Bibliomama

Well it was more of an addendum to my last post of last year, but I still found it enjoyable. She started out pretty traditional. She was frustrated trying to find her technique with the icing again. She didn't feel like this was an adequate representation of her abilities. A little more uniform here.  "Wow, I mean, I really am quite incredibly talented. I'm surprised I didn't see it before. I should try something hard." "Like a horse. I'm going to do a horse". "Oh my God, I amaze myself. I am amazing. What do you mean a horse isn't Christmassy? It's a talent thing. You just don't get it." "It needs a hair tie." (At this point, she giggled so much Matt asked if she was drunk.) "Well obviously this is heartbreakingly beautiful. How could anyone bring themselves to eat it?" (Angus says he'll eat it, Eve is offended). (She searched through the sprinkles, found an orange...

I think a lot, at this time of year, not just about everything that has to get done, but the whole issue of expectations, and where they come from, and what to do with them (as opposed to what I sometimes feel like telling people what to do with their expectations, which is another matter entirely). It's such an odd thing, this season of alleged comfort and joy, merry brightness, decked halls and midnights clear, that counter-intuitively often causes huge stress and strain and great antipathy toward one's fellow human. Last year Matt was away for work the second week of December. It was terrible - I felt like it put us so behind in Christmas prep that we never caught up. I didn't send out Christmas cards at all for the first time in years. This year there was no travel on the horizon but I didn't really trust it to stay that way, so we started decorating early, as opposed to my usual "oh, we'll start December first, oh wait, was today December first? We...

So, the Gingerbread Yahoos? I got them gingerbread pajamas. 

So on the week-end, these four yahoos decide to go buy gingerbread houses and decorate them. They bought two kits, and the original idea was for everybody to work on both, but when they got them back home Eve said she suddenly realized she didn't want Marianna or Alison anywhere near her gingerbread house. This is because Eve and Davis (partners in cooking class) are neat, deliberate, detail-oriented people in nearly every respect, while Marianna and Alison are, let's say, a little more into freestyling. So Matt and I picked up the three girls that had to be driven home, after some drinks around a Christmas tree with friends, so all of this was doubly hilarious. Alison: "You know what, I'm not even embarrassed about our house, because your house is, like, the kind of house that nobody ever buys because it's too intimidating, because it has, like, nine bathrooms and you can't just relax in it." Davis: "The houses are literally the exact same s...

Eve, a few days ago, storming into the room: "My next cooking project is so weird! It's called 'pasta est ceci'. What the hell is that? 'Pasta is here?' It's not even pasta! It's chickpeas!" Me, Googling: "It's not 'pasta est ceci', you dork. It's 'pasta e ceci'. Italian, not French. Pasta with chickpeas." Eve, the next day. "Okay, you're right. It's tiny pasta. With chickpeas." Eve, yesterday: "Where is Rome?" Me: "Italy." Eve: "Huh. So they speak... Italian?" Me: "Yep." Eve: "And that's... different from Spanish, right?" Me: "Um, yeah." Eve: *sighs* "Okay." Eve, today: "I apologized to my cooking partner, the Spanish exchange student, for trying to make her read Italian."