After a Storm, Comes a Little Party

Almost three months unable to post... life decided to give me a scare, and I had either no time or no inspiration to post anything during all this time.

Back in February, in my one year on STEEM milestone post, I had mentioned that I had been going through tough times and wasn't in the mood to even celebrate the milestone. What happened was that my mother was sick. And a mere few days after I published that post, she was hospitalized. She spent the remainder of February in the hospital, and meanwhile I got busy visiting her daily and frequently going to the health center to see if I also hadn't caught the illness (fortunately, I hadn't).

My mother got out of the hospital, and is continuing the treatment home with assistance of the nearest health center. Her treatment will last for seven more months. The health center has been providing most of the medications, and we have to go there at least once a week to get her medications and/or for her check-ups.

Thankfully, my mother's situation has been improving nicely. She's responding well to the treatment and has recovered enough to be able to do some things on her own at home and walk a bit on the street, and life is slowly returning to normal.

At least, something good that happened during this time is that my new kitchen appliances (about which I have written in this post) have been proving to be quite handy, and I'm glad to have purchased them when I did. While my mother was unable to do the household chores, I ended up doing quite a bit of cooking and learned more of the ins and outs of using the air fryer and the electric pressure cooker, and if there's one thing that has improved considerably during these last few months besides my mother's health, it has to be my cooking skills. Because of my mother's situation, my aunt came over from another city to help us out at home, and gave me some nice cooking tips, including the confirmation that a stand mixer isn't really required to prepare a sponge cake. I had been wanting to make a sponge cake for a while, but got discouraged because all recipes I found mentioned a stand mixer, and we don't have one. We only had a spiral whisk... but it turns out this whisk was enough to mix the batter. And this was how I made a cake for my mother's 62th birthday! And it was made in (guess where)... the electric pressure cooker!

Image source: own picture. The photo of the cake I made. Taken with a smartphone.

After the big scare, my mother's smooth recovery deserved a celebration, and we couldn't help but do something for her 62th birthday. My aunt helped me decorate the cake and made some other snacks, then we threw a little party among us and some close friends that greatly helped us during these hard times. The party was a success!

The storm is over and things seem to be returning to normal, though I'm still not sure if or when I'll be able to return to STEEM and be back to posting frequently. All I'm sure about right now is that I'm glad that my mother made it to her 62th birthday, because during her hardest moments, we even thought she might not make it. I hope she'll become healthier and celebrate many more birthdays with us!