Tickled

So I sent some cookies home for my dad because well, you know, I inherited my taste for baked goods from somewhere, and of course because Mom deserved to share the fruits of our labor too. I figured he'd love the peanut butter cookies because they were soft (he can't eat hard or crispy stuff because his teeth are bad), like the sugar cookies' flavor (and they weren't too hard either), and then he probably wouldn't like the peppermint cookies because he tends to like things more conventionally flavored.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

My grandfather was an incredible cook. Family lore says he could fry chicken in such a way that left the chicken juicy, tender, and yet slightly crispy all at once. He made amazing biscuits and his cookies were the best. His kids and even my mother tried to learn his secrets but his methods made it difficult at best. He didn't use recipes, instead using the "little bits'a this, little bits'a that", by-taste method. There really wasn't any way to convert handfuls and pinches to standard measurements, and my mom's hands weren't the same size as his. When he died, his "recipes" went with him. And for years my aunt and my dad have searched for recipes that mimicked the tastes and textures they grew up with.

Apparently, in my searches for recipes over the last few weeks, I found and settled upon not just one, but TWO recipes that are very close to cookies my grandfather used to make.

The first is the sugar cookie. My dad said that my grandfather made a cookie that was basically that sugar cookie without the extra granulated sugar on the outside.

The second was the peppermint cookie. He said that my grandfather made one like that, only without the peppermint flavorings. I think the particular form I send those ones in was part of the memory for my dad: the dough was difficult to work so when Mom and I got down to the last little bit, I took some of the green and some of the white and made a sort of rolled log out of it, and then sliced it into little cookies with a swirl design in them. My dad seemed to like the consistency of the cookies.

He said that Grandpa used to make maybe a hundred of each variety every Sunday. I don't know if the number is accurate or an exaggeration, or if the cookies are even really like Grandpa's or if it's all just the product of decades-old memories. The recipes aren't even mine--I just got lucky and found a couple good ones online.

But they made my dad happy. And making my dad happy always made me happy. Now, if I could just figure out how Grandpa did his chicken. I mean, I KNOW how he did it--it's just a matter of mastering his technique.

And, you know, getting over my fear of frying foods.

I know, I know... What good and decent Southern girl doesn't have some kind of tasty fried food in her repertoire? I think I might work on that this coming week and try to surprise him.

Homemade Christmas

This year we're not doing a lot for anyone for Christmas, mainly because everything is so expensive and NG has way too many family members for us to buy for. So this year, I'm making everyone's presents.

For starters, the grandparents (mine and NG's parents) will be getting homemade Christmas ornaments. Nothing fancy, just the applesauce-and-cinnamon recipe used by kindergartens across the country. I found some cute mini cookie cutters at the store and used those. There's also a set for our "couple friends", dear friends of ours who have kept us company on many evenings and fed us many dinners in return for fresh baked desserts. Oh, how I love our pals! Anyway, there's a set for them, a set for my old college roommate's son (who we will probably see tonight), a gingerbread couple for NG's grandparents, a set for us to put up for Sweet'ums, and two gingerbread girls and a boy that I intend to use as gift tags on the gifts I'm making for our siblings.

For NG's youngest sisters and my brother I'm making hot chocolate mix and cookies. I got three plastic trays and six holiday mugs at Walmart and some little half-pint Mason jars. I made up some hot chocolate mix and filled the mason jars with mix and marshmallows. I still have to go get some cellophane and ribbon for wrapping and decorating, but I plan to put two mugs per sibling on a tray with the mix and an assortment of homemade cookies (to be made tomorrow) for their enjoyment. If they should decide to share (and I'm sure they will, they've all got a boyfriend/girlfriend) there should be plenty to go around. I'm going to try to make sure there's enough cookies left for NG's oldest sister and her husband and son, but if not I'll at least set some aside for her son. After all, she's a mom. All moms know that there's not always enough cash to go around when it comes to extended family and Christmas gifts. I'll at least make sure her son gets some.

So for the cookies, here's what we have in mind. Mom's No-bake cookies (a wonderful oatmeal, chocolate, and peanut butter cookie), candy cane cookies, sugar cookies, and peanut butter kiss cookies. We're also keeping some cookies aside to send to my friend who is in the Army. She's stateside still, but she's away from her family for the holidays and we wanted to send her a little bit of love.

So how does that sound? We're busy right now trying to get things finished, but it's all going well.

Oh, and good news! I finished piecing the main part of the front of Sweet'ums' quilt together. Yay!

For Ali

For some reason my feed thingie won't let me into your blog. Did you set it to private or something? I wanted to comment back and it won't let me. So I'm sending you loooooooove and lots of missing you. And thank you for the Santa Key idea!!! That's awesome!

Soup

I might have said it before, but I totally have the best kid ever.

EVER.

She's always finding things to say and do that make me laugh.

Most of them slip out when she SHOULD be winding down to go to sleep.

Tonight I was rocking Sweet'ums like I do every night (yeah, she's probably a little old for it, but I enjoy the time with her) and trying to get her settled down. She was mad, at first, that it was time to go to sleep, but eventually she resigned herself to the fact that I wasn't going to let her down. She then decided, as she often does at bedtime, to change tactics from fighting to distraction.

She made a few faces at me, making me laugh. Then, she stuck her tongue out. I copied. Then, she stuck her tongue out and slurped it back in. I copied, and the slurping noise that went with it made her laugh. She continued to slurp her tongue in to encourage me to do the same so she could hear the sound (for some reason she can't make the noise). She began making her own version of the sound after sucking her tongue back in. Her version sounded almost like she was saying "soup".

Finally I got tired of slurping and just started faking the noise. That also amused her. Eventually it degraded into me simply saying "soup" and her laughing so hard that her little face turned red. Which, of course, resulted in me laughing, and her making her "soup" noise, and both of us laughing more.

Sure, we were supposed to be settling down for bed, but how could I turn down something so fun? You only get to live once and she's growing up so fast. Who cares if bedtime comes fifteen minutes late?

I have the best kid ever.

Christmas

I've never been the world's biggest fan of Christmas. It's so commercialized and overdone and lasts for so long that by the time the holiday actually arrives you're fresh out of Christmas spirit. But I think, maybe, now that I have a child some of that might change.

When I was a kid my parents really didn't do the Santa thing. I mean, they really didn't make any real effort to discourage us from believing, but I don't think they really tried to encourage it either. They told us the little stories and slipped the presents out under the tree the night of Christmas Eve.

Too many factors worked against them, though. There was the Christmas when I was 5 when I was supposed to get a Little Mermaid doll that talked when you pulled a drawstring in her back. My doll didn't have a drawstring. I knew Santa wouldn't deliver a broken toy. Then, there was the issue of precisely how Santa was going to get into my house. In the house I lived in until I was 7 there was no fireplace, only a gas furnace. Okay, I was willing to believe that somehow, Santa could find his way into the house that way. Then we moved to where my parents live now--a mobile home with an exhaust thingie for the stove but no fireplace. I knew pretty well by then that Santa was just a joke. My brother held on for a little while, but he never cared for people in costumes so there was never the same magic for him in believing in Santa or the Easter Bunny. This didn't hurt my dad's feelings, really. He was never as big on the Santa thing anyway. He preferred to read us the Christmas Story from the Bible on Christmas Eve before bed, rather than "T'was the Night Before Christmas". Personally, I would have loved both.

Now I have a child. A two year old. This year I think Sweet'ums is still a little young for Santa, but next year I'm sure she'll grasp the concept. She still doesn't grasp the idea that she has a birthday, let alone that Christmas is Jesus' birthday, so that one might be a bit longer in coming, but we're going to work on that too. But I must admit: I'm a little excited with all of this plotting for Christmases to come.

I'm looking forward to family get-togethers at our home-to-be (the sellers hit a snag with some permits but everything should be back on track soon). I look forward to decorating outside and putting up a tree in the big living room window and finally having a place to hang the ornaments we've been collecting since we've been married. I've even found a solution for the question of how Santa gets into the house: an electric fireplace. It'll take her a while to figure out it's not real and in the meantime it buys her a little extra time of belief and innocence in a time when the world is stripping away the joys of childhood as quickly as it can. It costs a little bit but it would be worth it.

I look forward to wrapping presents and hiding them until Christmas Eve. It'll be fun helping Sweet'ums make cookies to leave out with a Coke (per the request of our personal "Santa") and reindeer treats to leave in the yard. We're not the Waltons or Cleavers or anything, but I always wanted to give "normal" a try. Those were things we never did growing up.

My dad always gets depressed during the cooler season of the year (he blames it on Seasonal Affective Disorder) and after a while, Mom got depressed and said she didn't like to be the only one doing any of the "work" of putting up the tree and decorations for the holidays and then turning around and cooking. That year was the first year my brother and I were old enough to help, and was the first of a couple years where we tried doing it ourselves. I was maybe 8 or 9 at the time. After that we went a couple years without a tree because it just wasn't worth the effort, decorating for parents who were too depressed to appreciate it. Then my dad got a fiberoptic tree that didn't need lights and we just put that up year after year. My parents weren't total downers, and always tried making sure we got some stuff for Christmas and had a nice holiday, but in hindsight I think what we really needed most was a little bit of cheer, not stuff.

I still don't really LIKE the holiday season. It only gets more chaotic and expensive and impersonal every year. But I don't want my daughter hating the holiday season like I did growing up. I don't want her dreading the changing of seasons because she knows her parents are going to be depressed for the next three or four months. I want her to go back to school in January in high school and in homeroom when they ask what you did during the holidays, I want her to say she put out cookies for Santa like she has every year since she was a toddler and that it was the best Christmas yet.

I want her to know the real meaning behind Christmas, but sometimes I think that the real meaning is more of a grown-up thing to think about. We were taught it as kids and I plan to do the same with Sweet'ums but I remember wondering why people made a bigger deal about Someone Else's birthday than they did their own kids'. I want to teach her that giving is better than receiving, and I want her to donate a toy each year to a child who is less fortunate, all the better if it's a child her age and she gives something she really wanted for herself. I think it teaches a little bit of selflessness. But that's a lot for a smaller kid to handle.

I guess what I really want for her is the joy of believing. I mean, we all know Santa isn't real in the sense that he doesn't climb down our chimneys on Christmas Eve, but I think the spirit that the idea of Santa represents is very real.

Joy, cheer, giving, hope. The overwhelming desire of one person to make another's wishes come true for no reason but love. Togetherness, in spite of family differences. Excitement and anticipation of wonderful things if we could just abide by the "Do not open until Christmas" label. And maybe, above all of those other things, sacrifice without the promise of any kind of return.

As an adult I think that maybe the real meaning of Christmas isn't really so different from the boiled-down essence of what popular Christmas is. Jesus came and gave us the sacrifice of His life, without any kind of promise from us that we'd give anything back. He brought us joy, and hope, and the promise of something better if we could hold on just a little bit longer. He committed the ultimate act of selfless love and giving, so much bigger than what parents try to achieve during the holidays but with the same kind of love for us that we feel for our own children.

I know that not all parents try to give that to their children, but I think regardless of all the other motives the one that most parents have in common is the anticipation of the smiles they'll get on Christmas morning.

Maybe that's kind of what Jesus was looking forward to in eternity. Smiles, happiness, and having all of His family together in one place.

I look forward to getting those same smiles one day soon, but I hope to get them less as a result of the gifts Sweet'ums receives than as a result of the overall spirit of joy and hope and thankfulness that I hope we will be able to instill in her during the holiday season.

Today, I thank God for my husband

Warning: Very slight TMI

He gave me a wonderful gift last night. He told me it was okay to express my emotion however I needed to.

I went to bed upset and feeling inadequate, and past hurts were raw in my heart. He came to bed with me, held me for a little while, and tried to show his love for me in the purest way possible. And that's when I remembered something.

That's what it's all about: expression of love.

Not everyone can express their feelings well. Not everyone can say how they feel, or put it into words or actions, or buy gifts to express themselves.

Since my daughter was born I've had all kinds of little medical issues crop up. Some of them are bigger, like the arthritis and insulin problems, and are more obvious to people I'm around. Other problems just aren't the kinds of things you make public, and if you talk about them, it's only to the people you're closest to. Oftentimes those are the problems that drive wedges between people and leave the neighbors wondering what happened to the nice couple next door when they hear about a divorce being finalized.

And I've had my share of those problems since Sweet'ums got here.

Every time one of those little problems popped up, I distanced myself a little more emotionally from the situation. If I cared at all, I would end up frustrated and hurt inside, and the fun would drain out of the quiet moments with him and I'd eventually end up resenting him for something he couldn't help. So if I just didn't care, then the fun would still be gone but at least I wouldn't blame him for something neither of us could control.

Somewhere along the way, I took from him one of the few and most special ways he has to express his love for me. And at the same time, I took away from myself the only truly "safe" place I had to feel however I needed to feel, in whatever way I needed to feel it, with the one person who would never condemn me for it.

At some point it became "getting through it" instead of treasuring a moment of emotional intimacy. I started hating "the deed" instead of loving my husband.

So when he told me it was okay, to just go ahead and let out however I felt, that he just wanted to love me, it just clicked inside my head. In that moment my heart broke and healed all at once.

I realized what I had been doing wrong and how it hurt him and our marriage. I'm blessed with an incredibly patient man who knew I wasn't doing anything intentionally, so he isn't resentful, and our marriage wasn't damaged in a way that can't be fixed, but it's definitely something that needs to be worked on. I need to work on meeting in the middle--in so much of our life I put out so much effort, except for in the one place where we both need it most.

I thank God for my husband. He's probably the only person on earth who really understands me and who is willing to let me be as weird and quirky and dorky as I need to be and who is happy to be just as weird right along with me. He tolerated so much out of me for so long, and still put his needs aside and found just the right words to say, when I needed to hear them most, to help mend what was broken.

Funny... God has a tendency to be the same way.


I apologize if this post was too "TMI" but it was such an overwhelming realization for me, and I wanted to share but couldn't really without treading into personal territory.

Sibling Rivalry

My inner child is throwing a huge tantrum. I've decided to ignore his situation, and the girl, and the entire thing, pretend like it isn't happening, and when she breaks his heart or screws up his life, oh well--my mom and dad always said he had to learn the hard way when we were kids. But despite this decision, I'm having some major sibling rivalry/inadequacy issues.

I never felt good enough in comparison. I think they always wanted a son, and if he'd come along first they probably wouldn't have tried again--heaven only knows she had enough trouble having me. And my whole life growing up, I felt like the bad guy. I was always blamed for fights no matter which of us really started them, because I was older and should "know better" and put a stop to it. If I made the slightest mistake I got in trouble, and yet he always had excuses made for him. He had this medical problem as a child, and it justifies this mistake. He had that medical problem as a child so it excuses that error. The thing is, his medical issues were relatively minor and had no permanent impact on his well-being as a whole. They spent more money trying to fix my medical issues as a child, and I have permanent problems as a result, but do I get excuses? Nope. I'm still the bad guy. I'm still the one blamed when there's an argument and I'm still the one they lecture, despite being married, with a child, and living away from home.

I know that growing up that way was helpful in so many ways, but it sucks to be a kid constantly seeking someone's approval and never getting it. Even now, if they tell me they're proud of me, it's usually followed by a "but". And I know, deep down, that they really are proud, but it's hard to believe it when you've got a sibling who seems to be the Golden Child. Never does anything wrong, at least not that anything gets done about. And the thing is, none of the authority figures I ever dealt with ever really showed approval of what I tried to do. Everyone took an interest in him, and I always got ignored. No matter how hard I tried, someone was always liked better than I was. People at church, family members, school folks. I was smart, and polite, and well-behaved, followed by a "but" and something my brother did that was so much cooler.

None of it really matters. I'll continue going through life seeking approval from people I shouldn't and he'll go through life with people making excuses for his mistakes. I'll continue to be the daughter with the abrasive personality, the tendency for being overbearing and domineering, and the exceptionally bad luck. He'll continue to be the slacker with the cute smile, laid back personality, and the one everyone prefers to be around. Even though so many of my undesirable personality quirks come from years of being responsible for him because he had X Medical Problem and being told it was my job to look after him when Mom wasn't nearby. I took my job, and my life, very seriously and did what was expected of me. So now, I'm over it. I'm done looking after someone who doesn't care and who shows no respect. I'm over the expectations. And I'm done being the one who swoops in and fixes things when they're broken.

If everyone wants to let him make his mistakes, that's fine. But I won't stand around and watch, and I won't be the clean-up crew any more.

My inner child is throwing a huge tantrum. Most likely, no one will ever know.