March 29: Lemon Madeleines

Last week sucked. Well, it ended up good (fingers crossed), but it's a week I'd rather forget.

I find it ironic, then, that for this week I made Lemon Madeleines (pg. 190). The French writer Marcel Proust made madeleines famous when he featured them in the opening scene of his novel Remembrance of Things Past.

So, Friday was my birthday. I turned 41. I spent part of the day on a table in a medical clinic having what was supposed to have been a biopsy. That's because on Tuesday I discovered a lump. A large, painful lump. And it had a swollen, painful friend up where lymph nodes usually are. Wednesday it was nothing to worry about, per a general practitioner. Thursday it was a "mass with a blood supply and an enlarged ancillary lymph node," per the radiologist at the breast clinic. Sigh. Hence the biopsy.

But it turned out, we hope, hope, hope, to have been an infected abscess. So, now I'm on antibiotics and am waiting for test results. I may be back for a biopsy on Friday, depending on what those lab results and a follow-up ultrasound show.

It's scary and humbling to have the firepower of American medicine aimed directly at your left breast.

And what's the cause of all this excitement? Possibly the painful blow Ian gave me with his elbow. Right to the boob, last Friday.

Okay. So enough of that.

Those lemon madeleines are yummy! Delicate and very French, I think. Like little cake-like lemon bars. I can't wait to make the orange-cardamom versions. My cousin Heidi gave me the madeleine pan for my birthday, and I was very excited about it. I heart kitchen stuff.

Right now, for example, I'm roasting a whole chicken in my Dutch oven (one of three different sizes that I own). Inside the chicken is a sprig of thyme (home grown) that I cut with my cute, green herb snips. The chicken legs are tied together with my kitchen twine, and I basted the chicken in melted butter (unsalted, of course) using the best basting brush ever made (the one that comes apart for cleaning). I could go on and on, but I won't. Some people say that my blog posts are "long-winded." Hmph. But since those people don't read the blog, I'll just continue on my merry way.

Didn't Maya Angelou say something about caged birds singing not because they want an answer but because they have a song? I have a song, godammit, and I'm singing it. La la la la la la!

So, anyway, back to the birthday. Yeah, it sucked at the beginning, but I was very happy and relieved at the end. I just hope it stays that way. I'm hoping that someday I'll look back with nothing but gratitude--someday when the shear terror wears off. Meanwhile, there are chickens to roast, fifth-grade projects to manage, cookies to bake, runny noses to wipe and lots and lots of kids' sports to juggle. Someday, I hope, I'll look back and say, "remember that birthday when Ian almost gave me cancer?"

March 20: Peanut Butter Cookies, Part IV

My mom finally got her peanut butter cookies!

I baked them Friday night because I knew I'd be at Sky Nursery on Saturday. Now it's Sunday, and I'm just sitting down to work on the blog. Typical.

It's just me, a dirty house, a purring cat and the feeling that I need to get this written before the day really starts. James is at a meeting and the boys are asleep. And I still have housework to do, birthday presents to wrap, a shower to take and this to write by 12:30 p.m.

Another weekend at warp speed in the Phillips family.

Highlights of the past seven days:

1. Grandma Lorraine's stay in the hospital: She's feeling better and we're crossing our fingers.

2. My mother-in-law's new roommate: Her English Setter passed last week; on Friday James and Christian delivered Sammy the Havanese Puppy.

3. Ian's Poopy Water Toilet Overflow: Responding to screams of terror, I found him standing at the top of the stairs, pants around ankles, pointing in horror at the mini-Mississippi flowing through the upstairs bathroom.

4. My haircut: It's been 53 weeks. Enough said.

5. Ian's first soccer game: The half-time oranges were his favorite part.

6. Parent Information Night at Tahoma Middle School: James watched all four kids while Renee, Rob and I went to learn about middle school. We concluded that our 10-year-olds aren't ready, the parents definitely are not ready and it's never too soon to start freaking out about the teenage years.

And have I mentioned yet that I'm working out? Linda is my exercise buddy, and we head down to the Regence gym around 3:30 almost every day. Last week I exercised four times. That's some kind of record for me. I've concluded that after two weeks, I'm now in the maintenance stage. I'm also sensing that I'm probably the only gym member who keeps Whoppers in her gym bag. This is because my new fitness focus has taught me something profound: I don't eat enough.

Shut up! My body composition analysis reported that I need to gain 15 pounds of fat and 8.4 pounds of muscle. So, because Friday's 20-minute treadmill walk (remember: maintenance stage) showed I'd burned 97 calories, I enjoyed a handful of Whoppers on the way out of the locker room.

But seriously, I'm finding that when I don't eat properly (i.e., enough) on the weekends, I'm tired. Hmm. I'm just now figuring this out?

I have to add that those 15 pounds of fat are not going to happen. But I'm working on the 8.4 pounds of muscle.

Don't hate me. It's not so great having to work at keeping weight on. And my frame isn't my doing. It's all genetic. I get it from my Grandpa Russ, who, by the way, would have been 94 years old yesterday. I got a lot of things from my grandpa, in addition to the metabolism of a hummingbird. Like really long legs, a sense of optimism, blue eyes and an unabashed desire to drive a "look-at-me" car. He also taught me how to love a good project. So I guess I can sort of blame this blog on him.

I thought of him yesterday when someone mentioned how it was the Spring Equinox. Coincidentally, this occurred at my Great-Aunt Carol's memorial service. She died in December, but her family chose to celebrate her life on the first day of spring. Carol was my dad's aunt and my grandma's baby sister. It was a nice service, and it was interesting to see all those Lovaas and Shold family members we'd either never met or hadn't seen in many years. But in true Molzahn fashion, my sisters and I slipped out quickly, quietly and early. We're Larry's Girls after all, and we need to keep up our anti-social appearances.

When I reported to my mom on how the service was, she said, "You guys are just lucky you had me to dilute all that Scandinavian blood." My mom: one of the world's last anti-Scandites. Ah, but that's a blog entry for another day.

She was pretty happy to get her cookies, though, even if they did come from her mixed-race daughter.

March 14: Milk-Chocolate Cookies

I finally found milk chocolate for baking.

After checking and rechecking the shelves at Safeway and QFC (just to make sure I didn't miss it the first five times I looked), I concluded that it wasn't going to be easy to find this crucial ingredient in so many recipes. Next stop: specialty stores. And I do love my specialty stores.

I found it on my first try: It was only $12 per pound at Williams-Sonoma. My lucky day.

So, last night I made Milk-Chocolate Cookies (pg. 79). They were easy and smelled really good. The boys loved them (especially accompanied by the last of the milk at 9:30 p.m.). They're a little crunchy for me. But they look real pretty all stacked up in my glass cookie jar.

Would you believe that it's snowing? Again? It's 7:19 a.m., and I'm preparing to head out to Starbucks and QFC with Renee. I realized last night that someone was going to have to go to the store bright and early for milk. Needless to say, we're not walking. The last time we went, James caught us returning in Renee's minivan. Well, I didn't think of it as being caught until he started exclaiming about how he always thought we walked up there for the exercise. Snort. We go to coffee to get away from our families! We do walk, but only between May and September. And never in the rain.

I don't think the snow is sticking. And it doesn't look terribly cold. But cold enough to snow. So that's cold enough. I've had it with winter. After the cluster$%&*that was December, we've all had enough of it.

I'm not really motivated to do anything today. I have no momentum for housework, having spent a big chunk of yesterday in an urgent care clinic waiting room with Ian. He's had a cold for about two weeks, but as of Friday night, his eyes looked terrible--all creased, baggy and red. His normally big, blue eyes were nothing more than swollen little triangles. My eyes itch just thinking about it. James claimed it's a normal cold symptom, but my Mommy Instinct insisted it was something more. So we spent three hours at MultiCare because our pediatrician's office is closed on Saturdays.

Three hours in any waiting room with a four-year-old is hard enough. But urgent care clinics are a special kind of torture. To keep him busy, I dug a pen out of my purse and had him draw pictures of animals on the back of the HIPAA brochure. That worked great until he dropped the pen. He dove under the chair to get it, then came up with a grin, announcing that, "I found something yummy to eat!"

I like to think it was the look on my face rather than my exclamation of "What the heck were you thinking?!" that made him burst into tears. Mid-wail I could see the blue residue on his molars that I assumed came from the yummy something. So I immediately went into freak-out mode, envisioning the stray pharmaceutical he probably consumed. I was trying to decide which would be worse--painkiller, antibiotic or Viagra--when it dawned on me that we were probably in the best possible place to be when consuming unidentified "somethings." So, after impressing upon him how we just don't eat things off the floor and trying to see if there were any more yummy somethings under my chair, I decided to just wait and see what happened.

I'm pleased to report that he suffered no ill effects. Nor, however, did we ever get a diagnosis. We did get a prescription for $45 allergy eye drops. His eyes do look better. Now, instead of looking like he's been beat up, he just looks hungover.

If I could just get myself organized and motivated, there's a ton of housework needing my attention today. I did manage, though, to dispose of Super Fish last night. He succumbed to his bacterial disease sometime on Friday. I almost flushed him without telling Ian. But then I decided that would be dishonest, so I broke the news on my way to the bathroom with net in hand. Ian jumped up, grinned and said, "Ooh. Poor little fishy! Can I touch the dead, little fish?"

I explained that we don't touch a dead fish unless we're planning to eat it. We said goodbye to Super Fish, told him we were sorry he got sick and sent his stiff little body "back to the ocean where he came from." Ian already wants a lizard.

Okay. It's official. I need to get up and get moving. There are rooms to clean, things to put away and school papers to sign. Christian needs help with a big school project, there's grocery shopping to do, dinners to plan, eye drops to administer, a contaminated fish tank to toss. Etc., etc., etc. Why is it I can make a mission of finding specific kinds of baking chocolate, but sometimes when it comes to picking up the family room, I'd just rather read the paper?

March 7: Cream-Filled Chocolate Sandwiches

Homemade Oreos. What's not to like?

Actually, I can't vouch for how good Cream-Filled Chocolate Sandwiches (pg. 95) are because I didn't even try one. Don't know why. They just didn't appeal to me. But James and the boys liked them. James said they were, indeed, a lot like an Oreo.

They intimidated me, I think, because they are huge. I don't have a 1.25-inch ice cream scoop. Had to use a 2-inch scoop instead. There's just something about a 2-pound cookie that puts me off.

I guess there's another trip to City Kitchens in my future. Unnaturally large cookies are what happen when you lack the right equipment.

I'm looking out the office window at more snow. Sigh. But under that snow I can see Renee's purple heather--and a robin just caught my eye hopping by under our rhodies. So this snow doesn't scare me. As long as the roads stay clear so the buses can run tomorrow, it can snow all it wants.

It has been another intensely domestic weekend. Lots of housework and errands. James is getting the boat ready for fishing and the boys equipped for spring sports. I don't know how we're going to manage with two boys playing three sports through June. And James will be in Palm Springs for two weeks in April. I can't even think about it.

Overwhelmed has been the theme of the week. Tuesday night I was so paralyzed from thinking about all I need to accomplish that I couldn't even eat. Between work (which is uncharacteristically demanding) and home responsibilities, I felt like I was drowning. So, I turned to my favorite coping mechanism: list-making.

Now I have lots of little pieces of paper floating around my purse screaming barely legible words that only I can decipher. I take a distinct pleasure in striking those words out of existence.

For example:

"Call Gretchen" (i.e., make hair appointment). Done.

"Camp Casey stuff" (i.e., get supplies for Christian's fifth-grade camp trip). Partially done.

"Kim's letter" (i.e., write letter about LapCorp dropping off the Regence network). Done.

"Call Trish" (i.e., make appointment for annual physical). Done.

"Jeff's section" (i.e., start working on my chapters of the Regence brand book). In progress.

"Cham" (i.e., brew homemade chamomile hair rinse). Done.

"Pick up book" (i.e., check out on-hold book at library). Library sent book back. But it counts as a cross-off.

One other item on my list was "Call VV" (i.e, call Grandma VeVe to wish her happy birthday). I happily did that Friday afternoon, the day she turned 91. My Grandma VeVe is something else. She still lives in the house my grandpa built during the war. She still drives. She still works in her yard. I know people in their 60s who aren't as sharp and independent as my grandma.

When I was growing up, my cousin Heidi and I loved to spend the weekend with Grandma VeVe and Grandpa Russ. During one of those weekends Heidi remarked to me, "Isn't Grandma sweet?" Always inclined to agree with everyone, I replied, "Yeah." But inside I didn't agree with her. And I felt guilty about that. It was only much later that I could look back and see that I was right--and that I shouldn't have felt bad about it.

I can think of a lot of words to describe my grandma. But my definition of sweet wasn't high on that list. When my 10-year-old self thought of sweet, I pictured the stereotypical sweet little old lady with the white bun. That wasn't my grandma.

Thoughtful, generous and kind, yes. But intelligent, independent, outspoken, stubborn, funny, saucy, sassy--those words worked better. VeVe taught us to play poker and Mercy. She hated it when Grandpa slapped her on the butt and called her "Cookie." She likes fast cars and crime novels and was the only grandma I knew at the time who used the term "piss on you."

My grandma does have her sweet side, but if I had to choose one just word to describe her, it wouldn't be sweet. In my mind, it doesn't do her justice. At 41, I've seen less than half the life that she has. When I think of all that she has seen, done and accomplished in 91 years, I'd say that the term I'd use today is role model.

Ninety-one years. That makes my to-do list look pretty tame.

Happy Birthday, VeVe!

Feb. 27: Chocolate Crackles, Part II

I woke up this morning and immediately thought, "It's March 1!" Hooray! Winter is almost over.

I thought about how the bulbs are coming up, the snow should be over (ah, but remember last March?), and the lilacs are just two months away. It's like hitting the crest of a tall, cold hill. We're coasting down now, toward summer.

And then I went grocery shopping and found myself cursing the cold, hard rain. Maybe my relief is premature.

I guess that makes March 1 a tentative mixture of good (spring) and bad (winter). That also pretty much sums up my weekend. Some parts were enjoyable, some parts were just blah, and one small part can be described only as sheer domestic horror.

I baked Chocolate Crackles (pg. 68) on Friday for book club. I thought gooey chocolate was a good match for our February book, Enchanted: Erotic Bedtime Stories for Women. Sherry said "Beauty and the Beast" is ruined for her forever; Denise gave us an enlightening lesson on toes; and Amy admitted that she hid her book from her daughters. We all agreed that we couldn't really fault Snow White for ditching the Prince for the Seven Dwarves since they turned into Seven Hunks after dark. The book was an unconventional choice for us, but it did generate some great conversation, none of which is suitable for printing here. This is a family blog after all.

We're back on track with less controversial choices for March (The Worst Hard Time) and April (Tiny Girls in Shiny Pants).

So far, the low point of the weekend was my decision to finally clean the fish tank. Ian has a beta that Christian calls Super Fish. The poor thing has a bacteria that is draining him of color and making him swim around kind of lopsided. I researched it, and it's incurable. He's been ill since fall; we've been expecting to find him floating for months now. But he's still kicking. I hadn't cleaned the tank since late last year because I didn't want to cause any extra stress on him. But by yesterday, the green water and black slime was too much for me. So I decided to give it a cleaning.

You'd think I'd remember how bad it is to drop little aquarium rocks down the garbage disposal. But I always remember that too late--after I've accidentally sloshed rocks into the wrong side of the sink. Those damn little rocks get stuck in the blades and jam the disposal. I thought I had them all--until I tested the disposal. Stuck. Sigh.

So James came to the rescue with a metal stick to unjam it. He's really good at that, being a landlord and all. Ah, but my "one little rock" turned out to be several little rocks. The more he banged on that disposal, the dirtier his looks were. He went back to the garage and returned with a longer stick for more leverage. I was really disturbed by how much black gunk was coming out from under the disposal drain ring when he leaned the stick on it--I thought my sink was clean!

And did I mention that the dishwasher was running through all this? As I stood next to James, horrified by the black gunk creeping out from under the loosened drain ring, I suddenly felt a delicious warmth on my feet. Nice as it was to have warm toes, I knew that it meant something bad. Actually, it meant that hot water was pouring out from under the sink. In just seconds it was flowing all over the hardwood floor and making a run for the dining room.

Turned out that the long stick had broken a pipe loose--just as the dishwasher was draining into the disposal. Long story short, Christian and I used every towel in the house. James gave me the dirtiest look yet, headed to the couch and waited for me to clean it all up. At least he was quiet about it. Seething, most likely.

I'm happy to report that the story does have a happy ending: There's no damage to the floors or walls (at least none that's visible), the disposal is fixed (after several little rocks flew out) and the pipe didn't need to be replaced (yet).

Fortunately, that episode didn't interfere with our date night. MacKenzie came over to watch the boys, and James and I went out for Italian food in Bellevue and a comedy show in Kirkland. Home by 10:30. Bed by 11:00. Asleep by 11:05. My kind of date night.

Today is just blah. I'm not really into anything today. Cleaned the house. Worked in the yard. Went grocery shopping. Blah, blah, blah.

One bright spot: I discovered that I can make my own creme fraiche, which I need for one of my cookie recipes. I could probably buy it somewhere, but making my own is more interesting. Also, I was thrilled recently to find that Whole Foods carries Dutch cocoa for just $7.99 a box. It's $16.99 at QFC! I was one smug little cookie baker when I made that discovery. Now if I could just find baking-quality milk chocolate.

Isn't that just how life is? Taking the good with the bad. Winter's not quite over, but signs of spring are everywhere. And sure, the dishwasher drained all over my kitchen, but think how clean my floor is now!