Day: December 16, 2005

Ewwww, Yolk!

Helen and I just made cookies.

We were going to make a mix that Nannie brought over yesterday for White Chocolate Cran-Orange Cookies (don’t gag, Nancy). So I got out the mixer, set it up on the counter, and Helen pulled over a chair. I got out the eggs, and Helen wanted to crack them, so I handed one to her.

She gently tapped it on the metal bowl of the mixer until a very teensy tinesy crack appeared, and then basically crushed the egg in her hand, missing the bowl completely.

The egg exploded all over the countertop, down the front of the stainless steel dishwasher, dripping onto Logic’s head (he was strategically hanging out nearby in case of an occurrance such as this), and finally pooling on the floor.

Helen was hysterical, apologizing, crying, and just being generally bereft, poor thing. We washed her hands, and then I set to cleaning up the egg slime. And then I just moved on from the horror of an exploded egg, so she relaxed and let it go, too.

Problem, though: we only had one egg left, and the mix recipe called for two. So I put the mix away and started looking up other cookie recipes. Oatmeal cookies? 2 eggs. I didn’t have any chocolate chips, so that was out.

Snickerdoodles!

So we made a batch of snickerdoodles (I took care of the remaining egg; Helen had lost her nerve, I guess). The recipe I have is from a kids’ cookbook from when I was growing up, so it only makes three dozen very small cookies. Or 2 dozen reasonably-sized ones — a perfect number of cookies for a kid’s attention span. And it only uses 1 egg.

Helen liked making them because you make the cookie dough, and then roll little globs of it around in cinnamon sugar. She really enjoyed that part. And we ran out of dough about the time she ran out of interest.

I plan to make these again with her very soon, and ship a double batch to the girls’ aunt and uncle in Seattle as a thank you gift. We (the adults) don’t exchange presents, but they always send presents to the children. I did send them steaks last year and they got mad at me for breaking the “no exchange of gifts” rule, so we’ll just stick with cookies this year. It just bothers me not to be able to reciprocate, but they can’t get mad if we send them cookies. Right?

Tom used to send me cookies when I was in college, so it’ll be the renewal of an old tradition. 🙂 I’ll have Helen draw pictures for them, too.

Six Years

I have carried the same black Coach bag for six years. I bought it at a 6:30am sale at Parisian in November, 1999, the morning I judged for the district drama competition. I remember that because I was SO excited about my purse bargain when I got there to judge, and I was showing off my new purse to people who really did. not. care.

I did not intend to buy a purse that day, because I had another one that I had been using for about 4 years. But that one was brown, and I had gotten so I wasn’t wearing as much brown anymore. A black one made more sense.

And Coach bags almost NEVER go on sale. This black one was on sale… 40 or 50% or something equally unheard of, so I pounced.

“Think of all the money I saved!” wasn’t exactly an argument Jerry appreciated, so I just vowed to use that purse for a long time.

Here it is, six years later, and I’ve been using the same black purse every day since. Even in summer, even though I know it’s not correct to use a black purse in the summertime. Yup, I’m a rebel.

Lately, I’ve noticed that I’m only functioning out of the top third of it, and as a result it gets filled up with randomness that sinks to the abyss at the bottom, and thus gets VERY heavy. Everyone makes comments about the weight of my purse when they pick it up.

It was time for a change.

Parisian is having another sale (tomorrow they’re even having another 6:30am one… Trying to decide if I’ll go without kids in the morning), so I took Helen and Alice and we went shopping.

Shopping with me is rare for them –I do not particularly enjoy shopping because I’m an impulse buyer, so I try to stay out of stores as much as I can. But today I braved it, because we were going to try to find a white shirt for their Daddy, since his white button down has gone missing and he really needs one. Alice was in a stroller, and Helen had to be touching the stroller (my rule), and the girls were ANGELS. I was so pleased with them. It was even lunchtime — a traditional time for both of them to be fussy and obnoxious, but they were perfect.

We did not find a white shirt for Daddy. All the ones that we saw either had designs woven into the fabric (bleah), were too dressy, had a HUGE Polo logo on the chest, or cost over $75. I’ll just order a replacement non-descript white shirt from Eddie Bauer for $24.50, which is all he wants, anyway. It is not necessary to be a walking advertisement for Ralph Lauren, thanks.

Then, with Helen’s help (she picked them out), I got two new purses today. They’re about the same size, which is HALF the size of the black one that they’ll be replacing.

One is a red faux croc leather by Fossil, and the other is a lime green soft leather by The Sak. I got 40% off on one of them, and 55% off on the other one. Not too shabby! Looked briefly at Coach bags, but Coach isn’t really making leather purses right now, and I buy my purses to last a long time (obviously), so non-leather ain’t it for me.

Here’s the funniest part. I actually have STYLISH purses now. Weird. I haven’t had a stylish purse since my Liz Claiborne purses in middle school.

I moved into the red purse in the parking lot while I was waiting to be able to pull out of our parking space. Everything that I use actually FITS. Huh. And all this time I’ve been carrying around the Black Hole.

The BEST part? I don’t actually have to REMOVE the wallet to get to the money. I can get to cash/cards without having to take the entire wallet out of the purse, which is totally different from the black one (because the black one was too deep for how I used it). This will be a vast improvement. You women readers will totally understand why this is a good thing.

Whee! Enjoying the little things…