Christmas Cookie Emergency

I'd been correcting yearbook proofs for going on four hours, when I made my move. An intervention was needed, big-time.

Just so happens, my SIL had already sent me some other homework to correct.

Every Christmas, Norwegians (and the in-laws, like moi), bake delicious seasonal delicacies: Lefse (sort of a thin potato pancake), Krumkakke (sweet, crispy cookies, baked on a griddle, somewhat like waffles) and Sandbakkels, a version of the sugar cookie, each one whipped up with brown sugar and pressed into a tin.

Sandbakkels, if you must know, are my specialty. Having married into a Norwegian-American family, I immediately embraced the baking traditions of the Upper Midwest.

Every Christmas, I set up a one-woman sugar-cookie assembly line.

My SIL, who is the real Norwegian in this tale, has practiced a kind of "sandbakkel fail," as my cherubs would say, the last couple of years.

Don't know why, but her cookies are underdone. They're overdone. They don't taste right, or, horror of horrors, the cookies stick to the tins and won't come out in their pretty floral shapes.

I suggested that she send me her sandbakkel tins, and her recipe (in case it differed from mine), and I would try them out. After 25 years of baking sandbakkels, I know my Norwegian sugar cookies. Just sayin'.

The package arrived last week. I had a passel of grading to attend to, and those darn yearbook proofs, so I put the cookie rehabilitation project out of my mind for the time being.

But yesterday evening, just after dinner, I started to hear Christmas carols. I swear, I could smell the brief hint of brown sugar and cardemom (a member of the ginger family, and the secret ingredient to sandbakkels). I started feeling festive.

Of course, there were those darn yearbook proofs. Whatever. I put them aside, and started baking cookies.

As you can see from the snap above, there's nothing wrong with my SIL's sandbakkel tins. Nor her recipe, which is the same as mine. I don't know why she's been in a sandbakkel funk, but I do know one thing.

We're celebrating Christmas again at my house this week!

Editor's note: Mrs. Scribe's Poetry Slam will return next Monday. We had to interrupt our previously scheduled program, as you can see, because of a Christmas cookie emergency.

The Ice Man Cometh

Super Bowl-Bound

He rumbled into

the end zone, all three

hundred-plus pounds. Touchdown!

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Fly Like an Eagle

I swung a wide left out of the school parking lot. I downshifted as the colors up ahead slid from yellow to red. The boy grinding through the gears of his Mustang Turbo GT (circa mid-'80s) in the lane next to mine cut his horsepower by half.

But he wasn't looking at the approaching light. He had his eyes on the sky.

I put on my brakes and gazed up toward the clouds. I don't usually mimic the behavior of teenaged miscreants, but then my vision fixed at about mid-point between the road and the clouds high above us.

We both, I'm sure, held our breaths as a bald eagle rode the cold January currents only he could feel to snag a hapless brown squirrel, which had been minding his own business in the median in front of Our Humble High School.

The impatient crowd behind us, forced to slow as we watched one of the most graceful of Passion Plays, didn't honk, didn't gesture. Those drivers, too, ceased their urge to scurry home as they watched Mother Nature do her work.

As the eagle reached under the squirrel with his talons, I knew that what I saw at that moment was both the majesty and the horror inherent in our national symbol.

I rubbed one eye with a balled-up fist, not wishing to witness the persecution of the tiny mammal but at the same time transfixed by the action unfurling before me. No Spielberg could have choreographed such drama, such pitiful hopelessness, as the squirrel put up but a half-hearted struggle, dangling high above the road.

And then, in one majestic swoop, they were gone.

The boy in the Mustang raised his right fist in a salute, to both me and the huge bird of prey. For a flashing millisecond, he forgot about cool and surrendered to his inner child, awed by a performance that, I'm sure, we'll both be talking about well into our post-sedentary years.

He turned his head. He smiled. And then he accelerated, reaching 60 before I'd had a chance to catch my breath.

Editor's Note: While the events described above are entirely true, I don't have photographic evidence to share with y'all. And yes, this drama was played out on a 4-lane thoroughfare in front of a suburban DC high school. The photo above was snapped on the Fox River in NE Wisconsin by my youngest, Ella Numera Dos.

Too Much Christmas

Empty Promises

When my chicas return to home base ~ an occurrence that that is becoming increasingly rare around La Casita Scribe ~ we always sound the same theme. Pick up the dirty clothes strewn across the floor, do something other than watch endless hours of cable bridal shows ~ you know the drill.

The bane of my existence, though, as far as my kids are concerned, is the lowly diswasher. Over the years, I've given up on getting the full trash can down to the curb or the empty one back to the garage ~ or removing the sticky ice cream bowls from the table near the TV ~ but I'm eternally optimistic when it comes to getting the automatically scoured forks, plates and the warped plastic blue cups back into the kitchen recesses where they belong.

After this last Christmas visit, however, I'm beginning to think that my gals have forgotten Judy Garland's mantra, "There's no place like home."

The drama began with the youngest, of course. I returned from the salt mines one afternoon, only to discover the trash can still down at the curb, the sticky bowls still residing in the vicinity of the television, and the diswasher still jammed with the detritus of the "clean" cycle.

I mumbled, I muttered, I threatened. Ella Numera Dos looked up from "David Tutera's My Fair Wedding" long enough to say, and I quote, "I'll get to it tomorrow, Mom, if I remember."

I thought things would improve when Ella Numera Una returned to keep the home fires burning. She is older, if only by three years. She's legal, as she reminds me often. I anticipated that domestic bliss would finally be within my grasp.

Until, that is, the lovely Una emptied the dishwasher. On her own. Totally unbidden. I was, needless to say, thrilled. Well, for about 10 minutes, at any rate.

Let's just say that the state of my clean cutlery presented me with a curious conundrum. How to ask Ella Numera Una to cease and desist ~ at least when it came to putting away the dishes.

Two weeks later, I'm still trying to find the deep baking dish. And the tablespoons are nested with the can opener, for some reason. Plus the corkscrew has gone permanently missing (it's not even an item that goes in the dishwasher. Go figure).

Was she sending me a message, or has she truly forgotten where we store the stonewear? She's moving on, I suppose. And someday, I'll find my favorite egg skillet.

My 15 Minutes

I went for a "soak"
after a
difficult day
in the trenches.

A communal
whirlpool
hot tub
"spa,"
they call it.

15 minutes to go.

"Oh, he's hot,"
one of my cherubs might
say.

All I saw
was muscled pecs
and a too-small head.

I wondered
how a lifeguard
had the time
to join us.

His red shorts
gave him away.

12 minutes to go.

A young lady
tagged along.
Purple one-piece ~
maybe a swim-team chick?

"I had fun over break,"
she said,
perched
on the edge of
the steaming spa.

10 minutes to go.

He flexed. Grunted.
Postured. Adjusted.
Posed as if he were older.

9 minutes to go.

"I read Gatsby," she chirped.
"Did you read Gatsby?"
He grunted. Mumbled
something about Spark Notes.

7 minutes to go.

"I wish you enjoyed
books more," she said,
snuggling closer.

4 minutes to go.

He moved his tiny head
a bit.
I wondered about
steroids.

She kissed him on one
defined shoulder blade.

I stood up,
hit
the
showers.

They moved
closer
together,
but farther apart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Of the People; By the People; For the People

Wordful Wednesday is brought to you by Parenting for Dummies.

Virginia may be for lovers and I may have left my heart in San Francisco, but DC is my kind of town.

I've lived here for so many years that I do believe I could be called a genuine Washingtonian. Sure enough, I hail from Tejas and now live in the 'burbs, but DC ~ our Nation's Capital ~ is the Land of Lincoln that I love.

From summer concerts and fireworks on the West Lawn of the US Capitol to presidential motorcades that interrupt everyday downtown strolls; from Rolling Thunder roaring across the bridge from Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day to the nearly 4,000 Yoshino Cherry Trees that bloom, in unseasonal heat and sometimes in spring snowstorms, DC is a thrilling, enthralling iconoclast.

The Capital City, of course, is full of stuffed suits and egos off the charts. But it is also home to the funky rhythms of Capitol Hill's Eastern Market and the community of Miriam's Kitchen, which nurtured Yoshio and his friends of the street.

When folks "out there" criticize my city for its pomp and circumstance, for its politics and greed, a little piece of my heart cracks along the edges.

The truth is, where citizens beyond the Beltway see avarice, I see public servants who are trying to help.

I worked for a congressman ~ two, in fact ~ in the '80s. I can tell you most of them don't lead very lavish lives. Their staffs are crammed into rodent-infested quarters and work slavish hours for very little pay at the behest of the American people. I've helped coal miners in Southwest Virginia with their federal black lung benefits and I've listened patiently while an Oregon fisherman explained for what seemed like the eight-hundrenth time that fisheries management doesn't always sustain the little guy.

The victories for that little guy, though, are really what DC is all about.

Gabby Giffords, of Arizona's 8th District, and her Outreach Director, Gabe Zimmerman, were working for the people on Saturday when they were shot. Giffords, miraculously, survived. Zimmerman, who had set up the community gathering outside the Safeway in Tucson, did not.

The billboard above has been hanging over Highway 41 in Oshkosh, WI, for a number of years. Notice that it towers over the medium-security prison that serves the Fox River Valley. A bit of irony, that, no?

The cesspool isn't in Washington, DC, friends. The cesspool is in our hearts.

News at 11

In world news...
Pakistani governor shot
dead
by his bodyguard.

Around the nation...
Assistant principal shot
dead
in Omaha.

Federal judge
and a 9-year-old
(plus four others) shot
dead
in Tucson.

Public servant, caught in the"crosshairs,"
clings to life.

Meanwhile, closer to home...
Eight shot
dead
in eight days.

And it might snow
on Tuesday.

Madness.

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and link back here. No fuss, no Mr. Linky, no muss.

Snow Job

I Resolve, 2011

I resolve
not
to correct the daddy
who insists on trying
to drag a latex swim cap
over
a head cascading with dry hair.

I resolve
not
to grumble at the little girl
who steals my favorite kickboard.
I'll just get out
and
get her another.

I resolve
not
to holler at that lady
who's livin' large
when she cuts across my lane
and
gives me a death stare.
(It must be because I'm so cute in my suit?)

I resolve
not
to speak crossly to the man
in the funny yellow cap
who asks to share my lane
and
then acts
as if he owns the place.

I resolve
not
to looked cross-eyed
at the funny little family
that's splashing
and
carrying on, one lane over.

I resolve
to remember
that we're all here,
in this together.

Resolutions brought
us to the community
pool.

I resolve
to keep mine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Feeling the poetic muse? Scribble some verse, post it at your place, and link back here.
No fuss, no Mr. Linky, no muss.