My holiday baking for this year is almost done. Wow, this is the third year I’m reporting on baking on this blog. And before this blog there was another blog that lasted for over a year (it’s taken down now).  It chronicled library school and a cross-country trip. I like keeping a blog. I fancy myself a bit of a word teaser and this gives me a good outlet for that.

Holiday of Baking 2007

Holiday of Baking 2008

This Year:

• Soft Peanut Butter cookies (3 batches). Last month Scott asked for soft peanut butter cookies. I’m all, “That’s impossible. Peanut Butter cookies are hard and they break all over the place when you try to eat them.” Then I went online and looked up “soft peanut butter cookies.” And found them. Wow. They are SO GOOD.
• Oatmeal No-bakes (2 batches). Again, my own recipe. Yet improved from last year.
• Magic bars with toffee chips (2 9 X 13 pans)
• Chocolate-dipped macaroons. This year I realized that my chocolate-dipped macaroons are fancy Mounds bars. This totally bummed me out. I’ve been feeling a little blue but this ripped up my little universe: that MY “World Famous Chocolate Dipped Macaroons” were just inflated Mounds bars and if I put an almond in the middle they’d be Almond Joy Bars. But onward.
• Chocolate dipped Oreos. I’ve done two packages of cookies plus one bag of the minis for kids. I have one bag left to go and then those are done. I bought dark chocolate, white chocolate and then white chocolate dyed pink and some dyed purple. Gotta get those colors out and do some serious damage to the traditional concept of chocolate dipped Oreos. Breaking open the galaxy I am. Oh sweet Power.
• Brownies (double batch). I didn’t put quite enough chocolate chips in. They’re good but they’re not Classic.
• Tingalings
• Swedish wedding cookies. This year I tried to finally make enough and I made too much.
• Chocolate chip cookies. Lots and lots and lots and lots of chocolate chip cookies.

Yet to go I have one 9X13 of lemon bars and one more bag of Oreos. The Oreos go into treat bags and the cookies into tins. I’ve got 14 tins done and so far 11 treat bags.  I have another 8-10 tins ready to go on the counter. I’ll feed 15 people with the treat bags I have so far and then the tins, and then I take cookies to work (each person in my department gets a treat bag and then I bring a platter to the holiday party), and then to Christmas and Christmas eve dinners.

So, I haven’t been writing much lately. Honestly, I don’t have that many good things to say. Normally I can just push past that and come up with something interesting on a fairly regular basis, but not recently, not really.

I know it’s Thanksgiving and a good time to reflect on our personal and familial relationships, our relationships with our communities, our relationships with however we define forces greater than ourselves. And I am appreciative for those things. I know those things. I am grateful for my family and my friends. I am grateful simply for the hysterical game of Scrabble my family played last night and the 4 cut throat games of now-I-can’t-remember-the-name but it was super-fun.

But I’m also weary.  I’m not feeling transcendant.

My mother’s father’s oldest son by his first wife’s grandson’s third wife just wrote to tell me George has accidentally burned himself in a fire. Bad news, but wow, what I’ve learned in just a year of genealogy connecting.

Education is one of the few things a person is willing to pay for and not get. ~William Lowe Bryan

Got the much-touted NPR T-shirt. It sucked.

I have an idea to share for entertaining. It goes like this.

HOW TO THROW AN EXTRAVAGANT DINNER PARTY

When I was in college I lived in a student co-op. We met a budget of one dollar per person for dinner.  i.e. we fed 20 people for $20. We had some fine-ass meals, too.  Sometimes the cooks would do something simple like a bean bake and fresh bread, and because it didn’t take long they’d also set the table and make Kool-aid with oranges sliced up and floating at the top of the pitchers. Sometimes we’d decide to eat outside and haul all the food up the kitchen basement steps onto the side yard. Fine times, fine times.

I went back to visit the co-op  a few years later and they were living in, well, extravagance. They were feeding people on TWO dollars per dinner. They had meat, even!

So, here’s my idea. Throw an extravagant dinner party where you feed everyone on $2 per person. 4 people = $8 dollars. If you absolutely must adjust for inflation since I last checked this out in 1996, you might go to $3 per person. I’m looking to try this out.

“Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

- William Butler Yeats

The budgets are getting settled out here in Lansing.  The next Flint, Michigan, perhaps. The legislature is all up in everyone’s business. Times are tight. Michigan just happens to be at the bottom of the barrel. Rounds of layoffs are hitting state departments. At first I felt panicked, then sad, and finally just worn out. Looks like I’m safe for now but will possibly get slammed at home sweet library home in June of 2010.

Maybe my generation will be the next Great Generation. The next Great Generation on Facebook. I’ve seen status updates from people thrilled their spouse qualified for unemployment.

Facebook status: Holiday cards gonna be real brief this year fellas.

Ann Arbor’s Commie High newspaper up for Pulitzer of High School journalism

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So, it’s pledge week again on NPR. Fall is the season my hubby and I give. I called when I got home tonight. One of the prizes for new members was a T-shirt. They went on and on about how cool the T-shirts were. On and on. I decided I wanted a T-shirt.

A friend informs me that T-shirts are for new members only. I inform her I intend to negotiate for my T-shirt. I’m kidding. I mean, it’s a T-shirt advertising their business that they are giving away to people sending in less money than I am.

I call with my pledge and go through all the rigamorole – name, date, serial number. At the end I tell her I want a T-shirt. She says no. The woman says no. Then she says they are only for new members. I tell her that’s rude. I tell her I am going to withdraw my pledge. I tell her I have been giving to NPR since I was 18. My parents have been giving since I was 5. I am not kidding. I am indignant. I am serious. I want a T-shirt. She says she’ll get a manager.

The manager gets me my frickin’ T-shirt. I’ll send ‘em an extra $20 with my pledge for the shirt. I’m not trying to rip anybody off. What a sister has to do up in this town for a T-shirt.

Love NPR, love, love, love… and happy to advertise them.

My vacation in Charleston was indeed wonderful. My journal didn’t quite capture it, though. If you’re interested in Charleston I would send you to the following Flickr group:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/charleston_sc/

I have but one regret about this trip: that I didn’t buy more stuff.