Category Archives: Jason’s memorial foundation

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I\’m at it again…

Yeah I know, do I ever really stop?

Not usually no.

Anyway lots of craziness has happened in the past little while.  Far too much to write about, but hey here\’s some highlights:

Spider man & hello kitty in cake form:  I was asked by the other bosses wife to make a hello kitty cake and a spider man cake for their 2 children.  Hello kitty is easy (or so I thought) and spider man, well I did a Google search for spider man cakes and found a great website that had lots of images of a 3-d bust of spider man (sorry no pictures camera is MIA) although I was assured that I would be e-mailed some.  Anyway, I was So. Ridiculously. Sick. on the day of the event that I was due to not only cater the food but finish the damn cakes.

Mission impossible?

Hell yes! Not entirely

At first glance I had my doubts about it looking like spider man, more like the victim of a tragic farming accident.  Had to re-make the fondant 3 freaking times and of course it just wasn\’t going red like I wanted it to.  So I had to finger paint on the red.  Next time I\’m buying red fondant, in a pail because the cost vs effort, well there\’s no comparison what so ever.  In the end it wasn\’t perfect but looked close enough to spider man to make the little man happy and for a first attempt in conjunction with being deathly ill I did OK.  Even hello kitty fared pretty well in the end, thank God!

I also got quite the tip for my efforts which was nice.  I My Visa will appreciate that 🙂

I also made a killer snow white cake, which of course the pictures are on my memory card in my camera that I can\’t currently find at the moment.  (keeping my fingers crossed that its in Pete\’s car/Apt)

Not to mention the most bitching wedding cake ever, with the help of Pete.  I honestly don\’t think I could have pulled it off without him.  OK I\’m pretty sure I could, however I have to say that having him around made this task a lot less daunting and working with him was nothing short of pure greatness 🙂  I also made Clint a grooms/birthday cake which I do have a picture of, on my freaking camera of course!

Anyway without further ado, the most bitching wedding cake of the century!

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Pete has better pictures but there\’s a general idea for you.  The little wee one is for Jen, she can\’t have raspberry so we made her a non raspberry one just for her.  The cake in case you were wondering was lemon sponge finished with a raspberry liqueur simple syrup and each layer\’s filling (4 per tier) was alternating lemon curd Swiss meringue butter-cream & raspberry Swiss meringue butter-cream which was then covered in a combination of the lemon/raspberry Swiss butter cream and topped with lemon flavored fondant.  Was a huge hit and everyone loved it!

Once I get the pictures from Pete I\’ll post them here 🙂

In other news, I decided to volunteer for IAMAlive which requires me to be certified as a suicide prevention counselor that\’s offered through Eastern Washington University.  50 hours, costs $250.00 so I will be hitting people up for sponsorship to help offset the cost.  Its important to me and more importantly it will help to benefit my foundation as well.  All in due time of course, for the moment I need to focus on getting better physically and feeling better emotionally.  Which I seem to be getting there on both levels.  Physical aliments I can deal with, working in a daycare those seem to come and go.  I\’m more focused on the emotional aspect of it now.

Also on a final note, I got a surprise when my best friend from ON decided to come to Montreal for this beautiful long weekend and I got to spend some awesome time with her and her lovely family including her beautiful new baby boy.  OMG he IS the sweetest little thing ever!  Was a good day, did lots, seen lots and had a great time.  Was so good to see them!

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Depression, a boy & his puppy, oh and art.

\”Hope is the feeling that the feeling you have isn\’t permanent.\” – Jean Kerr

Couldn\’t have said it better myself.  Which is precisely the feeling I\’ve had pretty much all of last week.  As in, I hope this goes away, you know like yesterday?  So its been

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Since Jason died, but hey, who\’s keeping track?  Most days I\’m pretty much OK.  Wed April 21st? Not such an OK day, nor were the days leading up to it either.  As a matter of fact, those (the days leading to) were the worst.  A few years ago Jason asked me what it was like to be 30.  I simply & honestly replied \”Dude the first 6 months of being 30 were the best 6 months of my life\” and they were.  On. So. Many. Levels.  He replied with something to the effect of:\”I hope mine is just as good, gives me something to aim for/look forward to.  Except Jason didn\’t make it to be thirty years old.  Wed April 21st 2010 was Jason\’s 30th birthday.  That was a hard day.  A dark day if you will.  That whole week?  Hello depression!
I shut pretty much everyone out, I really didn\’t bother to correspond with anyone if I could help it and it sucked balls.  I\’m not going to lie.  You see, I had a conversation with someone not so long ago that sounded a little something like this:
Them:\”I don\’t ever say I\’m depressed, just \”sad\”.
Me: \”See, that pisses me off.\”
Them:\”Why?\”
Me: \”Because I am SO sick of the stigma around depression!  Sometimes you get depressed briefly, usually after a period of grief, its very common.  Also depression is a disease that affects so many people and those people sometimes don\’t get help because of statements like that!  Either they\’re afraid of the \”social stigma\” or too embarrassed or something along those lines. \”
Them: \”Well since you put it that way, you have a point\”
I at least like to think that I do…
Jason was a diagnosed manic depressive.  It made him suicidal.  Hence my burning desire to start Jason\’s memorial foundation.  These people who are suffering either briefly, or for the long term need to know that we are NOT afraid of how they feel!  Its human instinct to try and \”make someone feel better\” however I now know that its impossible.  Support them? Yes!  Make them feel as if they\’re less alone? Absolutely!  However \”feeling better\” in its truest form takes time, love, support and a whole lot of patience.  I hit an all time low last week that scared the shit out of me.  Not suicidal low, just OMG I haven\’t ever felt this \”dark\” inside in my entire life and it freaked me out.  I sought immediate help.  After doing a quick Google search I found  GROWW: Grief recovery online while this site is a bit of a pain in the ass to navigate, it was well worth the effort.
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um stuff?

Its 10:00am, I just had cheesecake for breakfast.  Don\’t judge me!

I thought I deserved a little self indulgence.  I\’m sick, as in dear God someone please kill me now sick.  No one\’s taking up my offers to run me over though damn you!  I blame him, him as in I was going to see you Wed but your still sick and now i\’m sick, him.  Granted I work at a daycare where runny noses are always in abundance but I\’m the Chef, not an educator so I rarely interact with the little ones very often.  There\’s a reason for that.  I had managed to stave off anything that was in fact going around the daycare, but then he was sick and we were making out in the museum on Saturday. Sigh

God damn him and all his yummy-ness!

In other news, I had a shift last night at COC that no one mentioned to me.  Fabulous!  Had it not been payday on Thursday (hooray!) and had I not contemplated taking Maximus primes Sunday shift I would have had no freaking clue.  That is until D-rock would have called me & been \”hey Steph, where the fuck are you?\” I thought about stabbing myself so I could go home early but my morals got the best of me and thought it would be best to stick it out with the new guy.  That\’s OK because new guy got one hell of a dose of Steph that he\’s not likely to forget anytime soon *smirk* heh…  I\’d write about it but i\’m currently stoned on cold medication and i\’m lazy.  Besides it was more like one of those you had to be there moments.

Anyhow moving along…

A while ago I briefly mentioned biting the bullet and contacting Jason\’s family(among other things).  Which I was hesitant to do because I don\’t know them, therefore they sure as hell don\’t know how I am either.  Grief is a funny thing & we all deal with it differently & for me its also a private matter.  OK well not too private since I\’ve been blogging about it from the get go but still.  I just know how much it hurt me personally and I couldn\’t begin to fathom how his mother would feel.  So one night at work a co-worker and myself were talking about Jason and he brother who sadly met the same demise in a similar fashion.  She made me feel better by saying that her mom loved hearing from anyone who knew her bother.  Its almost April and I was starting to wonder if my letter (yes I wrote typed out a letter and mailed it the old fashioned way) reached its destination or not.  Although I remember Jason telling me that it was a small town and well the mail service sucks, not to mention its in another country.

I came home in between jobs yesterday to feed the kids and decided to check my e-mail.  There was two in there from the same person, one containing pictures & another one where the subject line: Thank you for the beautiful letter.  I didn\’t recognize the name & at first I thought it was spam but I opened it and sure enough, it was from Jason\’s mom.  I was floored, but happy that it had arrived safely!  I was also pretty happy that she wholly supports what I aim to do which is amazing 🙂  I quote:\”  And I think, too, that if his death brings people together who can change even one other life in this world, there is new beauty and hope.\” I totally agree!  So that simple gesture made me feel 100 times better about the situation as a whole.  Not just his foundation, but the grief I\’ve been experiencing in general.  What she wrote just made everything seem OK for the first time since it happened.

Which is amazing and perhaps what I needed all along, so thank you for that.