I have been obsessed with baking cookies. Every time I tell myself “No more”, I really don’t mean it.
Until today. Today I am determined to store the baking sheets, the cooling racks, the Costco-sized bottle of pure vanilla extract in the cabinets.
It has been great fun. Every morning another tempting cookie recipe would appear on the home page of my computer. Ah, those algorithm’s…
The jam-filled thumbprint cookies were not my finest moment. But they taste good.
The peppermint pink-frosted sugar cookies are a little crazy looking, but Banjo Man ate three and declared them to be delicious.
In the freezer are sugar cookies waiting to be decorated by the Funny Grandson, who assures me he is not too old for the Christmas Eve tradition. There are candy cane cookies and shortbreads, white chocolate brownies (gluten free for my little friend Sam), along with gluten-free shortbreads and sugar cookies waiting to be drizzled with chocolate.
Oh, there is a cranberry cake. And two frozen (store bought) pies waiting to be baked when folks get hungry.
Can you tell I’m excited for the Texans to arrive?
Daughter Nancy baked cupcakes for my birthday, which we celebrated last night. They are gorgeous and delicious and I just ate another one with my coffee this morning.
I love cupcakes.
Birthday dinners, birthday lunches…oh, how I am being spoiled this year!
Not to mention the beautiful cards. Yes, I am definitely being spoiled. And it’s great fun.
This was to be the last day of our porch-stairs-deck building project, but it is too cold for the guys to work outside installing the railings. A few days from now it will warm up and I’m glad they’re waiting for the temperature to rise. We have twelve days before the Texans begin to arrive and there is no hurry. This latest “polar vortex” event will end soon enough.
Banjo Man is determined to have a real Christmas tree this year, so we may take a ride to a local tree farm to see what’s available before we buy one next Wednesday. We haven’t had a live tree for over two decades, but I remember how the needles started falling off three days after putting the thing up.
I’m not a fan. But Banjo Man is determined this is the year.
I will keep you posted. After all, what could go wrong?
According to an article in the Westerly Sun today: “More than a dozen cold-stunned turtles from the New England Aquarium, all in need of rehabilitation before a safe return to the ocean — their natural habitat — have arrived at Mystic Aquarium.
Sea turtles migrate to the area during the warm summer months but struggle when temperatures drop rapidly. As cold-blooded animals, their core body temperature is directly influenced by the environment. When their body temperature drops, they lose the ability to swim, feed and navigate, often washing up on beaches or in coastal marshes in a seemingly lifeless state.
Four species of sea turtles are affected: Kemp’s ridley, loggerhead, green, and leatherback. Among them, Kemp’s ridley, the smallest and most endangered, is the most commonly stranded species. Each year, hundreds, and sometimes more than 1,000, turtles strand in the region. The number of stranded turtles is increasing, likely due to climate change-related impacts, the aquarium said.”
I’m feeling a little cold-stunned myself.
Last night, as we were cozy on the couch waiting for Hell’s Kitchen to start, Banjo Man announced that outside it was 4 degrees (wind chill temperature).
The heavy sherpa-lined blanket covered the bed shortly after. Clearly winter was here and it was time to bring out the big guns. This morning was even colder. And gray. And windy.
It’s winter, it’s December, I get it. But am I mentally ready?
I used to love polishing my silverplate flatware. For over twenty-five years I’ve enjoyed making everything pretty and shiny and ready for company and the holidays and parties.
I own two sets of twelve place settings of vintage silverplate. And I’ve given a lot of parties.
But…yesterday afternoon I was polishing dessert forks. They looked gorgeous. But when it was time to work on the dinner forks, I just couldn’t bear it. I was done with polishing. I was done with old forks and knives and spoons.
Done, done, done.
I tossed my silver wipe (a nice product, by the way) in the trash and headed to the office. To the computer. To Amazon. To order flatware, a set for 12, something that could be delivered to my door before Thanksgiving. I found something that looked simple, a pattern that was the closest I could find to my flatware from 1970, Oneida Paul Revere (?). Of course that’s no longer available. But even if it wasn’t the perfect pattern my polish-free flatware would be delivered today and not Friday.
Instead of polishing stacks of silverware all afternoon, I got comfy on the couch and took a nap. And then I sewed for a while until suppertime.
Around six o’clock this morning the package from Amazon was delivered to my door.
They’ll do.
I’ve kept my pretty dessert forks and my gumbo spoons for special occasions. I’ll use the forks for Thanksgiving desserts.
Once Banjo Man stopped laughing, he was impressed with my life-simplifying decision.
Here’s a photo of my oldest son Ben’s second birthday. And yes, he went right to the musical instrument. His grandfather was highly amused.
That was 52 years ago, and today Ben celebrates his 53rd birthday.
Where did those years go?
This year he celebrated Halloween at the high school where he teaches US History. My clean cut, conservative son shocked his students with this outfit and fake hair.
Even his fellow faculty members didn’t immediately recognize him.
A year ago today I discovered my cancer had returned. I was now “metastatic”, Stage 4, a patient with dreaded “secondary” cancer.
This awful and terror-filled diagnosis–from two cancerous lymph nodes in my chest– would kick off more tests: a lung biopsy, a full-body PET scan and more. 2019’s breast cancer had spread. Was spreading.
And you know what? A year later I am okay.
I am okay.
Oh, not because the cancer is gone. The reality is that’s not going to happen, but after a very intense year of various treatments, my new oncologist prescribed a treatment I could tolerate. And so…right now I’m doing fine.
A trip to Dana Farber Monday proved it. The tumors are barely growing, which my doctor called “stable.” “Stable” is a very big deal in the cancer world. Last week’s PET scan showed the cancer hadn’t spread. And my doctor confirmed it.
On the way home we stopped to pick up groceries and I bought myself a little cake to celebrate.
Last November was a very, very hard month. December wasn’t much better. And January and February were spent dealing with treatment side effects and being afraid that I was now an invalid. A dying invalid too weak to walk across the living room.
But I’ve learned a few things since then.
First of all, I’m not dead yet. And until that happens, I’m going to live my life with joy and gusto and adventure. My energy returned in August. My baking mojo surfaced two weeks ago. We booked a cruise (from Istanbul to Athens) for April. I am getting ready for once again hosting Thanksgiving. My kids will all be home for Christmas this year. And I’m energetic enough to enjoy it all.
Every day is a gift. I know that sounds trite and overused and makes for pretty memes on Facebook. But…I learned last winter to wake up in the morning and say, “Today I am alive.”
It helped get me through some very bad days.
Secondly, I learned to slow down. Sit down. Look out the windows and watch the boats on the lake. Soak up the mountains. Feel the breeze. Somehow things got done without me doing them. No one starved, Banjo Man took great care of the kitchen and, for the most part, getting together with friends was done in restaurants.
In other words, the world kept on spinning as I put my feet up and read. Or sewed in my little office. Or did nothing. Doing nothing was okay. What a revelation!
And finally, kindness makes all the difference. Highly underrated, yes, but it changes challenging blood tests, scans, treatments, injections and office visits to something tolerable. A smile and a kind word makes a difference, whether you’re in a hospital or the grocery store or simply doing your best to stagger from A to B without bursting into tears.
After learning I was now Stage 4 another huge worry surfaced, one I often sobbed over: would people treat me differently? Would family and friends avoid me because they were sad or scared or didn’t know what to say? Would I be relegated to the social sidelines, declared a terminal invalid who couldn’t possibly participate in fun things?
Of course that didn’t happen. Instead my loved ones and friends treated me the same as always…but with an extra sprinkling of kindness and care and love and thoughtfulness.
It made all the difference to me.
You know who you are.
And at the risk of sounding sappy, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
If it’s November, we must be getting ready for Thanksgiving.
Nope. Oh, the potato casserole is in the freezer next to the spinach casserole. As are the turkey breasts. The mantle is decorated and my velvet pumpkins are all over the house.
But now? We’re getting ready for Christmas. The kids are coming home this year, the first time in about sixteen years.
What does that mean in November, you ask?
It was time to find my old cookie recipe.
And I went at it (I doubled the recipe).
My dough was too soft, despite spending the night in the refrigerator. It took several attempts to roll it out without sticking to the butcher block top of the island. And it took three days to make the cookies. But I did it! And thirteen dozen sugar cookies are now in the freezer awaiting the traditional family decorating event.
But I didn’t stop there.
Banjo Man and I made these. Seventy of them. Do you think that will be enough?
To celebrate, we headed down to the port of Galilee for fish ‘n chips. We watched the fishing boats, the seagulls, the Block Island ferry and simply enjoyed the view while we had a late lunch.
This is my favorite place to eat fish ‘n chips. Order at the window, snag a seat closest to the window facing the breakwater and watch the boats until your buzzer goes off and it is time to pick up lunch.
It’s quiet here in November. A few locals and some die-hard tourists (day trippers maybe?) joined us on Champlin’s Deck. One couple had ordered five lobsters. We tried not to stare, but it was an impressive sight.
Champlin’s will be open during the Christmas holidays, so we hope the kids want to join us one afternoon.
Cookies, meatballs, seafood? That’s Christmas in Rhode Island!!!
I’m not sure how old Will was here, but he was clearly thrilled with his Mickey Mouse cake. His best friend Jeremey is getting a kick out of his friend’s reaction.
They met when they were two and are still good friends.
I can’t believe I made that cake. I don’t have the Mickey Mouse cake pan or the red tablecloth anymore, but I do still have the white platter.
I’m sure Will’s second-graders are making him cards and maybe even singing Happy Birthday. He told me that they often break out in song for no reason. We met the children a couple of weeks ago and they are such a cheerful bunch. The girls dance and twirl, the boys laugh, everyone chatters and it’s obvious they are happy. It’s a very fun elementary school. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Between the time we left RI in May and when daughter Nancy moved in five days later, a transformer blew and our power was out for days.
Days.
Which meant everything in those appliances had to go. Two refrigerators and an upright freezer had to be emptied. What a job!
And thank goodness for a daughter who, after discovering the mess and calling the electric company, cleaned out the freezer and refrigerators and hauled the mess to the dump
So we are starting over, which is not a bad thing…if I can keep Banjo Man from filling all three appliances with more food, food we couldn’t possibly consume in three years.
We are no longer thirty minutes away from a grocery store. We are no longer dealing with months of snow and icy roads. We are no longer feeding six children. And we are no longer entertaining as much as we used to.
I need to get that through my head, too, whenever I am tempted to succumb to the “just in case” mentality.
I have a bit of a “prepper” mindset. It came in handy during the Covid lockdowns. Oh, I ran out of flour and sugar like everyone else, but we inventoried our freezer and had enough meals for at least six months.
Banjo Man can’t resist a sale, but last year he reined it in and managed to resist a lot of “good deals”.
This fall my freezer will be filled with Thanksgiving casseroles and Christmas cookies, not $1.89 a pound boneless chicken breasts and ten bags of buy-one-get-one-free broccoli crowns.
Although…can you ever have too much chicken and broccoli? Maybe not.
is there any more pie? 