December 18, 2009 @ 06:18

As I was putting away some of the holiday loot that Puppy came home with, including a full sized stocking, we had this conversation . . . 

Puppy:  Mommy, let’s hang my new stocking right next to my gingerbread man one so that I will get lots and lots of presents. 

Me:  Okay, we can do that. 

Puppy:  I’ve been good this year so I will get lots of good presents. 

Me:  (rolling eyes and grinning behind his back) Yes, you have been good this year. 

Puppy:  You’ve been a very good mommy this year, you’re gonna get lots of good presents! 

Well didn’t I just? 

Merry Christmas Everyone!

December 25, 2008 @ 11:42

This has turned out to be one of the best Christmases ever in my life.  I’ve recieved unexpected gifts from friends near and far.  A lovely whisk arrived within just a few days of the post that mentioned it.  I’ve made three batches of truffles so far, Emily, and it’s perfect, thank you.  Two gift certificates came to me as well with the same whisk-ey intent.  One has already been tranformed into a Nordic Elf fondue set in the whisk’s stead.  They make me smile, just like Heather and Christy do, thank you.  The third, I’m still thinking, the Nordic Elves are looking like they need company, though.  Perhaps hot cocoa mugs and spoons . . . There was also a card, with a poem, that flat out took my breath away.  As well as a set of Christmas ornaments for the tree that made me cry.  There were cards and notes and photos and presents and more sweetness than we’ve experienced in years.  Thank you guys.  You cannot know what you all mean to me. 

I got to have a house full of my brothers and sisters and cousins and all of their children for Christmas Eve dinner.  Even though some were missing and we missed them terribly, I had to fight back tears once or twice just looking across my living room at faces that hadn’t been together since my Nanny passed away.  I hope you all found a perfect moment for your holiday like that.  I hope you found yourself in exactly the place you wanted to be with all the people that you love.  My new year’s resolution is already done.  To spend the next year making more memories like these.  And hopefully to keep us all on the same track that has led Bear to being the best big brother/cousin ever.   He spent countless patient hours these past several days with the little ones and they love him for it. 

Helping Jaidon slam dunk a bit earlier than expected. 

Assembling loopedy loops. 

Kicking back after the dust had settled. 

Happy Christmas . . .  and an even Happier New Year to you all. 

December 22, 2008 @ 20:51

So every year for Christmas at my daddy’s house I make a birthday cake.  For Jesus.  One year I built a little manger in the center and made a tiny baby Jesus in the manger, all edible.  The family had the exact opposite reaction as they usually do, fighting for the piece with the most frosting.  They all avoided the baby in the manger until it was a wobbly narrow tower of cake in the center of the plate with the little sugar Christ child swaying on the top.  Nobody was willing to eat the baby Jesus.  We still laugh about that one.  I made a yule log cake years and years ago.  Early in my cake days.  It was not pretty.  It fell apart.  It wasn’t particularly tasty.  I hadn’t tried it again since.  I guess I just hadn’t thought about it.  But I decided to do one this year after seeing Throw Down.  Did you see the Buche de Noel Throw Down with Bobby Flay?  I gotta say Throw Down has made me rethink my previous dislike of him.  I forget which other Food Network show made a yule log cake but one of them rolled the cake from the jelly roll pan into the log shape and let it cool that way.  This appears to have been the key.  Because when I decided to give the yule log a re-try it worked.  Of course I ran short on time, because I’d managed all my time poorly.  Consistency’s the key, and every year I think I can get more done than I actually do.  So no meringue mushrooms.  No modeling chocolate pine cones.  No cute fondant forest critters.  On the way to my daddy’s house I left behind the ice cream.  What’s birthday cake without ice cream, right?  So I stopped at a grocery store between our house and theirs and would you believe they had one half gallon left of the same Merry Mint flavor I had bought and left behind.  We forgot to get the ice cream out and serve it with the cake after dinner.  But, all in all, not bad.  It was double chocolate mousse cake, Bear’s favorite, and Puppy thought it was hilarious that we had a cake that looked like Frog from Word World’s house.  And nobody seemed to have a problem eating Frog’s house. 

December 21, 2008 @ 14:09

So we went to one side of the family’s Christmas celebration this weekend.  Saw my four year old niece that I don’t get to see very often.  And it scared the bejeezus outta me.  They’re creating a monster.  Bossy, vain, look at me look at me four year olds are pretty normal.  I get that.  But this girl?  Is scary.  It was made significantly worse for the afternoon by one of the presents she recieved.  A big electronic rock star set up.  Microphone and, I swear, an amp that went to eleven.  For the entire afternoon she shrieked into it.  If daddy stopped paying attention she’d shout “Daddy!  Daddy!  Daddy!”  into the mic over and over until he returned to the room.  This is what she was singing: 

Keeps Gettin’ Better

Not a bad song, I actually really like Christina Aguilera, but not appropriate coming out of the mouth of a four year old girl.  And she knew every word.  Reminded of me of that poor little girl I saw at “Boo at the Zoo”  one year dressed as Brittany Spears, full red patent leather suit.  You remember the one?  She couldn’t have been more than four or five either.  Made me want to cry then.  And I did cry a little bit on the drive home for my neice. 

At one point, her daddy patted her on the head and pointed around the room at all the other kids and family and said . . . 

“You see all those other people?  All beneath you.  You’re above them all.” 

Send chills up your spine, too? 

December 17, 2008 @ 09:08

So I mentioned making a savory bread pudding after the Christmas party.  I even took a picture.  But afterward, I had decided not to post.  The snob in me occasionally self-edits.  You can’t cover leftovers with a pound of cheese and call it something special, Sara!?!?!  But a co-worker and I were talking on the post party morning about an old landmark that used to be in our hometown.  Clausen’s Truck Stop.  Gawd, I loved that place.  Fries and mushroom gravy at 3am after a long night of drinking?  I have no words to explain the small town bliss.  Greasy food after whiskey and beer, never fear, that’s how the rhyme goes, right?  I can very clearly remember the day I came into town for a visit, shortly before I moved back here for good, and went to drive past Clausen’s.  And it was gone.  I was blown away.  It was a classic greasy spoon.  Surly waitresses, sometimes the hot chocolate arrived without even a stir.  Just a lump of brown powder on top of a cup of hot water.  Awesome, no?  Not great food that I remember except for those fries and gravy.  In truth just regular old french fries with cafeteria brown mushroom gravy.  But, man.  It figured into some really great memories of my college days.  Talking about it made me homesick for the little town this used to be.  So here’s the Hangover Bread Pudding.  In honor of late nights with old friends. 

Hangover Bread Pudding

Stale baguette slices, enough to cover the bottom of a large baking dish
Leftover Sausage Balls, a classic Southern staple for parties, Paula Deen has a recipe for them here, of course she does. 
8 eggs
3 cups of milk
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of black pepper
1 teaspoon of dill weed
1 tablespoon of minced onion
2 cups of shredded cheese of your choice, a good melty kind

Lay bread slices in bottom of non-stick sprayed baking dish.  Layer the sausage balls on top of the bread.  Beat eggs with milk, salt, pepper, dill, and onion.  Pour over the bread and sausage layers.  Top with shredded cheese and let sit in fridge for at least two hours.  Bake at 350 degrees until top is bubbly and browned.  Eat and remember how much nicer it is tying one on with friends now that you are a mature grown up and not a silly college kid who thought they were bullet proof.  The wine is much better now. Oh, and the food, too. 

December 14, 2008 @ 09:15

Last night was my annual friends’ Christmas party.  I started the day at work.  Then dashed around buying what we needed and tried not to lose it in holiday traffic.  Seriously?  What is wrong with people?  Not losing it was greatly aided by a nice long talk with Puppy’s daddy when I met him to give him some things that I’d forgotten to send for the weekend.  Then I headed to the grocery store to buy the food for the party and the week.  You just can’t skip the weekly grocery trip when you’ve got kids, no matter how badly you don’t want to since your grocery store is a Walmart and it’s two weeks ’til Christmas.  Saints preserve us.  I cleaned house like a mad woman, partly because I’d been a bit neglectful lately.  I cooked entirely too much food.  I remembered to recharge the battery to the camera and then promptly forgot about it for the rest of the night.  I was still cooking when the guests arrived and nearly burned the phyllo wrapped chicken and beef.  Because I was still hovering in the kitchen at the party’s start time I spent the whole night with my hair in the pony tail I’d slapped it into that morning and only a thirty second slap of make up that I applied after everyone had arrived.  Oh, and mingled with my beautifully dressed guests in my favorite Serenty tee shirt.  At least it’s Christmasy. 

I did what I always do and jumped from one clustered conversation to the next trying to get to talk to everyone and in the process didn’t get nearly as much time as I wanted with anyone.  I forgot to put the gift game in the invitation so two of us exchanged a gift instead of a roomful of noisy present chasing.  In short . . .  it was perfect.  The guest list was smaller this year.  Some work drama has had many of us on edge so we settled in with our nearest and dearest instead of expanding the guest list as I thought we might.  Old friends that I hadn’t seen in months came.  And I had the best margarita I’ve ever had in my life.  Elderflower, seriously who would have thought, but it was excellent.  Now I’m going to go make a savory bread pudding with some leftovers and go to work, at the job that even with the drama I still love love love.  This has been a very good weekend.  This has been mostly a very good year.  Thanks to everyone of you who’ve partipated in those good parts. 

December 10, 2008 @ 22:54

* The edited version . . . 

I pulled this about an hour after I went to bed the night I wrote it.  But that won’t do will it?  If my intention was to feel better.  And I believe it was.  Not to hurt anybody else’s feelings, but to ask for what I really want. 

Maybe, for those who are worried about it, you should just read this preface and not read all the way through.  That might be best. 

Here’s a simple list as alternative: 

Enameld cast iron cookware, pick a shape or size, I’ll coo over it.  If you really want to know, though?  Here’s the real post: 

Two of my favorite bloggers spun me into thinking today.  Kitty and Robbin.  Robbin sent me into thinking about Santa first thing this morning.  And Kitty made a list!  Lovely . . .  There’s a thing that I’m sure a lot of single moms know about.  That state of being you can fall into where you forget to let yourself have Christmas.  Forget to ask for anything for yourself.  A few years ago, I broke down and cried when my mother asked what I wanted for Christmas.  I said money or gift cards to basic stores.  Wal-mart, grocery.  She said no, what she meant was what did I want?  And I began to cry because that was what I really wanted.  We were so broke that year and struggling so hard that it would have been the perfect gift.  I cried because I suddenly realized that nobody knew how bad things were.  And that scared me.  Both because we were so flat out broke and because I felt so alone in it, partially because I didn’t ask for help.  Now before anybody goes and starts to feel badly about this.  I’m just saying.  It just happens.  It’s not necessarily sad.  It just is.  You stretch every penny and then suddenly, something’s gotta be given up.  And it isn’t going to be something for the kids.  And it’s okay.  And then you realize it’s ten years later and you can’t remember the last time you got excited about the receiving part.  Sounding selfish?  Here me out.  The receiving isn’t about the thing.  It’s about the thought.  I’m talking about that moment of tearing off paper and being excited about the surprise that is just a layer of shiny away.  That thing that someone who loves you searched out and wrapped up.  And if you are really lucky, that someone is standing right there watching you open it, with just as much anticipation, to see if you love it.  That is the infamous thought which counts.  I have friends that are really good at it.  Janet is especially.  She gives gifts to share.  Books that she has loved that she wants to share with you.  Something that you adore, but never remember having told her about.  But she knows.  This is what I mean.  The silent gift that goes hand in hand with the actual one.  Her love.  Her having placed you in her heart as someone who matters.  She has paid attention when you spoke.  Heard what you said, as well as noted those things that you didn’t say.  That is amazing.  And I am grateful for it.  It’s about the relationship.  There were several years, between Bear being that age of making those fabulous hand print gifts at school and being old enough to be gift giver in his own right, that I didn’t get any gifts at all for Mother’s Day.  That is the hard thing I’m trying to put into words.  Bear is the gift, I know it.  But it was lonely, too.  On the grown up side.  Do you see what I mean?  I think I may totally be screwing up this explanation.  I don’t mean for this to sound like a whiney complaint. I just . . . 

Nowadays the problems I face are not so much about money.  Oh, don’t get me wrong.  I’m broke by 5 o’clock every payday.  But we’re sneaking by.  Peter and Paul have thrown up their hands at my shennanigans.  But we’re making it.  The killer tomato now is time.  Oh, and emotional reserves.  Everybody says you have to take care of yourself.  But the reality is, that’s one more chore for me to do.  You want me to take care of everything and me?  There just isn’t enough of me to go around.  And if something has to be given up, it isn’t going to be something for my boys.  I just want to know that I’ve been enough.  Even if I didn’t also get up at 4 am to run.  Even if I didn’t also go to an SCA event in the last year.  Even if I couldn’t do all the things that everyone wanted me to do.  What I did was get up at 5 am every day and get my kids off to school.  Go to work.  Come home and keep pounding away at the puzzle of Puppy.  Squeeze in a project here and there that will bring in a bit of funding for the puzzle and the roof over it.  Try to be mindful of Bear’s needs.  He never expresses any, so it’s tricky.  But I try.  And that’s all I’ve got.  Shouldn’t that be enough?  In light of all that, here’s my Christmas list . . .  it isn’t half as sexy as Kitty’s (boy, I said a mouthful there, didn’t I sugar?) But these are the things that I want.  These are the things that will say that you understand.  That will ease my stretched out self. 

Sunday dinners, once a month might be nice but I am willing to negotiate, with my sisters and brothers and their children. 

The bathroom painted.  I already have the paint. 

An invitation to do something besides work out.  Maybe I can’t go more than one time out of twenty, but I still want to be asked. 

To not be told, ever again, that Puppy just needs some discipline, a firmer hand, or whatever theory you’ve got that you want to apply to my child based on knowing a tiny fraction of him.  That theory which is really just your way of saying “I could have done it better than you have.”  I know that is like asking to win the lottery, but hey, it’s Christmas.  It’s my wish. 

A proper whisk.  A cheap whisk is a terrible thing.  And an easy thing to forget to buy, repeatedly. And it’s problematic for the ganache.  And the ganache makes us happy. 

That’s all.  No, really.  That’s all. 

December 10, 2008 @ 16:12

Yesterday afternoon, Puppy got very excited in the car on the way home from school.  He loves to categorize things.  Not always neatly, but to whatever degree he has decided at any particular moment, he likes things in their places and labeled accordingly.  We have home shoes and kindergarten shoes, for example.  Or the freight cars for his trains all have very specific duties.  Our downtown streets are lined with twinkle light snowflakes.  Three different shapes I now know.  Because when he had categorized all the snowflakes to his satisfaction, he proudly announced it. 

“Mommy!  I know all the shapes of the snowflakes!  There are stars . . . 

(clearly yes, that is a star)

 . . .  and diamonds . . . 

(I see it, diamonds, very much so)

But this one took me a minute to see . . .  Can you guess?  I made him repeat it three times before I got it myself.  And only a kid of mine, I gotta say . . . 

 . . .  Mommy, it’s PIE!” 

Yes of course!  Pie.  Twelve neat slices.  I guess it’s hereditary. 

December 06, 2008 @ 21:05

So in the aftermath of the cookie night, I had a batch of cookies in little balls with no sprinkles or nothin’.  If you know anything about me, you know that just wouldn’t do.  So first I dipped them in caramel.  And then I stared at them for a whole day.  It still wasn’t enough.  So then I dipped a couple in chocolate.  Which made me think of turtles.  Which made me get out the pecans and do the last dozen with little heads and feet like this. 

How cute is that little bugger?  And easy peasey, too. 

December 04, 2008 @ 11:17

Trixie visited and helped up make cookies last night.  Snowmen for Janet.  Trains for Puppy, Candy canes and stars for Bear.  Snowflakes and trees and gingerbread men for me and Trixie.  Although I think all she did was sample frosting.  There were lots of sprinkles and chocolate chips and colored sugar.  Oh and little sprinkle snowflakes, applied one at a time with the kitchen tweezers.  Yes, I have kitchen tweezers.  Shut up.  I reigned in my inner control freak and baked Puppy’s lopsided shapes and didn’t fret over perfect frosting application or anything else.  And they are beautiful, no? 

Candy canes and snowflakes not pictured.  What, we’re made of stone? 

This is how to make a perfect Christmas cookie.  With loved ones.  And no ridiculous expectations.  And seven pounds of butter . . .