June 13: Cherry Cookies

I cheated again. My most recent cookies weren't Martha's. They were Ethel's.

For my mom's 60th Birthday Picnic/Elliott Family Reunion on June 14, I decided to bake one of my great-grandma's recipes--one I've collected for the family recipe book I'm working on. I thought it would be a nice touch. They were actually very good! Although I think that the nostalgia was lost on my family.

I'm guilty of being a loser again. I haven't baked since June 13, but I have many good excuses. For one thing, we went camping last weekend. It was our annual trip to Alta Lake with 300+ Puget Sound-area recovering alcoholics. Those are some crazy mo-fos. These people love to be pulled on inflated rubber behind a boat at 60 mph--especially the recovering meth freaks. Anything for a non-chemical rush, I guess.

This year's trip, however, wasn't as satisfying as last year's trip. I'll just share a few lowlights:

The boat broke.
The air mattress broke.
The tent broke.
Even the tent bag broke.

We have three more camping trips scheduled for this summer. Oh joy.

Two of those trips, though, will be with my good friends, Renee and Denise, and their families. They're veteran campers, so I'll appreciate the emotional support. I'm not a huge fan of eating off the dirt.

Denise, especially, is a long-time camper and knows the ropes. Speaking of Denise, she applied last week for a job where I work! She actually worked there too, ages ago--up until the Black Summer of '04. I made a phone call and used my considerable influence (?) to convince the hiring manager of D's greatness. And I didn't exaggerate. Denise is truly fabulous. We've been friends for 18 years, and in those 18 years, she has taught me so much.

Such as the following important lessons:

1. Stealing fruit from the neighbors' yards in Palm Springs is a favor, not a crime. Those old people don't want all those lemons anyway.
2. Pubic hair, dwarf sex and ambiguous genitalia are perfectly acceptable topics of conversation. Even at work.
3. Assuming a funny ethnic accent is high comedy, not a form of racism.
4. As long as you're still in the state of Missouri, you're not really lost.
5. All you need to do is act tough.
6. The etymology of disgusting euphemisms deserves a place in academia.
7. The word "fuckers," when properly emphasized and slightly whispered, is the ultimate declaration of allegiance against foes of the worst kind (particularly the corporate ones).
8. Telling a prospective CEO that you've seen a former CEO naked is not a good idea. Especially in an interview.
9. Now is always a good time for a Girlfriends Trip.
10. If you spontaneously break into song, your real friends will sing along.

To have Denise back on Regence turf again would be sublime. Keep your fingers crossed.

After posting today's blog, I hope to feel like less of a loser. There's so much I need to be doing that I haven't taken care of lately. Like working out and weeding and paying bills. (Utilities are never truly late, are they?)

My goal for this week, then, is taking care of stuff.

I guess, though, that (bills aside) I took care of the really important stuff. Like taking my cat to the vet. And trying to help a friend get a job. And making sure the kids had camping fun even while James and I were mentally calculating the cost of a new propeller and boat engine repairs. And baking GG's cookies for my mom's birthday felt good. If I'm a good friend, pet-owner and mom, it's largely thanks to the excellent role model that my mom has always been (okay, I'm a so-so mom, but that's not her fault).

So, Happy Birthday, Mom! Thank you for teaching us what life's real priorities are.

But, could you come down and weed?

June 6: Rosemary Butter Cookies

God. Where to start? It feels like I have so much to cover.

Should I start with the fact that I'm a horrible mother and served my children Spaghettios and Pasta Roni for dinner tonight? Or with my soul-weary decision to put myself on a local/national/world news fast? Perhaps I should discuss my cat's burst skull cyst or cover James' recent diverticulitis diagnosis. Too gross for you? Then how about the 95-Degree Honey Bucket Incident?

Maybe I should just start with the cookies. Rosemary Butter cookies (pg. 144) are the best I've tried in a long time. My family wrinkled up their noses at the idea of rosemary in cookies, but they were great!

I have to admit I have a soft spot for rosemary. We saw Angels and Demons last week, and I was thinking later about how millions of people find meaning and direction in all of the pomp of the Catholic church while I find holiness in the random crooks of a rosemary branch. I appreciate how its scent clings to my arm when I brush up against it while gardening. Following Renee's advice, I tuck a sprig of it in my pants pocket just before a road trip. I've added it to chicken and egg dishes and even baked it into bread. Now cookies!

Mostly, I think I just like cooking with something I grew. It probably comes from when my grandparents had a small farm near where I grew up. As an extended farm family, we ate and cooked with the seasons: chickens, eggs, apples, plums, corn, potatoes, berries and lots of vegetables. My sisters and I would pull carrots out of the ground, run hose water over them and eat them right there in the garden. Many summer afternoon snacks consisted of green peas and raspberries. We baked with eggs right from the chicken, and could have fresh corn every night August through September. As a child I took it for granted. Now I see how lucky we were.

It just feels right to walk out the door and get some of what I need for use in the kitchen. We always grow strawberries on our patio; this year Ian's growing tomatoes. The boys and I prowl the woods behind our house for the little wild blackberries for an old-fashioned cobbler. These are small things, but somehow they just seem right. I like to think my Grandpa Elmer would approve.

It'll be especially important to take time for these kinds of things this summer. Time for cobblers and and homemade jam. Because it's going to be a cluster$#&* of a summer.

James' mom is selling her house and moving into a retirement condo. That's going to be a lot of work for James. (He's already delegating to me.) My dad is moving to Palm Springs, and I'm trying to figure out how to talk James into agreeing to Sam's and my plan to help Dad get his 52 dogs and 104 cats down there. Road trip! (Maybe.) We have camping trips, Dave at the Gorge (love the new album by the way), soccer up the wazzoo, and so on. I don't want to forget about simpler things, like walks in the woods and trips to the new Maple Valley Farmer's Market.

Okay. I know I titillated you with the reference to the Honey Bucket. Let's start by recognizing that sometimes moms just don't grasp the full urgency of a four-year-old's request to "go potty." "Going potty" is generally translated as "peeing." Unless a child says he's on the verge of a major diarrhea disaster, most moms probably just think the kid needs to take a whiz.

My kids are usually pretty specific and graphic about what goes on in and into a toilet. So, I was pretty surprised when what I expected to be a routine trip to a soccer field portapotty turned into a Poop Holocaust. There was poop everywhere: on the child, on the floor, on the walls, in the clothes. On me.

This I expect from a two-year-old. But for crying out loud--the boy is almost five! I have no wipes in the back of my car! No extra clothes! No industrial-strength pressure washers. Which, by the way, is probably what was needed for clean-up given the piss-poor quality (pardon the pun) of the toilet paper they put in portapotties.

I won't go into any further detail about events of that afternoon except to add two important points:

1. It was 95 degrees that day.

2. Ian had to walk back to the car wearing only his t-shirt and poopy socks.

I have to admit, I have a fair amount of Portapotty Guilt. Especially when a trip to the portapotty in question just tonight revealed that this poor Honey Bucket is now padlocked shut. And it's our fault.

There. Now those of you who asked to see the story in the blog (Denise) got it. And I'm expecting the Portapotty Police to show up on my porch any time.