#26) Go to Devou Park

Nothing compares to a picnic before the Cincinnati skyline.  Especially if it happens to be on the first warm day of spring.  Especially if the spring happens to follow the coldest winter. 

It has been said that the best view of Cincinnati is not in Cincinnati, but from Covington’s Devou Park.  According to the park’s webpage, Devou offers 704 acres of green space in the urban core.  For context, this is nearly as big as Central Park, which comes in at 843 acres. 

I first learned about Devou Park when a young couple visited it on one of the Teen Mom adoption episodes.  Since then, plenty of people that I actually know have vouched for its great view.  But I had never been!  I always felt like Cincinnati had so many vistas to choose from I didn’t need to leave the city to see the city.  But this is the year. 

On Saturday afternoon, I got down to the important business of packing my picnic:

A bottle of Two Buck Chuck (now $3) fits nicely inside a Swell insulator.  I also made a kale and kalamata salad and brought a block of gouda, some grapes, and a bar of dark chocolate. 

Donnie had a long run planned for the next day, so for him I packed four slices of homemade whole wheat bread (#2), half a box of angel hair pasta, and leftover rice and naan from takeout Indian.   

We drove through the quaint winding streets of Covington and then up an impossibly steep hill to get to the park:

 

The view is every bit as breathtaking as the Teen Moms and everyone else had led me to believe.  Although, per usual, the camera on my phone can’t begin to do it justice.

 

 

 

As we snacked on our kale and our carbs, we were surrounded by couples celebrating all manner of milestones:  high schoolers were posing for prom pictures, an outdoor wedding was taking place on the pavilion, and a pregnant couple was accompanied by a professional photographer who was  taking “belly shots" (not pictured):

Meanwhile, we took smudgy selfies. 

It was a lovely evening for all of these activities. 

 

 

 

 

#2) Learn to Bake Bread - Redux

It took some time to recover from the shock of last month’s disastrous introduction to bread making.  Even Donnie, who regularly eats an entire box of pasta in one sitting, was so turned off by my last loaf of bread that he briefly contemplated a conversion to a gluten-free lifestyle.  Can you blame him? 

One Saturday morning as I was planning our meals for the week we had this exchange: 

Kayla:                    Any meal requests?

Donnie:                I’d like to eat more gluten free meals.

Kayla:                    Me too!  Let’s do a gluten free week.

Donnie:                Cool.  Wait… is pizza gluten free?

Kayla:                    Ha.

Donnie:                Are tortillas gluten free?

Kayla:                    You can’t do a gluten free week, forget it.

Donnie:                No, I can.  I just need to plan.  What week do you want to do this?

Kayla:                    This week?

Donnie:                Oh.

Five minutes later…

Donnie:                I’ve always wanted to go to a restaurant and ask, “Is this gluten free?”

Five minutes later…

Kayla:                    You know we won’t be able to have beer.

Donnie:                (no response)

Five minutes later…

Donnie:               This is not the week.

Kayla:                  You’re not doing it?  I’m not doing it if you’re not doing it.

Donnie:               No, I’m not doing it. 

The truth is, I do feel better when I avoid wheat.   I used to have horrible bloating until I realized that the culprit was handfuls of Triscuits.  I’ve also been trying to drink less beer, which is basically fermented bread juice. 

But bread making seems like an important skill.  Something adults should know how to do.  Plus, when I buy bread at the grocery store, I agonize over the choice between the local Shadeau Bakery bread, which is “multigrain” but is made with white flour, and the commercially processed whole grain loaf that has ingredients not found in nature.  

Neither is ideal.

Despite a nagging fear that the Bob’s Red Mill recipe I used the last time might be at least partially to blame for last month’s disaster, I decided to give Bob another chance.  Some of the other recipes I researched called for milk or sugar and I wanted something with fewer ingredients.  But because I still didn’t entirely trust Bob, I halved his recipe.  Better to end up with half an ogre than a full one. 

In doing so, I realized that the little yeast packets you buy at the grocery store contain only ONE tablespoon—not two.  WTF?   So my last loaf only had half as much yeast as it should have, which explains why it didn’t rise.  At all.  After FOUR HOURS.  This time, I also approached the water amounts as general suggestions.  

The last time I tried to make bread, I did so without really understanding what the texture of the dough should be.  I assumed that the flakiness was okay and that it would bake itself out.  Wrong.  I should have been adding water until the dough felt spongy and pliable (thanks, Google!).  More like pizza dough than cookie dough. 

Google also taught me that it is better to knead dough on a large flat surface than in a bowl.  In retrospect, this seems sort of obvious. 

This second attempt was going so beautifully that I decided to get creative and make a honey sea salt glaze to add a little pizzazz.

Pop quiz:  try to spell pizzazz!  It’s not easy.  I kept writing “to add a little pizzas”.

To make the glaze, I whisked together honey, sea salt, and water.  I rubbed it all over my dough ball and then rolled the whole thing in some old fashioned oats. 

When this came out of the oven, I almost cried.  This must be how people feel after giving birth!  Except without all the blood. 

 

Except, as it turned out, there was some blood.  Lots of it.  This is the year to learn to make bread and it was also the year to sharpen my knives.  And it was nearly the year to join Maggie’s “9 ½ Finger Club”: 

After the bleeding stopped, I was able to enjoy the fruits of my labor.  Or, to be more precise, the glutens of my labor. 

 

With lots of butter.

#11) Join Toastmasters

Sometimes your life changes to the tune of a 40-piece band. 

I don’t remember what the band was playing, but I will always remember leaving my first Toastmasters’ Club meeting through a concert of brass instruments set up in the building’s atrium lobby. 

Now might be a good time to mention that “the building” was the Seasons Retirement Community in Kenwood and the band was not for me, or even for Toastmasters, but for the retirees who had gathered in the lobby for an after-dinner recital.   This might also be a good time to point out that this Toastmasters’ Club is not for retirees, it just happens to meet at Seasons because there is an available conference room and offers easy highway access. 

But it felt like the concert was in my honor and it probably should have been.  Here’s why:  Toastmasters is something I’ve been putting off for fifteen years.   This all started my senior year of high school when I turned down the opportunity to give the Valedictorian’s address at my graduation ceremony because the thought of speaking in front of four thousand people made me sick to my stomach.   Everyone said I would look back on the decision and wish that I hadn’t given up the opportunity, but this is a good example of a time when everyone was wrong.  To this day, I haven’t felt an ounce of regret.  Instead, I feel like I smartly avoided a traumatic situation. 

During my freshman year of college, a friend’s father recommended Toastmasters as a way to overcome my fear of public speaking.  Obviously, I didn’t heed his advice right away, but I did tuck it away in my back pocket as something that I would get around to eventually.  As I eased into my professional career, I continued to put this off and almost began to accept that I would always be anxious in front of a crowd. 

It wasn’t until recently that I began to recognize that I could no longer turn down speaking events or just fumble through them without limiting my career potential.  I’ve worked too hard.  There is too much on the line!  This is the year!  Time to “lean forward”!

(Actually, I have no idea what people mean when they say women professionals should “lean forward” but it sounds like it fits here.)

So I left Toastmasters on Monday night with my membership application in a smart red folder and I woke up at 4:00 AM on Tuesday morning to read through the materials and start preparing my first speech.  I hadn’t set my alarm that early—I was just excited. 

This is the year!

#3) Check Out Krohn Conservatory

Walking through Eden Park today I realized that it was the first time I’d been there wearing something other than running clothes.  This is why I’ve gone by Krohn Conservatory upwards of a thousand times and never set foot in the door.  Last year, on the Walnut Hills leg of Run 52, I vowed to return on a day when I was more appropriately dressed and smelled fresher.

It took five months, but today was the day.  

Susan has been to Krohn Conservatory a hundred times so I enlisted her as my tour guide.  We were joined by Maggie, Ari, Abigail, and Elsie.  Somehow we ended up visiting the weekend before the beginning of the annual Butterfly Show, which sounds like a sad misfortune, but ended up being really pleasant because we had the entire place nearly to ourselves. 

Well, it was us and this kid in a blue shirt.  He was there, too.  And his parents.  And his grandparents.  And some other people. 

Okay, we didn't have the place to ourselves.  Maybe it just felt that way because I tend to be self-absorbed. 

Although the Show Room and the Bonsai Room were closed so that the botanists could prep for the Butterfly Show, we were able to spend a relaxing hour exploring the Palm House, the Tropical House, the Orchid Room, and the Desert Garden. 

The Palm House has a meandering goldfish stream that ends in a pretty waterfall.  I don’t think you’re supposed to sit on the rocks, but you know I’ve never been one to pass up the opportunity to pose for a picture:

 

In the Tropical House, we saw tall ferns and pairs of birds in cages:

 

This is also where I had a crazy realization that although I make a big deal about trying to avoid processed foods, I’ve never seen how two of the things I consume most often look when they are growing:

Coffee Tree

 

Cacao Tree

Now if only there had been a Diet Coke tree I would have been all set. 

The Desert Garden—full of cacti and succulents—was probably my favorite room.  While the Tropical House made me feel really bad about the grocery store hibiscus that died a slow death on my patio last year, I felt really comfortable around all the succulents. 

What was not so comfortable was the cactus that reached up and latched onto the pinky finger side of my right hand. 

 

Luckily, I was able to detach it without much blood. 

In case it's ever needed for my medical record, here is a shot of the offending plant:

Now that I’ve been to Krohn Conservatory once, I would love to come back again and walk around the plants in a cocktail dress and high heels while enjoying a few glasses of white wine and some chocolate stations. 

I have no idea where this vision came from.

Until then, I’m content with the memory of a beautiful spring afternoon spent with five beautiful ladies. 

Namaste!