Giant Pound Cake in the Sky

It's taken me awhile to compose this post because of the tremendous amount of emotion that comes when it's time to say good-bye to someone you love.

Yes, that would be my beloved Kitchen-Aid, whose gears spontaneously stopped spinning right in the middle of a batch of whole wheat dinner rolls.

My relationship with her pre-dates my kids and even my marriage.

After getting engaged, it's the very first gift I remember my parents buying for me us.

Because a marriage without lots of warm baked goods is really no marriage at all.

Spring Break '04

As you can observe from the above photo, we've had lots of good times together.

In fact, I did some simple math in my head and realized I've used it at least 12,000 times. And NO, I'm not exaggerating or making up that ridiculously high number.

If anything, it is a low estimate, due to a few years of commercial baking in which I made enough brownies to stretch from here to Russia.

And my 250 watt Lady of Steel is not exactly a commercial grade mixer.

But she was excellent at mixing things. With whisk! With paddle! With dough hook!

There had been signs of it's demise...the large bolt in the back that regularly had to be hammered back in with a mallet...

...the enamel flaking off the paddle attachment and occasionally making it's way into the cookie dough for an extra crunch.
But mostly, it was the noises. Even a child can discern the difference between a well-oiled motor and a revving jet engine that occasionally throws in a high-pitched squeal like a dying seagull caught in the turbine.

Tons of people (like my mom and aunts) have had Kitchen-Aids for decades. Decades. In case the delightful 1980's almond color ever makes an appearance on the fashion scene again, Mom will be retro-chic.

But they have probably not beat theirs into submission like I did.

So anyway, I've been checking on eHarmony and I'm pretty sure I've found a new lady of the house, but I'm pretty commitment-shy at this point.

It's just so soon.

I've also had a few (um, ONE) very generous donation to the Mixer Relief Fund. But I'm urging the rest of you to place whatever change you find in your couches in my urn with the dead flowers out front. Every little bit counts!

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of this whole drama is that Jackson didn't bat one single eyelash when I asked him to pause the Wii and take pictures of me cradling a dead kitchen appliance.

p.s. Would you believe my hand-mixer (the red-headed step-child back-up) died two weeks ago? I'm trying not to interpret that as a righteous judgment on my eating habits.