The children, in church several hours before being nestled all snug in their beds under brand-new blankets crocheted by their great-grandmother. I sit here in front of a 6' tree fairly dwarfed by piles of presents, nibbling on Santa's caramel crunch cookie and the reindeers' carrot, sipping the former's frosty bubbly cocktail (what? Santa doesn't get a mimosa at your house?) secure in the knowledge that sugarplums have likely begun dancing in their heads and I may take a moment to blog.

After the 4 p.m. service we drove around a bit, looking at lights and meandering our way to a nearby Chinese place for dinner. The kids were amused by waiters wearing Santa hats and the restuarant's gift to us of a 2007 calendar - cool enough to warrant fighting over and the quick intervention by one waiter in rushing a second to our table. We took a little detour through Brainiac's childhood neighborhood on the way home and were charmed by luminaria in front of most of the houses. He tells me that this has been going on since he was quite young and he became both sad and joyous as we drove, enjoying his children's exclamations from the backseat while also remembering his late father's role in setting up the luminaria that his family displayed. It's an odd place in which we find ourselves, still feeling as if we ought to eat at the kids' table and not yet finished being parented but now also parents ourselves. Christmas seems to make this neither-here-nor-there quality bolder, somehow, more stark.

And now we are home. The carrot and cocktail are gone, the last verses of Barbra Streisand's Ave Maria have faded from my little Pandora set-up, and Brainiac is pouring me a Frangelico. So.

We most definitely did not have a silent night, although in many ways it did feel holy. The gift of the blankets made by my kids' oldest relative, remembering to them a grandfather they never met, eating dumplings together as part of a tradition their father and I started before they were born and now sharing a drink and cigar with Brainiac as we putter away the remaining hours of Christmas Eve...yes, there has been something very holy in the day we shared.

Sleep in heavenly peace.

When my sisters and I were young our mother was a Cake Lady. You know who I mean, every town has at least one. She was the woman that other moms would turn to for their Holly Hobby, Mickey Mouse and Garfield cake needs (those of you who weren't alive in the late 70s/early 80s would be surprised at just how large those needs were - and this was before the surge in children's party character licensing we see today when it's possible to find a pan for the most obscure of interests and virtually every movie short of Boogie Nights). She made wedding cakes, Christening cakes, graduation cakes, end-of-softball-season cakes and other confections in such numbers that my memories of childhood are practically themselves sugarcoated. It was rare that there wasn't a cake around either baking, being decorated, cautiously carried to the car for delivery or cast aside as a dud. We got the duds in our lunchboxes.

Our friends, of course, thought this was fabulous. Cake all the time! What's not to love? Except, of course, constant exposure even to the awesome dulls and after a while we collectively stopped eating much cake at all. Duds sat around uneaten and undesired until they hardened sufficiently that they could be thrown out without the attendant guilt of wasting food and, once it became possible by the early 90s to buy an airbrushed cake in virtually every supermarket, mom gradually went into Cake Lady retirement.

Among the legacies of my cake-filled youth is the ability to produce simple icings for almost any requirement without a recipe or really much thought at all. Mom never taught me (she preferred to keep her kitchen to herself) but somewhere along the line I - and perhaps my sisters, too - picked up all kinds of frostings from glazes to the less tasty but more substantial decorator icing, suitable for roses and borders and other things you need to keep their shape. Come to think of it, the only "icing" I can't make from memory is fondant, which I suspect is because Mom disapproves of fondant and seldom consented to its use.

Last night I made the following chocolate icing for brownies for the Boy Wonder's school holiday party. Recipes for chocolate icing abound and there are probably at least three for everyone who has ever made any - I, of course, think mine is the best. I also think it's the easiest, a feature not to be underestimated as far as I'm concerned, especially this time of year when we're all so busy. This is a general-purpose spreading icing, suitable for brownies, a layer cake, sugar cookies or - let's be honest withourselves here - just spooning directly from the bowl into the mouth. You may see some recipes that require cooking, evaporated milk, separating eggs and so on and while these may produce perfectly pleasant icings I assure you that they are all unnecessary.

For a nice, general-use chocolate frosting, soften a quarter-cup of butter in a mixing bowl. When nicely softened (you can press a finger into the butter with little resistance), add a one pound box of confectioner's sugar and, say, a cup of cocoa powder. Start adding milk (I use 1%, but used both skim and whole successfully) slooooowly, about a tablespoon at a time until the frosting starts to form. Keep adding the milk until you get the consistency you like. If you accidentally add too much milk, mix in more sugar or cocoa powder. Taste liberally! It'll help you adjust the ingredients to get to where you want to be. Some folks like to add a pinch of salt and a bit of vanilla - I find them superfluous but, hey, it's your icing. Your frosted baked goods can sit out overnight or a couple days covered - the sugar and chocolate keep the milk and butter nicely protected for a short time.

Mom comes out of retirement every so often, mostly to make wedding cakes. These she has made for each of my sisters and me, as well as our friends who remember the birthday cakes she made for their own childhood parties. As even the youngest of our girlhood friends is now in her 30s these wedding cakes are becoming fewer and further between and her stretches of retirement longer and longer. The cake-filled bits of our lives exist now primarily in photographs and the ability to make almost any kind of icing, whenever we need that fix of memory combined with necessity. All except that fondant, of course.

More Fragments

I have an entry in this week's Carnival of Homeschooling - it's the Nutcracker post from a few days ago. I entered the Carnival with this post specifically because 1) we continue to think through this education business and 2) I liked the lesson I learned from the whole episode, sometimes the kids will take an interest in something I would never have imagined. This is something I need to remember as we think about our next steps.


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You may have noticed the ticker on the right-hand margin counting the numbers of pre-approved credit offers we've received since the end of November. Seriously, there were maybe three or four arriving every day and it was all so ridiculous that I felt the numbers needed to be documented somehow. Of course, within days of posting the arriving offers slowed markedly and I almost took the counter down. I needn't have worried, for their once again filling our mailbox to astonishing levels. Yesterday brought another three. At least we received more Christmas cards than that, or I might have been depressed.


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Thank you for the help and advice regarding our bus driver's gift. I am going with the gift card and note, as originally planned. I do not know why this caused so much angst for me, other than I guess I need to have at least one gift-related freak-out every year or it just isn't Christmas.

Usually the freak-outs are related to my mother, my father or Brainiac. My sisters are fairly easy to buy for (and I'm not just saying that because one of them reads here) - they have a wide variety of interests and don't fuss about bigness or smallness or whatever. I have given my sisters all kind of things, from silly to sentimental, from thrifted to spendy and by and large I think I've done o.k.

Shopping for my mom is hard because she's an world-class shopper of the highest, black-belt order and usually buys herself what see wants almost immediately upon seeing it ("If I wait for a sale, it'll be gone!" is her frequent refrain). Selecting gifts for my dad can be hard because most of the things he'd really enjoy I can't afford (like really old Scotch, vintage golf clubs, greens fees at some fancy-pants club). And Brainiac wants only one thing badly - a pilot's license - but I just can't seem to come up with the many hundreds of dollars monthly that such an endeavor requires. Besides, a pilot's license is kind of like a naked Barbie - pointless and no fun without the further investment of capital in things like actually flying planes/clothes and Dreamhouse.

But this year everyone except the bus drive was covered nicely so I guess my freak-out needed reassignment. And now there's no freak-out at all.

Fragments

Despite my assertion that I would neither read nor acknowledge the Boy Wonder's BMI report, out neighborhood elementary school has proven too wily for to avoid/ignore it as planned. The magic number has been reported on the same piece of paper alongside information I actually do need, like his vision results (as the child of two glasses-wearing parents, with three glasses-wearing aunts/uncles and four glasses-wearing grandparents, we're always on the lookout for the need for corrective lenses). So. There it is. Hm.

And that's really all that needs to be said about that.

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I am breaking up with Target. This has been a long time coming and I really do feel that it's time I see other stores. I'm a little sad, of course, but also hopeful that with time I will be able to see our relationship with a bit more clarity. In the meantime, I am engaging in some retail therapy with several yards of this to be made into little paper-sack type evening bags and an ever-so-small spree at Crane buying New Years cards and perusing the offerings for the household stationery that Brainiac is always saying we should order.

I feel better already.

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There remains only one gift to arrange here at the Hot Water Bath estate and that is for the lovely young woman who drives the bus that delivers the Boy Wonder to school every day (how it came to pass that he takes the bus at all is a story in itself but believe me when I say that he is thrilled and I am somewhat less so). Anyway, he is one of three children on this route so it's more that he has this personal transportation service and the Boy tells us how they all sing songs on the way to school and she sings along with them. Nice, no? So I've already written a card expressing our heartfelt thanks that she is so kind to the children and how grateful we are that she keeps them safe and sound in the time they are in her care (not to mention that she is the absolute perfect driver for the parents who were terrified to put their kid on a bus).

I would like to enclose a little something with the card but I can't think of what that little something ought to be. I know nothing about her other than she sings songs and is quite diligent about safety, if the Boy's stories are to be believed. I don't know if she likes wine or cookies (or is even able to enjoy either). I don't know if she likes movies or reading or knitting or even celebrates any given winter gift-giving holiday at all, for that matter. She does wear a handful of silver rings which I see when she waves to me as the bus leaves off. But jewelry? No. Definitely not appropriate.

It flitted through my mind that I might buy a gift card to a local market and add to our note that I hoped she'd buy herself some of her favorite wintertime treats and enjoy them with our thanks, but...is that very icky-ticky-tacky? Or is this a good idea?

Do tell. I'm begging for help here so please share.

Not long ago I was having One of Those Days. The kids were very tightly wound, I was somewhat less so and all efforts at a pleasant family morning were coming to naught. As I do every now and again I announced Quiet Time by saying, "Why don't you guys go see what's on channel 12?!" (Channel 12 is one of the two parentally sanctioned watching options in our house, our local public broadcasting.)

You can imagine my surprise to notice maybe five minutes later the calm that had descended. No more arguing, picking, instigating, throwing, screaming, tattling - it had all stopped. I was almost afraid to go check and see what it was they found on the television in case I would feel compelled to declare it inappropriate viewing and turn it off, with the inevitable result of a return to the morning's chaos. Steeling myself against bitter cathode ray dissapointment, I walked into the play room to find the kids snuggled up on the futon with a fleece blanket, staring rapt at the screen watching...

The Nutcracker.

I sat down to watch with them, remembering well my own girlhood fascination with Gelsey Kirkland and my despair at growing too tall and too, uh, large for ballet (my stature is rather more suited to softball than ballet). I wondered what they'd make of the show, if children more accustomed to animation and Disney spectacle would find The Nutcracker as compelling as so many generations before them.

They did. I provided minimal narration, just enough to help them follow the story and secretly (well, less so now that I'm writing about it on my blog, I guess) was pleased that they displayed such cultah in their attention. It was a distinct pleasure to share with them a holiday tradition that I enjoyed so well at their age.

Of course, when the ballet ended we were right back to craziness, this time with re-enactments of battles with the Mouse King, a part they alternated for maximum hysteria. Ah, so much for culture.

Still, happening upon The Nutcracker seems to have had an effect on them that I doubt it would have had if I had sat them down specifically to watch it, maybe a sense of discovery or ownership rather than something that Mom said was important to do. Both relish telling the story to friends and family, as if it were something that they themselves created and Entropy Girl practices her "steps" daily and asks her brother to play the part of the "guy dancer". The Boy Wonder is amazed to note that the male dancers can jump just as high as football players and thinks it beyond cool that battle scenes are not at all unusual within ballet - jumping with swords! Not to mention, of course, the constant source of amazement in the Christmas tree that grows! On stage! Or that so many dancers can do the same things at the same time, his constant search for synchronicity and symmetry satisfied. I am utterly charmed by their enthusiasm in a way that only a mother could be.

So now I'm on the hunt for Nutcracker-themed activities. I found a few at the Pennsylvania Ballet and, because they are intended for older children, they've inspired me to create a couple of my own - a wordsearch, an I Spy-type page and a bit of time making sugarplums.

It has been a wonderful gift for me to be able to share The Nutcracker with the kids and have them enjoy it so much. Despite knowing that the odds are against them developing a lifelong appreciate for dance, living as we do in the age of Wii, I'd like to think that the memory of this time will stay with them and someday, at least, they'll be able to share a little of the wonder with their own children.

(If you'd like me to send you .PDF copies of our Nutcracker games and activities, e-mail me at hotwaterbath AT gmail DOT com and I'll get them out to you. They're nothing super elaborate, just a bit of holiday fun to take advantage of youthful enthusiasm.)

Among Brainiac's many charms is that he is an ace gift giver. He has given me all kinds of wonderful presents in our 16 years together - a perfectly red lipstick, lovely earrings, books, music, travel and all kinds of other squee-worthy delights. And he doesn't just pick cool things - sometimes things I didn't even know I wanted - but he's into cool presentation, too. After one particularly tough year of living in separate cities and commuting back and forth on weekends, Brainiac gave me a cruise so that we could spend a solid block of relaxing, sun-drenched time together. Under the tree that year I found a child's bathtub boat, little and red, spiffed up with stickers of smiling faces marked "Brainiac" and "Marsha" and a note attached announing our upcoming trip. Last year brought a letter from Santa himself,on North Pole letterhead letting me know that Brainiac had informed him of my exceptional goodness and his desire that Santa should deliver a Kitchen Aid stand mixer. .

Because of the impending move and rather rustic kitchen arrangements awaiting me in the new house, Santa thought it best to hold off on the mixer's actual delivery. In the meantime, Brainiac has installed a dishwasher, replaced the countertop, put in more lighting and just generally improved cooking conditions. And, true to his word, Santa delivered the mixer about a week ago. Yesterday, I used it to mix up cookie dough.

Squee-worthy, indeed.

I made a precious few cookies last year, just the basics without which Christmas would have felt less-than to me. This year, with my brand new (and lightening fast) mixer at the ready, I am feeling a touch more ambitious. Cookie goals for this year include everything from last year as well as tea cakes, peanut butter kisses, regular old peanut butter, oatmeal cranberry (the red of the cranberry is a cool festive change from raisons), shortbread (I use teeny tiny cutters on these so each baking sheet holds scores - very fun), snickerdoodles, rum balls, those coconut and chocolar bar things, linzer torte-type cookies, and probably more. Maybe some fudge? And brownies? And cake? Mama's got a new mixer, after all.

You may have heard about the Kraft Guacamole Kerkuffle of 2006. Then again, maybe not - the upshot is that a woman in Los Angeles was upset to find that the Kraft guacamole she bought to serve friends contains virtually no avocado. Modified food starch, skim milk, green food coloring, sure, but just a teensy bit (like 2%) avocado.

So what's a girl to do when her industrially-produced snack dip disappoints? Apparently, a girl sues. (ETA: It appears that our little claimant may not be unassisted in her search for Truth Justice and the Guacamole Way. Check out the link at the bottom of this encouraging potential avocado litigants to fill out a complaint about their guacamole disappointments which will then be evaulated by a lawyer "at no charge".)

A friend with whom I was discussing the matter maintains that Kraft is 100% in the wrong with this one, that their labeling practices were/are deceptive and that the entire company should be force fed authentic guacamole until it comes out their collective ears. I think the woman in question must be a bit loco at the least and perhaps even a bit mercenary (Hey! I know, Kraft has lots of, uh, dough! I'll sue them!) at the worst.

Goodness knows I prefer real, minimally-processed food as much as the next girl and I certainly know the disappointment and d'oh feelings that come with finding out that something you're eating isn't quite what you thought it was (go ahead, ask me about the red dye #40 I poured down the Boy Wonder's gullet in the form of YOGURT! or the high fructose corn syrup we ingested that had been disguised as salsa) but here's the thing: we have labeling laws and Kraft followed them. The information that would have prevented this consumer from purchasing the "guac" was available and clearly printed just as it is for nearly every food product commercially available in every supermarket in the country. Just as I fell down on the job not perusing our yogurt for dyes, this woman made an assumption about a specialty product produced by a decidedly non-specialty mass-market company. No where did craft ever claim "chock full of perfectly ripe, totally healthy avocados!".

And, purely as an aside, this person lives in Los Angeles! You cannot tell me that she had no access to freshly made, wonderful guacamole. Really. Los Angeles, people. Sheesh.

Anyway, whatever. I'm no fan of Kraft in general but I really don't think they did anything wrong here. Most of us know that "juice cocktail" isn't really juice and fruit roll-ups aren't really fruit, boxed mac-and-cheese generally doesn't have cheese (ironically, Kraft's famous blue and yellow boxed mac-and-cheese used to actually be the "cheesiest" as their ads went, but I recall reading recently that it now contains next to no cheese, a nod to cost-reduction) and candy corn isn't corn. Do we really need a lawsuit to establish that the mass-market, shelf-stable guacamole really isn't?

Guacamole is super easy to make. And for everyone who has ever made their own, there are probably scores of recipes. I usually use two dead-ripe avocados (they need to be softer than what you'd use sliced on a sandwich) smashed with a fork, the juice of a lime or two, some finely chopped onion and garlic, some chopped tomato, a spot each of salt and ground cumin (freshly ground, if you can), a bit of chopped cilantro and, heck, maybe a bit of cayenne. Basically, make it with whatever you have around. If I'm pressed for time I'll just mix up a bit of salsa with the smashed avocado and then some lime juice.

Like so many things, guacamole is a matter of taste and preference. If you don't care for colored food starch, read your labels and shop accordingly.