A Cake Metaphor

I don't particularly care for cooking and I'm not that great at it, but I do like to bake. Sometimes I bake from scratch and sometimes my baking comes from a box, but I enjoy it either way.

I remember growing up and always helping my mom bake cakes. We would get the ingredients all mixed up, pour the batter in the prepared pan and into the hot oven it would go. I could hardly stand to wait for it to bake. There's something fascinating about the chemical reaction that takes place under the intense heat of the oven to turn a gloopy (but delicious) batter into a fluffy cake. With childish impatience I was constantly peeking in the oven wondering if the cake was done yet, my excitement always getting the better of me. My mom always warned me that if I kept opening and closing the oven door the cake would fall. Rather than being fluffy, it would be dense and not nearly as delicious. Still, I sometimes couldn't help myself.

I'm much the same way today. I still love to bake. I hate waiting for the end result. I keep peeking in the oven to see how much longer, even though I know I can't make that cake bake one minute faster and it might even ruin the cake in the end. I just get so excited that I feel like I have to DO something rather than just wait and let the oven's heating element do it's thing. I want to see what's happening every step of the way.

For the record, I'm not really talking about cake. I'm talking about being so excited- practically giddy- about a prospect that I cannot do a thing about. It might take awhile for the batter to change and rise and become what it's meant to be. In the meantime, I have to try and leave the oven door closed (read: mind my own business) lest the whole thing fall apart. Once in awhile, my excitement gets the better of me, but I'm trying.