Reading: John Fowles, A Maggot

Listening: Ode to Joy

 

5 December 1999: Christmas

Saturday I felt less misanthropic and more like the mall might be an okay thing, but by now HAO had other plans. Instead RDC and I went to the mall and found presents for my sister (who, bless her, gave me ideas for items other than $400 watches or boring gift certificates to Pottery Barn) and forgot to get HAO's present. After particularly exquisite sandwiches from Alfalfa's, we went home and napped instead of walked, and Saturday night RDC didn't feel well so again we didn't go to "Toy Story II" but instead stayed home and watched Paul Newman on TMC ("The Hustler" and "Hud") and I stamped cards.

Sunday HAO and I went to the mall again. RDC had decided no more malls for him after a spotty teenager give him the finger after nearly ramming us making an ill-scouted left turn. This happened down near Bonnie Brae, not in the mall, but he'd made up his mind. Saturday night he spent tracking down a Furbie for his nephew while I stamped.

For my sister so far, I have monogrammed stationery (a staple) plus a box of gold seals with C on them for her stocking. At Bloodbath and Beyond I found a tree skirt I hope she'll like and at the checkstand, a mini garlic grater for her stocking. I still need to find a white turtleneck (from REI, not L.L. Bean, because I'm in Colorado now not New England) and maybe Sung perfume. Also her annual Christmas catalog--which HAO said was funny but since I thrust it into her hands moments after she got back from a sleepless night of travel she was too paralytically tired to laugh--and a print of Mary Cassatt's Two Sisters that I bought at the Seattle Art Museum. Also some other little wrapped doodad, probably a hair thingie, that I discovered from maybe two years ago in the bottom of my Christmas box. One of my Christmas boxes. Luckily she still has long hair. And the Monopoly game, when and if. I need to go to Walgreen's for her stocking. Walgreen's is not as fun as CVS, much cheaper and tackier, and I don't buy stuff that starveling Indonesian children made until she'll actually enjoy or use the thing, hence the Catalog instead of the actual plastic tchotchkes.

For my father, River Horse and The Great Shame. For Sheryl, three Rosamunde Pilcher books. For my grandmother, four more books plus stationery she'll get Christmas morning--unlike the books, which she might open if she gets the mail that day. But she probably won't be getting the mail for a while. Sigh. So my kidlets are done and my family are mostly done, with one noticeable exception: I have no idea what to get for my mother.

So anyway, HAO and I were back in Bloodbath & Beyond looking for a European pillow sham (i.e., square) when her cell phone rang. Lately when her cell phone has rung in a public place it's been for me: RDC figures I'm with her and that we're interchangeable. But she hates using the phone in public. She said, pulling the ringing thing from her bag, "I hate people who use cellphones in stores." Taking it from her, I asked, "How about you hate it when people use them in stores, so that you can still like me afterward?" Anyway, RDC told me there was voicemail from SEM calling from in the middle of Kansas and he and Skip'd be in Denver when he got there. Wheeeeeeeeee! I thought we were nearly done anyway, but we weren't: we were going to Tattered Cover Cherry Creek for HAO's niece. Oh. No, HAO would drive me home. Yes yes yes pleeeeaze. Poor child, she puts up with so much.

Two weeks after Thanksgiving, the house wasn't too bad, and I had vacuumed that morning. It was messy, with modem cords and wrapping paper all over the living room and sloughed-off clothing festering outside bathroom doors and whatnot, but the bathrooms weren't growing mold and Blake's cage didn't reek, so I was ahead of the game. I had no idea when they'd get there, but RDC made it sound like soon, so I didn't go for a walk Sunday either: I knew the moment I left they'd show.

So I made cookies again. I made my oatmeal chocolate chip standbys, this time with enough brown sugar (and I think the last batch, with molasses, was better) and whipped up a batch of chocolate snowballs (which wouldn't be done until after SEM left). Nancy's recipe sounds good, but mine I can make in my sleep, and often do, which is how they get burned so often. My recipe:

3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup brown sugar (dark)
1/2 cup white sugar
Cream the butter just like Nancy says. Frothy.
If you don't have enough brown sugar, you can substitute probably oh I have no idea up to half white sugar and molasses
One egg
1/4 cup water
1 t vanilla
Combine first two sets
1 cup flour
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
Blend these together and then add to the mixture.
You should be tasting this all the while. Allegedly this recipe yields five dozen but I got 60 cookies only once, when my dog wasn't home to help, and never since even after she died. I don't know why. The batter sampling is necessary to ensure a quality product.
Completely combine all this and then add
3 cups of oatmeal
Gotta use Quaker from the big canister. Other oatmeal is Wrong. However, plain instant still Quaker oatmeal in packets is also okay and maybe better; between eight and nine packets. And since no one eats plain oatmeal except the bird who is happy to share the three varieties of flavored, this is a great way to get rid of the extra.
Mix it all up good.
Dump in the chips. Ghirardelli semi-sweet, Hershey's if you must, Nestlé if you're Wrong. Don't measure. Put in plenty and then some more just in case. (I have a five-pound bag, not any wimpy 16-ounce, or worse, 8-ounce snack size bags, so I say more is better.) A full 8-ounce bag should be enough.
Measure out by teaspoonfuls or tablespoonfuls onto Pam'd cookie sheets unless you've got that weird new expensive kind of sheet Martha recommends. My job as a child used to be to be applying Crisco to cookie sheets, so Pam makes my life much happier and those Martha ones probably happier still.
You preheated the oven to 350, right? Good. Slide the pans in, and make sure you've rearranged the racks to their proper intervals instead of having both way at the bottom to accommodate a turkey. Racks too close together and too close to the bottom are Bad. Also remove the pizza stone before you preheat.
Go do a small obligation. This is like Pilate telling Milkman how to make whatever, wine or fruit compote or whatever it was. Do a small obligation (Pilate generally goes to the bathroom, but if you do please wash your hands afterward). I usually prostrate myself on the couch with a book and forget that I have anything in the oven at all, which is not a step I recommend.
Take the cookies out before the recommended 10-12 minutes have elapsed. That's too long and your cookies won't be properly gooey.
Eat them.

So I had snowball batter chilling in the fridge and chocolate chip cookies cooling on the counter and RDC had just finished the guacamole and it was during the third story of "60 Minutes" (around 6:40, not 7:40, television being Wrong in Mountain time) that our friends arrived.

I wasn't thinking, or I was making excuses, but I had had plenty of time for a walk before dark. Some people might split driving from deepest Missouri to Colorado into two days, but my bud SEM isn't one of them.

So we had a great evening. He showed us his new toy (a Toyota 4x4) and we showed them Cassidy. I paid him the nickel I've owed him since 24 June 1995, and I thought to pay him his nickel because he has pretty well won the bet against all of us. SEB was the first to marry, in 1991, then HEB in 1992; then me in 1995; then PLT and DEDB in 1996, and TJZ just got engaged for October of next year.

"What?" exclaimed SEM.

"What's the last time you checked your email?"

"....."

Saturday I checked my email briefly; I've not been online much since last Thursday. I had recently emailed TJZ because once again I forgot her birthday by a few days. The subject line of her reply was "better than birthday" and after pointing out she has almost never remembered my birthday (which is true) so my forgetting hers didn't matter, her birthday was particularly good this year because Soulmate asked her to marry him and she said yes! I whooped and screamed into the living room, grabbed the cell phone almost from my husband's very ear, and called my pal.

The nifty thing about this news is that Skippy, who has met TJZ once or maybe twice, demonstrated infinitely good taste (already shown in her taste in men) by wanting to know all the details. So that was a fun conversation, because in typical lisa-style I had to do the backstory about how when I heard Soulmate's name, I feared that he might be Russian. She had sworn off Russians before her penultimate boyfriend but went out with Dmitri anyway. So when I heard Soulmate's name, I asked, tremulously, if he were Russian, and she replied in an email scream, "STAB YOURSELF IN THE ROLLERBLADING GASH." Apparently not.

(I call the man "Soulmate" because the first time I heard about him was severally from DEDBG and HEBD and DEDBG said "sounds like a soulmate!" Took me ages to make TJZ squeak about him.)

Supper. SEM stopped eating meat after freshling year and for a long while was vegan, just to see if he could be. So the bag of shrimp in the freezer that's saved us from not a few last minute meals was out, but delving into the fridge in a desperate attempt not to have to make a grocery run uncovered zucchini and spinach and two varieties of fresh fettuccine plus leeks left over from Thanksgiving (as were the guacamole's avocados, limes, and peppers, since guacamole is such a traditional Thanksgiving dish). Since mostly people'd drunk wine on Thanksgiving, we had a lot of beer left as well. It should be the weekend after Thanksgiving all the time and we'd always have lots and variety for surprise guests. Besides that RDC can make a yummy meal out of anything, SEM and Skip were happy to have anything that wasn't prepared for 400 (they work at a YMCA camp). So the meal was a success.

As is usual in our house, the television was on but muted. I caught SEM's eye straying to the set while we hung out in the kitchen cooking during "The Simpsons" so reassured him that I, after getting his voicemail hours before, had programmed to tape it (in case we went out or found each other more amusing that Matt Groening). He breathed easier, then asked tentatively whether we watched "The X-Files." Dinner was over by then and we watched it live, relatively speaking. I'll have to send him this Thursday's "ER" unless it's a rerun. He was the only one of us, and still one of the few people I knew at all, who had a television in his dorm room. Dinner at Hilltop and "M*A*S*H" in SEM's room afterward, yes, I remember it well.

After a 14-hour drive, Skip was beat. If SEM were capable of being tired, he might have been too. So I pulled out the futon and set up their bed in their own room with their own bathroom (the study), ooo the luxury. They had sleeping bags, which was a good thing because apparently we have no spare blankets. We do have extra pillows, but Skip travels with her own--she had a hotel in Portland, Maine, mail it to her when she forgot it there. She's determined. She disappeared during the X-Files rerun and SEM looked at CLH's Catalog o' Tackiness.

In the catalog were die-cast models of the cars from Dukes of Hazzard--the General Lee, a sheriff's car, and Boss Hogg's limousine. I could remember the sheriff's name because of his supremely annoying manner of pronouncing it: "Roscoe PPPPPPPPP Coltraine" and the deputy Enos (because Mad magazine, spoofing the show, called him Anus) but I couldn't remember the Dukes' friend's name and wrote some frustrated message in the catalog about that, where was his truck and what was his name? SEM is, as I've said, more of a television addict than I. I was nearby wrapping a kidlet's present when he ejaculated "Cooter!" and I kissed him with gratitude. I've probably kissed him with a beard before, since he's had one on and off for several years, but I can't remember. I kind of like it.

ljh and semI've had Making Movies in my head Monday and today because that's what was in my head the day I fell, and I was thinking about the fall because, last thing yesterday morning before he left, Shawn saw my leg as well. I didn't tell him the same way as I so lugubriously threw myself on my mother and the female part of the gang, but he did happen to call the next day as I lay prostrate on the couch. RDC, who could move, answered, and before handing me the phone told SEM he, SEM, would make me feel better . Not that I wouldn't've told him anyway, but with that lead-in it was the first topic of conversation.

But that wasn't the last thing. I was still in my (purple) bathrobe then but I wanted photographs of me and SEM with his current amount of hair (receded, a quarter of an inch long, plus beard), so Skippy obliged me after I dressed and took the (purple) towel off my head--he teased me about the purpleness, of course. I didn't point out that the purple towel set was a wedding shower present from his mom, so there. And then they left for points west--they're going to Bryce, Arches, Moab, and Utah places like that. Camping in Utah in December--did I mention that his next vacation, planned for years now, is dogsledding in northern Minnesota? The boy has no subcutaneous fat and was happily bouncing around in shorts in the snow last night. This time he spared me the snowball down the shirt though, what a prince.

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Last modified 5 December 1999

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