I tweeted this:
I really want a cupcake. (At 9am. Yeah, I said it.) :D
— Katie Klein (@katiekleinbooks) May 28, 2015
By 10:30, the daughter and I were in the kitchen, trying out a new recipe for cupcakes.
We didn't have eggs, so I decided to use applesauce as an alternative (which can be done, yo, and is a legit option when there's an egg allergy in the family).
(No egg allergy here, though--just no eggs, period.)
You saw the title of this post, right? Do you get where I'm going with this?
So we mix our ingredients, pop the pan in the oven and wait. And wait. And wait. And when the timer dings our cupcakes are still flat.
Like . . . pancakes.
Round 1:
I keep my cool, grab the cookbook, and reread the instructions.
SELF-RISING flour. Not All-Purpose.
Crap. It. All.
At this point, I had a choice. Freak out and moan and groan, or take the high road. It was my mistake, after all.
So I smiled. And I said: "Well, that happened. Let's try again."
The daughter and I washed all of our pans and measuring spoons and started over. This time, we used the right kind of flour.
Still no egg.
Turns out, substitute or not, that egg was pretty freaking important.
Round 2:
*sigh*
So here's what I know about failure:
Failing is an important part of life and living.
If you aren't failing, you aren't trying
(or you're not trying hard enough,
or you're not trying the right things).
Every failure contains its own lesson.
You will learn more from your failures than your successes.
Yeah, I could've gotten angry, tossed it all in the trash and spent the rest of the day sulking because things didn't go like I planned. (Because that's what "perfectionist" me wants to do.)
But I embraced the failure. Called it what it was.
Then I buttercream iced my failure and ate it.
The lesson I want my daughter to learn from this day: Mom didn't give up. Even when things didn't go the way she expected, she kept trying. And she kept her good attitude while she did it.
So when Mr. Klein came home and asked "What the $%&* happened?," I turned to him and smiled and said:
I taught our daughter how to fail today.
Now it's your turn. Go find failure.
And Be Brilliant while doing it.
~Katie~
