Evidence That Some 1960s Upholstery Fabric May Have Been Capable of Driving Children To Madness

Look at the eyes, man. That couch is clearly evil. Never mind the matching drapes.

Stollen Update #3: Christmas Epilogue

So there were three loaves of stollen in the end: one was not cooked through and fell apart into a doughy mass when I took it out of the pan. One was a little bit burnt, but not too badly, and one was, more or less, just right. Or at least my father claimed it was--I don't care for the stuff myself, so I don't have a clear memory of what it's supposed to taste like. And he may just have been being nice. Otherwise, Christmas was lovely. The puppy got some treats, a fine dinner was eaten, and no one got drunk, belligerent, or weepy. I did not quite finish the photo album rehab project because there are many, many pictures to scan--for example, this lovely shot of me and our dog Gretchen on my first Christmas. Those snowflakes and little soldier head ornaments are still on my tree. But don't ask me what that is I'm holding--I'm guessing some well-meaning neighbor made it for me--I know it was no one in my family, as those women were crafty as hell and could have done way better than that.

Stollen Update #2

The good news is that the dough did not overflow the bowl and creep all over the counter. The bad news is that I don't think it rose enough, and the second rising doesn't seem to be going all that well either. And I am cursing my lazy ass for not attempting this more than 24 hours before my dad arrives, because he has his heart set on the stollen our mothers used to make, and I suspect I will instead be offering him leaden bricks with raisins. Merry Christmas!

Stollen Update #1

I wish I'd thought of this before I and my kitchen were covered with flour: I do not really have a mixing bowl big enough to mix 12 cups of flour, a pound of butter, 2 cups of sugar, and 3 cups of milk, never mind a pound of raisins, a pound of citron (though I actually only bought a half a pound of citron--I was so excited that I found it in the first place I forgot how much I needed), and the rest of the ingredients. So I kind of mixed the dough in two separate bowls and then recombined and put the giant ball in the biggest of my not-big-enough mixing bowls, into which it barely fits. Now it's supposed to rise for 12 hours. I suspect when I wake up tomorrow it will have taken over my kitchen.

Miss Karen Is Having Herself A Merry Little Christmas

So I finally got a tree on Friday, and given that I found it only a few days before Christmas, I have to say it's not half bad. A little Charlie Brown, but not embarrassingly so. And just in case you ever need to know, a 6-foot tree will fit inside a Mini with the seats folded down and a considerable but not unsafe amount sticking out the back.

The presents are bought and wrapped, the cards are sent, and the Christmas dinner fixin's are bought. The only thing left to do is make the stollen. I promised my father and my uncle I would make it and so now I must deliver. But timing is everything, since the recipe my mother used, and which now I must follow, requires the dough to rise twice, the first time for 12 hours. I guess when you involve 12 cups of flour and a pound of butter, significant rising is necessary to ensure that each loaf (the recipe makes only two) doesn't weigh 35 pounds. I will let you know how it goes....

Meet Cute

I learned a new term this week, and it happened in that way that I always find kind of spooky. You know, when you read or hear a new word or term or concept you've never in your life heard or read before, and then you keep coming across it--suddenly it's everywhere. In this case, I was watching a cheesy holiday movie from last year, about how Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet swap houses for Christmas and thereby fix everything that was wrong with their lives, mostly thanks to Jude Law* and Jack Black,** respectively. The term I learned was "meet cute," which refers to the contrived meeting of romantic partners in a romantic comedy. Then that same term turned up in an article in Entertainment Weekly about Charlie Wilson's War (no, that is not a romantic comedy, though I have heard it's quite funny). And THEN I was doing a little blog surfing and I came across What's Alan Watching, a nice TV blog, and in an October post the term is used about an episode of How I Met Your Mother. So, anyway, weird.

In other news, among the Christmas gifts I've received so far this year is a box of Polish chocolates. There are very few English words on the box, so it's hard to know what you're putting in your mouth, but luckily there is basically no limit to what I will eat if it is covered in chocolate. I do not speak any Polish at all, but there's a phrase on the box that, in what is I'm sure a completely wrong pronunciation, has started rolling around and around in my brain. KOLEKCJA SMAKOW. With an accent over the O in SMAKOW, which I have no idea how to produce in HTML. Or to pronounce in Polish. So in my head, it's "kolecha smackow." Try it. I think, in Whitman's sampler terms, it means "delicious assortment," or at least that's what I've discerned from a Polish translation site, which tells me that KOLEKCJA is "collection" and SMAKOW is "relish"--the verb, not the noun, I assume. So, anyway, yum.

And finally, to make all of you other procrastinators feel better, here is a list Christmas items I still don't have:

• A tree
• A completed list of sent Christmas cards
• A present for my father
• A clue about what to make for Christmas dinner
  

* What has happened to Jude Law? Remember how lovely he was in his early movies, most notably The Talented Mr. Ripley? He is not so lovely anymore. Though I'm still not going to kick him out of bed for eating crackers.
** I love Jack Black. I may be the only woman on earth over the age of 25 who owns a Tenacious D album. But he is downright creepy in this movie, I think because he is trying to play just a straight, regular guy. And we all know he is not a straight, regular guy. He is a mad genius.

Pathetique

If there is anything more simultaneously ridiculous and sad in this world than a dog with a cone around its neck, I don't know what it is.



Also, the vet calls that an "E-collar," short for Elizabethan collar, but it is certainly a lame-ass version of this:



If Francie had something that looked more like that, I'd feel less bad for her. But I have to say I don't think this is really a better solution, dignity-wise.

But Not A Leopard-Skin One To Be Found

My parents were married in 1965, which was also apparently the year of the pillbox hat. The first picture is of my mother and her oldest brother. I don't know if this is the actual wedding or the reception--I think they both took place in the same building, whether it was a church or a rented hall (Elks Lodge, maybe?). Anyway, her brother would have "given her away," since my grandfather died when my mother was a teenager. The other picture is of my two grandmothers: one who lived the better part of her life in Westchester County, NY, and one who lived her entire life in Yankton, SD. I bet you can guess who's who, despite the almost-matching hats.

Me and Mom

Having volunteered to take all the old falling-apart family photo albums and rehab them as a present for my dad for Christmas, I figured it would also be cool to digitize some of the better photos. So I bought a scanner/printer over the weekend, and after some initial setup issues (thanks for the help, Geek Wizard!)) I've been scanning like mad. So I suspect you'll be seeing more of me, and my mom's fabulous outfits, in the weeks to come.

Another Reason Why Living Alone Does Not Suck

I have never really mastered the concept of meals. Being able to have more than one thing be ready to eat at the same time, especially if any of them involves cooking or heating in some way, seems like a superpower to me. Luckily, my standards for what constitutes a meal when I'm feeding myself are pretty low, and I have no problem with eating things sequentially, as they become ready. I also have no problem eating peanut butter sandwiches for dinner, for that matter.

I went to the farmers' market over the weekend for apples, and I also came home with brussels sprouts (because they were still on the stalk and that seemed cool) and a huge fennel bulb (because it was $1, and somehow that seemed like a deal I couldn't pass up, not that I have any idea how much fennel should cost). So tonight for dinner I had brussels sprouts and fennel and parsley salad. Because I can follow a recipe (though both of these barely count as recipes, they're so simple). Both things were extremely good. But I was still a little hungry, so then I made cinnamon toast. And had a handful of almonds. Now I'm full and happy, but I am also aware that there is no way I could serve such a strange collection of things to someone else. Even though all of them were yummy and, together, relatively nutritious. But for some reason, and I don't think I'm alone in this, meals shared with other people seem like they have to take on a more traditional shape, even when they're other single people, who you know spend many a night standing up in the kitchen eating cold cereal for dinner. But I love my weird dinners, and I would hate to give them up. Of course, the way my dating life is going, it doesn't seem likely that I'll be forced to make that sacrifice any time soon. Unless I need to take in boarders to help me pay my vet bills.

Listening to: Rilo Kiley and Modest Mouse
Reading: Kate Atkinson's One Good Turn
Buying everyone for the holidays: Spam subject lines as hand-lettered art