elderly (you are more likely to be depressed in a nursing home), reported lifetime diagnosis of depression were 15.7% (source).

The NCHS states:

Antidepressants were the third most common prescription drug taken by Americans of all ages in 2005-2008 and the most frequently used by persons aged 18-44 years. From 1988-1994 through 2005-2008, the rate of antidepressant use in the United States among all ages increased nearly 400%.

Source.

Open up Facebook. Look at all your friends. Out of the 100 people you know, 15 to 25 suffer from mental illness, either depression, bipolar disorder, etc., and you might not even know it.

They didn't ask for this, they didn't ask for their mind to betray them, to lead them down dark and twisted roads, feeling more and more isolated. They didn't ask for society to look down upon them because they see things that no one else sees, or their emotions are taking a twirl on the Ferris wheel. All they want is to be understood and loved.

Don't blame them when they want to end it all, don't walk away because you don't know how to handle it. Yes, it's hard dealing with the constant drama and emotion. It's even harder on us, because you only see a fraction of what goes on inside our heads.

Just hold us, comfort us, tell us that we are loved, that we are special and deserving of life. Talk about the happy times. Ask what you can do to help.

And above all: treat us with respect.

The Hunt for the Domesticated Salesman

Earlier this month, my car, the Awful Boat, started acting liked it was about to go to the Great Car Unknown, so the Boyfriend Unit and I traded it in, after looking at many new and used cars.

I hated it.

The actual process of picking out a car -- deciding on the model, interior, perks, etc. -- was a bit frustrating, but fun at the same time. I liked looking at all the cars I can't afford, and wincing about most of the ones I can.

The part that I hated the most? Dealing with salespeople. I know, everyone hates dealing with car salesmen, they are up there with politicians, creepy preachers and the kid who plays with his iPhone at the movies.

Most complaints that I've heard about car salesmen is that they are too pushy, they constantly call or pester you to make a sale, and they might smudge details about a vehicle so it's more appealing.

I wish we encountered that, or some attention from salesmen. Instead, we were ignored at the dealerships, left to wander the vast wastelands of domestic and imported cars, blinded by their shiny new paint jobs. When we are able to capture the attention of a domesticated peddler, we were treated like pariahs, riffraff, someone to humor until we decide to leave.

We realize that we were not buying the most expensive of cars, but neither were we looking for a cash car or the cheapest car on the lot. We knew what we wanted, we knew what our budget was, and we're reasonably well-informed about the cars we did want to look at.

Salesmen are guilty only of what so many of us do on a daily basis - judging a book by its cover. We didn't go to dealerships dressed to the nines, looking to impress; indeed, we did just the opposite. While we do not quite resemble hobos, we were quite casual in our attire -- flip-flops, tee shirts, ponytails (on me, at least).

We didn't seek out salesmen, we waited for them to come to us. It's a game, really. If a salesman is brave enough to venture outside his air-conditioned dealership, and talk to us like human beings, they will get our business (if they are selling the car we want, of course).

“For every sale you miss because you're too enthusiastic, you will miss a hundred because you're not enthusiastic enough.” -- Zig Ziglar

The only time we encountered a salesperson that actually treated us like human beings was at a Chevy dealership, and the guy had only been there a week. He was nice and very personable, if a bit unknowledgeable about the vehicle, but his sales manager was horrible - talking down to us (and to New Guy), treating us like we were wasting his time, up until he found out that we could actually afford the vehicle, and then some. Then we were his best friends, and he became the pushy salesperson we all love to hate.

All of the other salesmen at the other dealerships would barely give us the time of day. One older gentleman, whose chest hair was quite distracting, even cut our conversation short because someone else came in and wanted to talk to him. We avoided that particular dealership.

I guess you can't really blame salesmen, though. Their livelihood depends on selling vehicles, and they don't want to waste time on someone who isn't serious about purchasing a car. But there are many types of vehicles on the market, from many different dealers, and in the end, you can try to sell the car and the brand, or you can sell yourself and the company - make the experience as pleasant as possible and make yourself stand out in consumers' minds in a favorable way.

But without that personality, you're just another polo-shirt taking up space at the dealership.

Update - In the end, we ended up with a 2013 Volkswagen Golf. Why did we end up with a VW? Multiple reasons. We've both had VWs before, and loved the feel of them, and the dependability. The Golf had the features we both wanted - Bluetooth, horsies, size, warranty, and the Outlaw (as we dubbed our salesman) was honest. If he didn't know something, he didn't bullshit us.

We were originally trying to decide between a Golf and GTI, the GTI was more fun, but the Golf is a bit more practical. Problem with the Golf was that they didn't have the wheels we wanted or the color, and the GTI was a bit too pricy. When we went back to the dealership after a lunch break, Outlaw had actually found the Golf we wanted, and offered us a price break.

What made us happy was that he found the cheaper car we wanted. Most salesmen would have tried to find the more expensive car to sell us, knowing their commission would have been bigger, but he knew we would be happier with the Golf.

And we are, we both love it.

Zooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom.

Adventures in New Eyeballs, part two

Today was my first day back at work since last Wednesday, and let me tell you, it was certainly interesting. About an hour after I clocked in, my eyes were already hurting. My left eye is currently 20/20 (with a slight glare around all lights, including monitors and cell phones) and my right eye is 20/25. Between the two eyes, I can drive and read just fine, but staring at a computer was apparently a bit beyond me.

About an hour into my shift, my coworker CF noticed I kept staring at the ceiling, letting my eyes rest. She alerted our boss and I was sent home, with orders to call the doctor.

I received a call back from the doctor's office just as I arrived home, with instructions to stop on in as soon as possible. Thanks to Apple's new Map feature, a 10 minute journey ended up taking me the better part of an hour, as Maps mistook Ellstree for E Lane Street, and I ended up in the bad part of town.

While I was driving, my right eye went from "eh, sore and tolerable" to "gonna pop out any second now." So it was a fun drive, being lost, in pain and panicking because I was lost.

Since the office staff and DK were so good to me, I made them a basket of goodies decorated Halloween-style to say thank you.

I found the basket at World Market, and the ribbon and bow at A.C. Moore. Inside, I put some pumpkin crunch popcorn, two types of crackers, three chocolate bars, candy corn, tequila salsa, three berry preserves, garlic & herb cheese wedges, chocolate-covered jelly beans and a bag of chocolate eyeballs (get it?).

They absolutely loved it!

When my right eye was checked out, we found the pressure had skyrocketed - up to 53 (normal is between 10 and 20). A couple round of drops were put in, along with the dreaded pills that make you, er, extremely dehydrated. After about an hour and a half, DK had come back from surgery and the pressure in my eye was down to normal.

We talked for a bit, and decided that the next course of action was the laser procedure again - the one that made me empty my stomach and pass out. Of course, I started panicking immediately, and asked if I could take leave for an hour, I needed to eat and wanted the Boyfriend Unit there with me. He said of course, and off I went into the rainy unknown.

The Boyfriend met me at Applebee's, and after a well-deserved Coke and spicy boneless chicken wings, we went back to DK's office. All three of us started discussing options, and we eventually made the decision to do surgery on my right eye - same as last time, opening up some drainage holes to permanently reduce the pressure.

Rant Time
DK said he wished he had done it on Friday, when I was already put under, but the Boyfriend brought up a good point - why operate on an eye that was behaving normally? It only increases the risk of infection.

A few comments have been mentioned to me that it's an easy surgery, that DK is trying to fix his original mistake, cover his ass, etc., but that is simply not the case. A very small percentage of those who receive ICLs have complications, and I just happened to be one of them; there was no mistake by DK or his staff.

The ICL surgery is different than LASIK -- sedation is administered, my eyes were surgically cut into, the ICLs were implanted and allowed to unfold and then the drainage holes were put in (an iridectomy, actually). There's risk with every surgical procedure; you're just as likely to get an eye infection from LASIK or even a simple eye exam.

A very complicated procedure, actually, if you factor in the fact that one small mistake can permanently blind someone; it's not as simple as removing an ingrown toenail or a loose tooth.
End Rant

Tomorrow's surgery is scheduled for noon, though I have to be at the surgery center at 10 a.m. No food or drink after midnight tonight, which means I'll probably be a bit cranky tomorrow.

If you take anything from this, please let it be this bit of advice - your eyes are one of the most important organs you have. Without your vision, you cannot drive, see the sunset or the sleepy look on your lover's face. Go in for yearly checkups, and for Shiny Unicorn's sake, if you're prescribed corrective lens, please wear them, if not for your own safety, then for the safety of everyone else around you.

And make sure you find a doctor you trust, a doctor who goes above and beyond the usual "let's see if you're still 20/20." It's certainly worth the extra cost, believe me.