Tuesday, and other holy things

I am so relieved to have fellow bloggers looking out for me. For example, without Danelle over at Outnumbered, I might not have known that this is National Cookie Month. (Warning: she has photos over there...photos of cookies...lots and lots of cookies!) Obviously my mixer knew, and that is why it called to my daughter to get baking the other day. I still don't know exactly what that means, but am pretty sure I can come up with a few of my own ideas to celebrate. I imagine there should be homemade cookies available all month long (and since I got a late start, I will carry this through the first seven days of November.) If you don't bake, you should probably ask a neighbor, as no doubt they wouldn't want to crush your hopes and dreams of a proper celebration. Bring the kids along if you think there is even a slight possibility of rejection, just to seal the deal. If you strike out, if you need an absolute last resort, I am your gal. I am a giver like that. There should be lessons in diversity and tolerance for all different types of cookies this month. You might think that you don't like walnuts, but really once they are surrounded by other crumbly goodness, you might be surprised. Maybe lemon is not your thing, but are you really so small that you can't gobble down one little cookie? Show baked goods some respect! 

OK, speaking of tolerance, I have no issue with religions that are not my own (although lately I do have issues with the religion that is, in fact, my own). However, these two signs I passed outside of churches last week just didn't sit right with me. Maybe Jesus, and his dad, are suddenly snarkier than I like to imagine, or of course, maybe it's just me...

Put out that fire? How does he roll?

I got nothing here.

I saw this at a bar stuck to a table. She never did show up that night, that I saw. Perhaps there was a crystal ball incident.

Is this an acceptable color combination these days? Maroon and red? Are the red pants stylish? Oh my gosh, I have been out of the work force for so long, I might have to wear a housecoat (with heels, as I have some class) and plead temporary insanity when I do go back.

Hopefully my son's trigonometry homework is done now, and it is safe for me to go back out to the kitchen. I don't even like to look at it! 

Be a smart cookie and go visit Stacy!

In the mix

As I was hauling the KitchenAid mixer out of the pantry closet, I stopped to think, and not just about how many toes I could break at one time if I dropped that thing. I reflected back to the years when that mixer occupied a prominent place on the kitchen counter. The number of times I whipped up batches of cookies, justified the loss of counter space. Cookies...usually chocolate chip.

Cookies were the answer...no matter the question. They made me a good guest, a decent hostess and a fun mother. What to bring to playgroup? Chocolate chip cookies at 10:00 a.m.? Why certainly. We'd been up long enough to justify a little chocolate and enriched flour. There'd be plenty of time later in the day for fruit. I wasn't going to show up at playgroup with a basket of produce. An impromptu invite for lunch? Well if someone was making me a meal, even if that meal was a turkey sandwich, the least I could do was provide dessert. I could turn out a respectable amount (by that I mean that a portion of batter always stayed in the refrigerator at home so that I could be gracious and not devour an obscene amount of cookies, knowing more were waiting for me at home) of Tollhouse wonders in thirty minutes, getting dressed and brushing teeth and hair in between batches. If I anticipated higher maintenance needs before heading out, Tollhouse bars that could go in the oven all at once, and straight to the car from the oven with no cooling in between. 

One woman once commented that if she was in the mood for homemade baked goods, all she had to do was invite me over, knowing I would not show up empty handed. Let's face it, there were times in a young stay at home mother's life that some staples out of the baking cupboard, and a mixing bowl to clean, were well worth an afternoon of adult conversation. So yes, even if you were just after my cookies, the invite was greatly appreciated. If there were (okay, are) going to be hungry children at my house for lunch, and peanut butter and jelly was all that I had on hand, I firmly believed warm cookies made up for a lackluster meal. In some small delusional part of my mind, I guess I believed that all of the other mothers were asking the same drill of questions on the way home from a playdate regarding the intricacies of how time was spent and whether or not there was a grand lunch buffet. Furthermore, I obviously figured my fresh from the oven cookies would absolutely make it into that conversation.

Cookies were for celebrating or for comforting or just because. If I needed the baked goods to look extra special, I would throw the dough on the pizza stone for one giant cookie. Plus, some frosting piped around the edge made it a cookie cake suitable for birthdays even! This worked really well...at least the times I remembered that my cookie stone nicely accommodated half a batch of batter. There was just one time when I forgot and ended up with a flaming ring of dough burning away in the bottom of my oven. The half that stayed on the stone was unharmed, and the sound of the smoke detector and vision of all that smoke never let me forget what portion to use ever again. If someone's pet died, there was a decent chance of chocolate chip cookies arriving at their door as there had to be small small morsel of comfort mixed in with the semi-sweet ones. It was so simple to add flair to a dreary day just by shouting the words "The cookies are ready!" The just because batches held their own near and dear place, often times when all other crafting options had lost appeal, or maybe just a mother's craving. A snack and an activity? Sure, pull up a chair!

Much like the loaves of zucchini bread one might fashion near the end of a grand harvest to use things up, you will find cookies here a couple weeks after Halloween. At some point we just realize a significant dent is not being made in the stash. It becomes no longer enough to just eat the Snicker bar, and it needs more oomf...especially if you are going to call it a proper snack (or breakfast).

Let's face it, everybody has their preference when it comes to the perfect chocolate chip cookie, and it is usually the cookie of their youth. Crispy, thick, chewy, cakey? I will never turn down a homemade chocolate chip cookie. (There was that one year I gave them up for lent...not happening again. You can't imagine how many opportunities, that i had to decline, arose in those forty days.) That is not to say that I enjoy them all the same. I used to love my own cookies. They were soft, thick and cakey, made with margarine. There was comfort in the consistent manner in which I could produce fine results. I had a couple of followers who enjoyed them as well (none of which were my husband who grew up with his mom's crunchy cookies). Then I got mixed up with some crowds chanting about butter being the best to bake with and hydrogenated oils and other banter. I cast aside my sticks of margarine and stepped over to the butter side, and cookies I didn't like as well. My daughter doesn't even remember the cookies the way I once baked them (I think as long as they have chocolate in them, she is good), and the son has a vague recollection.

There is a new baker in the house now. When she first transformed from being happy with whatever ingredients I let her pour, into having more of an understanding about truly participating in the process, I was a little annoyed at times to have such messy dawdling help. I had to remind myself that it was about the process for her, just as much as the end result. Now I try to remove myself from the kitchen completely as she needs to chalk up that independent success. When she announced she was bored this afternoon, I told her she could make cookies. I smiled as I saw her bring her brother a little handful of chips like I always did for the two of them. She also brought him his fresh from the oven portion. I inquired as to why I got no chips and no cookie offered, and her response was that I could get my own. (Truth be told, I had already helped myself to both. Maybe next time I will have some sort of manners willpower and she will wait on me...HA!)

Just a couple of unrelated cookie items...as if this post hadn't already taken on a life of its own, and may or may not have covered where I initially intended for it to go:

I remember having the day off from school as a teen, and my mother leaving me a note to make some spritz cookies to put in the freezer for the upcoming holiday. I am sure I had something really awesome planned, like a day of watching MTV, that I was bummed to have interrupted. I guess I thought if I showed my displeasure I would not have such a ridiculous request bestowed upon me again, so I made some of the dough pink and some purple. Hindsight is 20/20 in that a happy mother returning from work would've been better than my being a smartass.

My son was less interested in adding ingredients to the bowl than his sister, and was happier to dig in the flour container. Sometimes the angle a long spoon projected flour at was not optimal. I didn't get the camera in time to catch the actual glob of flour before it avalanched off his face. I absolutely tended to him as soon as the shutter snapped.

Age 4

Now go bake yourself some cookies, or invite me over!

52 Weeks of Happiness - Week 30

The apples, the cider, the long sleeved shirts, the Halloween decorations...yay! Autumn makes me happy!

I even planted mums this year...as in dug a hole in the ground and put the mums in, as opposed to letting the buckets just sit there, or just submerging the buckets in the dirt, thinking I have some master plan for putting them in the garage for the winter. (A plan that never fully hatches mind you.) I am happy that the buds are opening.

It made me happy to have a helper when it came time to haul out the decorations. We were both overwhelmed by the number of bins that mysteriously found their way into our basement last year. Did the neighbors put their Halloween flair in our storage area? Nope, it's all ours...complete with her Royal Pumqueen!

This witch makes me happy, so she greets us in the front hall.

There is always room for someone new...Thanks Mom! This new pumpkin head makes me happy. So much so, that I might have run out and bought his friend to sit with him.

Well don't just sit there! Tell us what made you happy this week!

Blog-jacking!

Oh hey there! You might've come here looking for Andrea and her 52 Weeks of Happiness post, but alas, it's me, Fozzie, and I am taking over to share some things I am rather unhappy about!

This is me, fresh from the salon. Those ladies at the Chatty K-9 know how to treat a man! They don't bother me with sissy bows, instead I got this bad-ass biker scarf. (No, it is absolutely not a neckerchief or an ascot.) I came home smelling all manly and natural...in other words, gross. I went looking for my bedding to get some of that good stink back on myself, only to find that Andrea had confiscated my stuff, mumbling something about the washing machine. She is so rude! So far the only retaliation I have been able to successfully achieve is waking her up two nights in a row at 1:30 to let me out. Seriously, I could've sent my laundry out to the cleaner with quicker results. A nasty clean smelling bed is better than no bed. So that right there goes on the unhappy chart - having my stuff messed with!

It also makes me unhappy when these people think they are funny. Obviously these are not the kinds of bones I find delightful.

(Pre groomer)

In other unhappy news, Halloween is just around the corner. As if it isn't bad enough that I get no candy, that woman insists on adding insult to injury by dressing me up. Dracula? I couldn't even look at her...

She knows that putting any sort of clothing on my frame makes it virtually impossible for me to move. I mustered up all of the intimidation I could and gave her this look...

...you can be sure she took that silly thing off of me, pronto...as soon as she snapped some photos (to document how vicious I am) and stopped laughing (at a joke she earlier in the day I believe).

I am going to go look for a dirty tissue to chew on to cheer myself up.

Just a bit of Random

Well, here it is October! Time to get out the long sleeved shirts, oh except for tomorrow, when the forecast is calling for eighty degrees...humpf! Enough about that before I get my sinuses in a royal tizzy.

The husband and I went to open house at the middle school last night. We were treated to the worst psychic show ever, as the math teacher tried to figure out whose parents she was looking at. "Your eyes, your eyes look familiar," and it just got more uncomfortable from there, as she was unable to figure out the first six people she tried. When she got to us I asked if she'd just like me to tell her who my child was to save her the trouble. That was a "yes". Please note the sign we saw later on our way out...

Um, have you smelled middle school aged girls after a decent workout? Are they expected to change in the hall?

See that speck in the middle of the photo?

That is the loaf of bread I had just brought home, and THAT is one of the two bugs that was flying around inside of it. Guess I didn't need the lunch meat! GROSS!

I had to pull the car right over to photograph this marvel in lawn ornament overachiever-ness!

On that note, because really...how do you follow that?

Thanks for hosting the Random, Stacy!

Roots

My grandfather passed away when I was twenty-one, two weeks after I graduated from college. This was before it occurred to me to look outside of myself and peer group for things that might have been interesting. Each of us has such a rich history that we are often missing opportunities to find out about. Day to day stuff seems to trump all. There is so much to sift through. All at once it feels like everything matters, or so overwhelming that none of it does. I have some very vivid snapshot memories from when I was a kid, but sometimes am missing how the whole tale fit together or where it started. Sometimes it is such a welcome spot in a hectic day to hear a story that just stands on its own, presented in a way that all we have to do is listen. Luckily, a lot of times, all you have to do is ask the right person the right question...thanks Dad!

When my grandfather turned 16, in 1928, it was time to get to work. He initially wanted to be a stone mason, but that had an unpaid apprenticeship and several levels to work through to be on the job. The next logical choice was to attend barber school? The training in Fordham was quick, they then practiced on balloons using single blades, then progressed to paying folks living on the street to be practice heads. After achieving success, it was off to work in an actual shop. The standard order of the day at a barber shop was a shave and a haircut.

My grandfather soon realized that there was more money to be made at a beauty parlor due to the diversity of requests. After finishing beauty school (no drop out here) in Manhattan, in his twenties, he went to competitions to see what sorts of things were going on in the beautician world. Haircuts were not the rage among women in that day, but color and styling were. He did win some awards at the competitions and had started to mix his own dyes. At that time, women were trying to get their hair dyed close to their natural colors, and without the colorwheels and do it yourself kits of today, it took some professional doing to get a decent match.

I never really thought about who was actually going to my grandfather's shop, that he co-owned with a woman named Sally, back in the day. My father explained that, on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, there were three levels of customers. First, working women who just needed to maintain their hairdos went to the shop. Due to the shop's location in a wealthy area, relative to the rest of the Bronx, where many of the men went to work daily in Manhattan, there were wives who could afford to have standing regular appointments. Finally, there were everyday people who were customers when special events arose that they wanted to spruce up for. Thursdays and Fridays were the busiest days in anticipation of the weekend. They accommodated these people's schedules and requests often working from 7:00a.m. until 11:00 p.m. on those days. The wash and set was the most popular - big hair with spray, and color. It also became clear that most women liked to have their hair done by men, so a second man was hired and worked his entire career at the shop. While makeup was not available on a grand scale, they started carrying it at the shop.

On my grandfather's sixty-second birthday, he put the shop on the market. He and my grandmother left soon after for what had been their summer place in Brewster, NY. This is where my stronger memories start to kick in. My grandfather set up a shop in the downstairs of the house. One of the things I remember most about my grandfather being a hairdresser was the sort of bronze colored plastic bottle of hair dye, with the pink top, that was always speckled with some very dark indigo. Silver Fox was the name of the color. My cousin and I thought it was so funny that these women wanted blue hair, as we were not sold on the concept that the end result would really be a silvery gray. Another fond memory was riding the swivel chair that he had. Seriously, how long could two six year olds be amused by spinning around in a chair that also had the ability to raise and lower? Quite awhile, apparently. I still feel nostalgic at the salon when the foot release lets that audible bit of air out, causing the chair to lower.
 
I remember some joking and mumblings about my grandfather's scissor works when it came to us kids. I also remember being a rather unhappy young teenage girl heading upstairs after my turn in the chair. His cutting technique was always the same, and what worked for one cousin, worked for the next. I never stopped to wonder why his skill with his regular customers did not seem to be translating onto my head. Of course, I have also led a lifetime of wanting my hair to magically arrange itself in styles it is not meant to take on. Now when I stop to think about the era my grandfather was successful in, I realize that people weren't very often doing things like growing their hair out, only to get it all chopped off the following year. He was very current for his customers, who were not typically under thirty years old. When I think back on the older women I knew as a kid, they looked the same for the duration.
 
During my grandmother's illness, my grandfather became very adept at washing and styling hair for people who were unable to get out of bed. He brought his skills to the hospital where he volunteered for over ten years earning his 5,000 hour pin. He also made house calls, and still welcomed customers into the magic chair downstairs. Often men and women from the hospital and/or their spouses became regular customers.
 
My father can sometimes be heard commenting on someone's hair style or color, while mentioning that he was the son of a hairdresser. I admit that I am not in full support of there being any sort of genetics behind having a keen eye for coiffures. Case in point, this granddaughter of a hairdresser recently realized she bought the wrong color temporary hair dye and was too lazy to exchange it, and decided hiding the gray was more important that having the rest of her hair a desirable color. There are a few posts I could direct you to that would further display my deficient cosmetology skills. It warms my heart to know that this would not have disappointed my grandfather, as he had a fine sense of humor and a kid's playful spirit. He would be laughing with me.

Andrea: 2 1/2...Grandpa: 60, yet timeless

52 Weeks of Happiness - Week 29

Remember how my trip to the apple orchard this year suffered a slight ding when the Fritter Shack was closed? Well, it made me very happy this week when my husband came home with a bag of STILL WARM fritters!

It is funny to think of how hot those delights usually are as we try to eat them on the spot, considering the ride home was over a half hour. 

He had been refereeing a football game a few miles down the road from the orchard. To make his trip worthwhile though, he bought more fritters than the three I would typically get for my son and I to share. Yes, I used poor judgement in just how many of them I ate, which was on top of the poor judgement I used while stuffing chocolate in my face before my surprise arrived. Oh, but I was still happy...make no mistake! I was happy again the next morning when I reheated the two leftovers in the toaster.

I was also happy to be thought of, I must admit!

Thanks Leigh for hosting the happy every week!