2023/8 COMMON THREADS

I spend an inordinate amount of time in this comfy black recliner in our family room. I sort of fell in love with recliners when I had Guillain Barre Syndrome and was confined to one for months before my legs got back under my hips. Before then I had not spent much time in a recliner…ever. Now this nice yummy leather has formed to me and wraps me sweetly, holding the small of my back safely in her arms. 

Most of my word-families are born in this easy chair, tapped out on a laptop keyboard. Many essay length dreams have been played out here. And small song embryo, which end up moving to the couch where the guitar fits better if they start growing to fruition. 

My view from this spot includes the rock fireplace, the TV screen if we have it lifted from the fooled-you console under the painting that used to hang in Dave’s law office. On the opposite wall is a lovely row of glass doors, four of them, that stand regimentally between the house and the back deck. 

There are red checkered roman shades on all four doors. They’ve been there since we built this house. Twenty-nine years now. I’ve replaced the strings that lift the blinds at least twice and sewn in eighty new little metal rings through which the strings slide to lift and lower the cloth shades. Because the glass on these doors in low-e and blocks UV light, the front facing fabric has not faded after all these years.

I have repeatedly told myself I should replace these blinds. I even have yardage of a nice neutral gray tweed-ish material in the bottom drawer of my sewing/craft dresser. But every time I actually think about it, I can’t bring myself to change my roman shades, mostly because I like them the way they are.

I doubt myself all the time, wondering if I am becoming that kind of old person who can’t let go of the familiar. I’m not against updating. Very few pieces in this room were here when these shades were installed. And if these shades were no longer functional, they’d be gone. But every Christmas, and every Thanksgiving, I like the feeling I get with these traditional plaid shades, the red in the fabric speaking warmth and family and dripping with memories. 

I wonder if one of my angels is keeping a transcript of the discussions I have with myself:

Me: you really should update this place

Also Me: Yeah, I know. I’m getting a little stale, huh?

Me: Yes. Why don’t you get in the car and drive somewhere and find something fresh and new and exciting

Also Me: I like the idea of getting in the car and driving somewhere and looking at new stuff. But when we’re done can we come back home to warm and comfy? I really like the cozy feel we have going here. 

I imagine the hip and happenin’ Me winning out, then two years down the road the Real Me goes down in the basement and drags out the familiar old plaid roman shades, because you know she kept them just in case, and reinstalls them. Then she sits in her comfy worn-out leather recliner and sighs.

So many magical moments have these trusty red plaid roman shades as a backdrop.

There is so much change I cannot control. This I can.

I’m hanging on to common threads.

 

Many a bridal and baby shower
has taken place in front of these shades.

Uncle George pretending to be the grinch
(with Joe)

Rehearsals for Christmas concerts
(with the Eskeltones)

Easter cookies with the Grands

...and Grand Christmas gatherings

Brand New Years with brand new babies
(Annie and Baby Beth)

Holiday house parades with Auntie Kate...

...and Unkin John

Years and years of Saltwerks songwriter gatherings

Santa secrets
(Anna Bella and Paul Dickamore... I mean, Santa)

...and more new babies
(Tess)

Helping Gumpa hang Christmas ornaments
(Calvin)

Newly returned Elder John Connors
making Merry on Christmas Eve with
Bea and Manu visiting from France

There's a lot of my life tucked up in those folds of fabric.

2023/7 SUMMONS

 We have a handful of days left when we have access to the courthouse through the back door. The reality of this is hurling at us as Dave tries to squeeze clearing out his massive piles of papers in his judicial chambers in between hearings and other court duties. We are frantically preparing for his retirement ceremony and open house, at the same time as trying to manage pretty heavy duties in other areas. So when it hit me that this Friday is the first Friday of the month it almost overwhelmed me, until I realized we could do something creative and awesome, then I woke right up as if there were a new me with something fun to do. I talked with Dave and we decided to hold a mock trial in his courtroom when the space isn't being used for real court. It's still unfolding in my mind, like something charming exists, I just need to peel away the layers hiding it. So far what I imagine is a mock trial:

Red Riding Hood vs. Big Bad Wolf. 

Fortunately for me, knowing that creative people already exist and may have created such a thing... and also knowing that teachers are such creative beings... I looked on an app I have where teachers provide what they have already created for other teachers to use. For a nominal fee someone already created what would have taken be many hours to do, and all I had to do was pay a few bucks and click "Download".

They did not, however, provide everything, so I spent a few hours today creating this to send to my grandkids. I foresee the grandkids, the ones we host the first Friday of every month, putting on the trial and their parents and aunties and uncles being the jury. Or I may flip flop that and have the parents put on the trial and have the kids be the jury. Either way, I needed a summons to court, so I made this, and this is what has taken the creative space I offer every day of Lent.

I'll keep you posted.

2023/6 CONSTRUCTION

Our "new" home in winter
now 29 years old

Nearly three decades ago, when I was half my age and in the heat of mothering pre-adolescents, adolescents and teenagers, we decided the kitchen in our old house needed to be changed. The process of discussing those changes and getting construction bids led us to deciding to just build a whole new house. I’ve already written, years ago, about how it came about… about finding this lot and hiring our friend and fellow baseball coach Jerry Preston as General Contractor. Right now, sitting in our now so familiar family room, I am recalling a specific scene, 29 years ago right about this time of year, when I stood in this very room, the walls brand new and not yet painted, the windows framed in and what is now our rock fireplace just a pile of stones we had collected from the creek behind the old house. I had brought donuts over for the workers, an almost daily offering to the wonderful workers who built this house. I can recall the scent of flesh sawn wood, the clean, cold scent of disturbed woods that provided the footprint for this place. I can smell mortar being mixed and hear the voice of Merrill Law instructing the two apprentices how to lay the stones. I wanted the fireplace to have the stones stacked vertically over the opening, and to come forward with smaller and smaller stones to a cement mantle that curved out. I kept searching my mind for the right collection of words to explain what I wanted. Finally, I found a long thick cardboard roll sitting in the corner of one of the rooms, some piece of leftover construction form, like an oversized cardboard leftover from a wrapping paper roll or the inside of a roll of paper towels. I lifted the long cylinder up above the lower section of rocks they had been placing one above the other. “If we could just somehow set this up here” … I groaned as I tried to balance the piece with my arms…” Then create a frame around it and pour the cement in, I think it would work.”   

Merrill looked a little confused, so I found other words to explain myself. After the third go round of re-explaining the idea, he got it. His eyebrows relaxed and he nodded his head and moved forward, grabbing pieces of wood and wire. By golly, by morning, when I came back with a fresh new baker’s dozen glazed Tasty’s Donuts, there was a form placed ready for wet cement. Now I sit daily in my easy chair facing this fireplace and see the shadow in the curve on the cement mantle.

The curved cement mantle on our rock fireplace.

No one would know this but me, not even Dave, but I scratched the initials of our little family in the mortar on the west side of this fireplace. I suppose it was an effort to keep us here as long as it stands.

I vividly remember planting my feet in this very room when the hickory floors were not yet placed, when we walked on plywood and the walls had wet drywall mud on them. 

"DMC" David Michael Connors
scratched into the mortar between stones.
There is also a J, S, K and A
(John, Sarah, Kate and Annie)

I remember inhaling the moment and pretending I was living here, that it was Christmastime, and our kids were in their pj’s and there was a roaring fire in that new fireplace. The heart-swell I felt in that moment of forethought has been relived year after year. 

Could I have imagined how wonderful
these grand-treasures would be back then?

Who gets such a charmed existence?

Lord, make me worthy of such blessings.

2023/5. OH, HERE WE GO!

This morning I called my friend Chris to check in on her. She’s been having balance issues lately. Chris is an athlete. She burned up the basketball court in high school and college, knows the exact way to time a slide into home plate and has always had that recognizable gait of a ball player, where they carry themselves properly over their hips, their hands tucked into the waist pocket of their hoodie sweatshirt.

I met her years ago when my daughters played comp softball. I probably even yelled at her then as she made quick and unapologetic calls in her blue umpire uniform behind home plate. Now she is one of my blessed sisters whose fellowship I feel in Christ as we worship in the same ward together. I now know the gentler, vulnerable part of her, the part that is humble before her Lord and embracing rather than competitive. She is warm and funny and devoted.

Chris has a can-do attitude, which is refreshing. Life has thrown her some pretty nasty curve balls, and she keeps swinging, even if she knows she’s going to go down doing it.

We were laughing on the phone today and she was lamenting the fact that she doesn’t handle falling as well as she used to. “I’m not rolling right.” Part of being good at using your body in sports is knowing how to roll when you fall. I’ve been pondering this lately, wishing I had learned and practiced the concept. Chris has developed instinct to respond the minute she starts falling. She told me about the time they were driving to Denver and a deer ran out into the road in front of them. Her son made fun of her because she instantly, as soon as the deer appeared, put her hands on the dashboard and her head down while simultaneously calling out; “Oh, here we go!” She defended her response by saying you have to train yourself to relax and go with it rather than stiffening up. “You stiffen up and you’re gonna get hurt. First rule of falling.”

In less than three weeks life in our home is going to make a big shift. Dave is retiring from the bench. I’m happy for Dave, though I do have real worries about his self-definition and such. But I am also worried about me. My rhythm is going to shift, for sure. The whole flow of this household is bracing for a shake-up. I have a feeling I need to keep repeating Chris’ words in my head. I need to understand that we have the ability to roll with whatever comes rather than needing a clear picture of what’s coming. 

I am taking upon myself the Chris Lindstrom mantra. I’m going to steady my breathing, jot down some notes to clear my fuzzy brain space, avoid pre-determining the outcome, and physically smile. I’m learning from Chris. 

I am counting my uncountable blessings, the first being that I actually really like the guy who will be invading my private space. I am imagining myself being as gentle with his shifted situation as he always seems to be with mine. 

Ready,

or not…

OH, HERE WE GO!

2023/4. LOST LYRICS

Tonight, we were watching an episode of The Chosen that correlated with the scripture story we studied in church, where Jesus healed the man with palsy. At one point in the show we missed what Peter said to Mathew, so we rewound the recording. Hooray for technology! On the second-go-round we still couldn’t understand what he said, so we rewound again and added closed captioning. Again… technology! We finished the show, prayed together, then Timo went up to bed, Dave pulled up his calendar for court tomorrow, and I went to finally get out of my Sunday clothes. I instinctively started the washing machine in our bedroom closet so I could wash Timo’s livery jacket that smells like goats. At the same time, I became conscious of the layer of music playing in my brain. Did you know most people have a layer of music playing in their head at any given time? We are rarely conscious of it, but its true. When I became aware of this phenomenon I started taking note of it for myself and sure enough, there is almost always some random song underneath a couple layers of other thought. If I am in the process of writing a song it is usually that song, and it ends up driving me batty. Songwriting can be a blurse that way. 

Tonight, I recognized the tune as one from the made for TV Rogers and Hammerstein version of Cinderella. “In my own little corner in my own little chair, I can be whatever I want to be.” I brought the tune to the surface and started humming, eventually letting the words spill into the forefront. First verse, second line…”On the wings of my fancy I can fly anywhere, and the world will open its arms to me.  I’m a young…” hmmmm, I know I’m a princess, but from what country? I racked my brain to take me back to our house on Old Clairton Road and our black and white TV. Leslie Ann Warren is singing, her hair wrapped in a kerchief. There’s a whisp of smoot on her cheeks as she sings. 

“Seriously, I know this song! “I tell myself. I’d sung it a hundred times, pretending to be her, knowing I was exactly the kind of girl Prince Charming would fall in love with (before he grew out of his castle and became Dr Alan Quartermain on General Hospital.)  I could not for the life of me find the lost lyric in my head. I know it’s in there rattling around somewhere!

In the olden days, information was available to common folk in one of three places:.

1.     Mom or Dad. (I should like to say teachers, but in those days I didn’t ask teachers random questions. We just tried to be dutiful students and answer their questions.)

2.     The set of orange skinned Childcraft books that lined up regimentally on the lower bookshelf, minus the Stories & Songs volume that fell in the bathtub. Or the more mature set of Encyclopedia Britannica strategically placed too high for little hands to reach. Both sets circa Nineteen-Fifty-Something.

Or

3.     The Library, a quarter mile down the road and only open on weekdays until 8 and Saturday until 4. 

If what you wanted was the lyric to a new-ish song you were generally out of luck unless there was a record store nearby and the liner notes contained lyrics.

 

Now I am an old-ish woman with a stacked washer and dryer in her bedroom closet. As I scooped a grainy mound of laundry soap into the washing machine and slipped my nightgown over my head, I sang the song-worm aloud, hoping there would be an auditory trigger that made the missing lyric fall out. But alas, it wasn’t there. Eventually I found myself, instinctively, flopping into my recliner with my computer on my lap. A click-click-click into a search bar and within seconds I not only found the lyric but also had a sweet little ten-minute whirlwind romance the prince charming of my childhood. 

There is so much at our fingertips nowadays. I am amazed, with the immediate access technology gives us to all sorts of sweet reminiscences, that we get anything done at all.

For all its drawbacks, I celebrate technology. Otherwise, there would be a serious brain wormhole by morning from a futile search in the catacombs of my memory for lost lyrics.

Norway, by the way. The princess in the song is Norwegian. Sheesh, I’m glad to know that!

Good night.

2023/3. THE MINISTERING JIGSAW

When you have a scatter-prone brain, and a big old wad of life to chew, things can get a bit disorganized. The parade of neighbors who walk through our back gate, the only passageway between two neighborhoods, would recognize this as a Connors truth. Dave, by nature, is much more organized. He just can’t keep up with me and my need to hang onto stuff cuz someone might need it. To be quite honest, we are those people folks call when they need a random this-or-that for an upcoming event, and I am always happy to oblige. It only really becomes a serious problem when I can’t find that thing I saved for “such a time as this” and I end up beating myself for having no order whatsoever. We live in a jigsaw puzzle box. At least its colorful.

My personal business motto is IDEAS R US. My head is on idea overdrive. They rattle around in my brain like ping pong balls falling on Captain Kangaroo. It’s been this way since I was old enough to think. I should probably clarify… CREATIVE IDEAS R US.  

Really useful things like balancing budgets and sorting junk drawers are not necessarily in my skill set. Which brings me to my Lazy Susan.

Last summer we purchased a large round table for our dining area. It seats ten for our Sunday dinners. It came with a dandy Lazy Susan to set on top. Thick glass with good bearings that make it spin smoothly and with ease, like an eternal Merry Go Round. Without it the table is too large to pass anything across to the persons opposite. Last Sunday, when my nephew’s family was here from St George and able to join the masses for Sunday dinner, we taped extra wide paper on top of it, manned the kids with colored Sharpie markers, and made a giant Spirograph.

Monday I placed 150 names, printed on pieces of cardstock, on top of the glass. I had been trying, for weeks, to organize on my computer, and on a legal pad, and then finally Ideas R Us popped out the prompt to use the Lazy Susan.

Here’s what Monday looked like.

 

Now, after roughly 50 hours, and I am not kidding about that, here’s what it looks like.

 

Such is the task of organizing people. Trust me, it’s easier to dig through the garage. Not as much risk involved.

I love my calling as Relief Society President. I honestly do. I feel like my heart has grown three sizes too large, or whatever it did in the Grinch (not that I’m a grinch, though after our four hour presidency meeting today my counselors might say otherwise). Pretty much any Relief Society of Elders Quorum President will tell you that keeping ministering assignments organized, functional and flowing is the bane of their existence. One person moves and the whole jigsaw puzzle starts to fall apart. Because of the pandemic, when I was first given charge of this responsibility, I felt impressed to create ministering groups rather than companions. These teams of sisters watch over each other. There has been greater ownership and more equal-based friendships formed under this format. More of our membership is accounted for, and the connective thread between the sisters and the bishop is stronger under this format. But we needed to make come changes. For instance, because we have a senior mobile home park in our church community, we had assigned couples to minister together. A few weeks ago we had an 83 year old and a 78 year old lying on the ground under the trailer of one of our sisters attempting to fix a pipe. The holy spirit of all things safe whispered “Isn’t there a younger demographic that could do this kind of ministering?” And so the shifting started and I ended up with this mess on my Lazy Susan. (By the way, who came up with the term Lazy Susan and why didn’t they call it The Great Facilitator instead?)

The visual of what I could do on my table, with a gentle spin allowing potential changes, was perfect, though we haven’t had dinner at the table all week.

Finally, with the ultimate help of my blessed friends Tasha, Cheryl and Bonnie who man this ship with me, we have a collection of remarkable women who, if they give it a chance, will have their lives changed for good and will look back years from now and wonder what they might have missed had they not moved forward with faith.

Here’s what I have discovered in the last three years I have served in this calling: 

1.     I can do hard things

2.     If I will keep a prayer simmering in my heart and brain, the Holy Ghost pretty much always comes through

3.     I can achieve less by doing everything myself and more when I let go and allow people to step in and either help or take charge

4.     Everyone is majestic and everyone struggles

5.     Good people make mistakes

6.     God knows more than I do (he keeps teaching me this)

 

Now is that sweet spot where no-one knows about these changes so no one is panicked and calling me. 

Breathe in – Breathe out.

 

Also, I need this book, except I can't stay focused long enough to finish books :-) 

2023 / 2. HEMS

Timothy’s new white suit arrived today. A Prime delivery, ordered on Tuesday and on our doorstep two days later. We live in remarkable times. Because he begins his service as an ordinance worker in the Bountiful temple tomorrow, I asked Timo to try it on while I grabbed my pin cushion. He stood on the raised hearth of our family room looking a little bit like a kid wearing Daddy’s suit. The sleeves were three inches too long and the trousers a good four inches past his heels. I asked him to carry my small Bernina out to the kitchen table and bring me my good sewing scissors. He handed me his suit, we read our nightly chapter from the New Testament, then off to bed he went.  Here I am, 3 am, finally finding time to do my writing exercise for the day. One of the magical things about deciding to write every day is you start seeing the ordinary of life with a writer’s eye. It makes the mundane sparkle. Everyone should write.

I spent some time in quiet introspection as I worked this unexpected task tonight. I am not a seamstress by any stretch of the word, especially since my Margaret, who tried her best to teach me to sew ten years ago, skipped town and took up residence in Heaven. If Margaret were here I would have waited till morning and begged her to walk me through it, knowing full well that she would eventually scoot me out of the chair and fix it for me if I whined enough. So instead, I had to pretend she was walking me through the cuffs of the suit jacket, which is fully lined. I really have no idea if what I did is functional. But it looks pretty good, to my untrained tailoring eye. The proof will be with the young man sound asleep upstairs.

Ironically, my sister Libby and I attended the temple today. We had heard there were some changes in the presentation of one of the ordinances and we were interested to participate. There were, indeed, some beautiful changes, not in the ordinance itself, but in how we were taught the meaning of it. 

I have struggles with some of the promises I make in the temple. I will keep those struggles to myself and my God for now, but I am not one of those profoundly blessed people who find complete peace and comfort in this holy place. I usually come out with more questions, like there is a pebble in my pretty white shoes and it rubs me raw in that one place. I see no need to hide this. It’s my truth. It’s not pushing me to abandon the whole thing. But I do have questions for which I search for understanding if not answers. I can hear the voice of my mother telling me, “You are not likely to find them outside. Search in earnest inside. So I return with my queries and a healthy dose of trust. If I die and find out I’m a fool, then at least I have lived a happy fool’s life of service and love. How can that be so bad?

So I am thinking, these past hours in my chair, my thumb and finger working the fabric and pushing the needle-led thread between two pieces of fabric… I am thinking how these little stitches bind two separate things together. I look at the hem of Timo’s trousers when I am done and discover it’s sadly puckered. That’s when I hear my mother’s voice again, whispering, “That will iron out. Don’t worry.” And you know what, she was right. Under the weight and heat and steam of my iron the puckery hem turned nice and crisp and even and flat. The threads and the fabric were forgiving. Just took a little heat and pressure.

So, too, I suppose, will my issues with certain aspects of my faith. Just because I don’t understand all of it does not mean it is not understandable. After all, we humans only use something like 10% of our brains. Mom repeatedly told us the Lord is just and it will all work out in the end. God is binding me to him. It may be a little wrinkly now, but I have confidence He can iron it out.

I miss my mom.

As I stood at my ironing board, pressing the hem of my faithful boy’s temple suit, I got to thinking about the woman with the issue of blood, as told in the New Testament. She’d been bleeding for many years. I suspect she had tried everything to fix it. When Jesus came through the crowd, and she hadn’t the strength to press her way through the throngs, she lowered herself to the ground and stretched her hand through the masses to touch the hem of his robes. With all those people pressing against him, he felt her need sucking the miracle out of him.

“Who touched me?”

It’s no accident that the woman, under Mosaic law, was cast out and considered unclean. I love how Jesus used the least likely people to teach us the most profound truths. It’s worth noting too that most of the people surrounding him were seeking miracles as well. And I think it is symbolic that it was the hem she touched. Not his flesh, not his head, but the hem of his robes. In my overly symbolic mind I imagine it was the knotted fringe of his rabbinical shawl, the Tzitzit maybe, that represented the priesthood keys he carried. Whatever it was, her faith, combined with his ability to heal, made her whole.

Tonight, clothed in my own doubts, I pray the touching of a holy hem will bring me comfort, if not answers. I am a woman with issues, and I am reaching.

LENT 2023 1. SACKCLOTH & ASHES

Sackcloth and Ashes

 

Timothy was set apart

His mother wept

And so did I.

He wore his new blue suit

The fibers freshly woven and evenly spaced

 

He sat alone in the center of their circle

Closed his eyes and dropped his head

 

They laid their wrinkled hands on him

And told him to stay home

When what he wanted

What we wanted

What we thought God wanted

Was for him to travel far and preach the Word

and wear the fibers of his new suit thin

 

Instead, he tends the goats

On Fridays and Saturdays

At the park in Salt Lake

 

His suit hangs in his closet for Sundays

And temple days

 

Timothy likes the goats

But they are not his

Which is probably good because its easier to lose what you do not own.

 

Last week he came home

And lifted his chilly feet out of his mucky boots

By the kitchen door

He pulled his arms out of his jacket and hung it on the banister

 

I was pressing my fist into a triple batch of roll dough

“How was your day, Buddy?”

He answers, 

Always,

With a cheerful

“Good!”

But he went on, as he pinched a piece of dough from the counter

“It was a little sad though.

One of the goats miscarried.”

 

He went on while I kneaded

Told how there were two of them,

One quite small and deformed

That’s probably why it didn’t work out

 

It struck me how mature he was

Witnessing his first miscarriage

And I prayed the prayer of a grandmother

As I slapped and turned the dough with

Equal measures of gratitude and pleading

 

Timothy wears a perpetual smile

A real one, that requires no forethought

He sleeps in his room alone at night

No companion but God himself

With the aid of an alarm clock

To get him up and on his knees before the sun rises

 

And because none of us has thought to buy him a barn coat

He wears his high school drumline jacket

To tend the goats

 

I lift it from the banister where he hangs it

Every Saturday night

And lay it in my washing machine

Where water,

By immersion,

Washes it clean

Every whit.

 

Timothy does his own laundry

But this one garment I keep for my own

Pre-Sabbath ritual 

to wash away what stinks

 

Timothy’s barn sits up there on the hill

Where pioneers are celebrated

At the mouth of the canyon in Salt Lake City

Next to the blacksmith shop

I imagine the rhythmic pounding of hammer on anvil is a comfort to my drumline boy

 

He is happy to serve

Happier than we let him be

In his goat’s hair sackcloth

And the ashes of a Smithy.

Timothy's goats

Timothy's coat

Timothy's drums

 

DELUXE CARROT CAKE

Long ago, before the internet, when I was a young 21-year-old trying to figure out how to walk the path of wife and mother, I bought a cookbook from the Junior League of Upstate New York. We were living in Rochester NY at the time. That cookbook has some of my favorite recipes. One of them is this really moist and yummy carrot cake. 4 cups of raw carrots makes it really moist. And though I am a firm believer that butter makes everything better, this recipe needs oil to make it right. Resist the urge to replace it with butter.

DELUXE CARROT CAKE

2 c flour

2 c sugar

2 t baking soda

2 t cinnamon

1 t salt

4 eggs

1 c vegetable oil

4 c raw grated carrots

3/4 c chopped walnuts (optional)

Mix flour, sugar, soda, salt, cinnamon together in a separate bowl. Grate carrot to equal 4 cups. In large mixing bowl beat 4 eggs until foamy. Drizzle oil into eggs as you continue to beat. Add dry ingredients, then carrots. Add nuts.

Bake at 350 in greased and floured 9x13 cake pan for 35 minutes or until done.

or in 3 cake pans for a layered cake, 25 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Beat 8 oz softened cream cheese with 2 T soft butter until creamy. Add approx 4 -5 c powdered sugar and beat. Add 2 T vanilla and beat. If its too runny, add more powdered sugar.

Frost cooled cake then sprinkle crushed nuts on top if you've used nuts in the cake.