Post-Rant Recipe

So this is December. Finals have been finalized. Course evaluations have been completed. Frost was on the ground this morning, and I managed through one lonely night without my husband. We’ve found ourselves caught up in a whirlwind of Christmas music rehearsals, frequent excursions to Eugene, mismatched work schedules, LSAT testing, dinners out and dinners in, and often no dinner at all. And everything is perfectly wonderful. So wonderful in fact that I needed to use an adverb to describe the condition of the adjective. Though I’ve regretfully seen very little of my husband the past couple days, I rest in the glorious fact that we land in the same place tonight, will wake up early in the morning together, will carry on with what the day brings and will be ever aware of our rings wrapped about our fingers. This is most comforting.

Back to December. I’ll miss you, fall quarter. I find myself quite anxious for winter term to begin. I am looking forward to a plethora of excellent writing classes, and shall try earnestly not to pollute the poor blog with free writes and scratchy drafts - though I’ve already declared this space something of a venue. I, unlike many of my friends in this season of life, do not have senioritis. What I wouldn’t give to want to be done with school. I otherwise ignore my student loans that are increasing in number and spreading through my school and my presently untouched bank account like a parasite, waiting to rear its ugly head and sicken what I’ve saved. May the Lord deliver me from post-grad syndrome. I do love school, and love the things I’m learning. But as faith without action is dead, so learning without implementation is futile. I am a firm believer in the fact that an education can still be wasted even after it has been achieved. Mark, for example, graduated from the University of Oregon with a bachelor’s in music and jazz studies. He received a fine education, and is a highly accomplished jazz guitarist. He doesn’t necessarily (and thankfully) teach the theory in schools, nor does he tour the world in a bus with a band, or record 15-song albums that gather dust on the shelves at Borders. But he has taken his education and and let it permeate his very realistic, practical life. He teaches guitar lessons on Thursdays, remains faithful to his father’s Christmas program in Eugene, and allows me the sheer delight of listening to him pluck away on strings during quiet evenings at home. If he did nothing more than that, I am certain, it is an education well spent.

Anyway ... December. I was going to try to meal plan for the whole month, but seeing as that I am already a week behind, I really see no point. Mark always says he flies by the seat of his pants, so that is precisely the tact I am going to take with meal planning ;) But while on matters of food (and recalling the original purpose of this post), I was given a most delicious recipe for a chocolate chip pumpkin cookie I implemented today, and must share with you. The recipe follows, but do note: this cookie contains no nutritional value. Do not make yourself feel better by substituting raisins for chocolate chips. Do not try to use whole wheat flour. Do not adulterate the recipe in any way; you will compromise the profoundly delicious nature of the cookie.

P.S. If you need canned pumpkin, don’t go to Fred Meyer’s. They have a sign that reads: “Due to high demand for canned pumpkin, we are currently out of stock. Sorry for the inconvenience.” Yes, Fred Meyer, it was an inconvenience.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies - I halved the recipe for you, otherwise you’d be making 60 cookies .... which isn’t such a bad thing

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup (yes, one ENTIRE stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 1 large egg (eggs come in sizes?)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup canned pumpkin puree (carrots, believe it or not, work just as well)
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves (yuck.)
• 1 cup milk chocolate chips, NOT semisweet

Directions

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray cookie sheets with nonstick spray or line them with parchment paper. If you really wanted to be as good as Martha Stewart, you’d line them with parchment paper.

Using a mixer, beat the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, then mix in the vanilla and pumpkin puree. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. Slowly beat the flour mixture into the batter in thirds. Stir in the chips. Test the cookie dough several times to “make sure its not poison.” Scoop the cookie dough by heaping tablespoons onto the prepared cookie sheets and bake for 13-15 minutes, or until the cookies are browned around the edges. Remove from oven and let rest for 2 minutes. Take the cookies off with a spatula (or your bare hands) and cool them on wire racks. Makes 30 amazing, addictive, crowd-pleasing, gone-the-next-day cookies.

Today's Roast

I am so very hesitant to reveal the locale from which I write lest I only add to the artist’s starved and yet ever so dapper stereotype. Yes, I sadly admit, I am sitting in a Starbucks, writing. How very artsy-studious of me. How very chic. All the good writers seem to be inspired by their piping hot double-grande-mocha-vanilla-reduced-fat-lattes, Ella Fitzgerald lamenting cooly in the background, and the whole-bean-Sumatra-blend-disciples with wide framed glasses and Macbooks tilted casually in front of them. I think they must like the steam screeching through the espresso machines, like The New York Times in wrinkled piles near the door, like the milky circles on tables where the last meetings took place. Local artwork adorns the walls, lamps that look like spaghetti sauce suspended from the ceilings, and exercise groups and mom’s clubs and dental assistants gather in corners and talk over each other, over the espresso racket.

I am seated quite uncomfortably in my angular chair at my angular table, writing in an angular fashion on a place heavily frequented by people like myself ... yet not at all like myself. If I use sentences like, “... and the aroma of pumpkin spice and autumn rain outside the window makes me long for holiday festivities to begin” then, you see, I’ve succumbed to the conventional image of the “writer” found in a Starbucks cafe. But if instead I use sentences like, “... I chose this morning to be economic and bring my own beverage to Starbucks, withstand for a while the nauseating smell of breakfast sandwiches, try desperately to ignore the toddler staring blankly at me as he clearly crashes from a caffeine high, and offer my chair to the first person who appears to be wanting to stay”, then I’ve carefully set myself apart.

The goal here is not to write poorly of Starbucks, or to associate or disassociate myself from any particular writing “group”, or to suggest that I don’t enjoy a good cappuccino from this place every so often. I find the environment disturbingly a muse, my coffee gone cold, $1.59 left on my gift card...

Shower Cookies

I’m so proud of the dexterous man I married, I have to share this. My mom and I hosted Elizabeth Hanson’s church bridal shower on Tuesday evening. Trying my hardest to facilitate what little creative abilities I have, I sought the inventive flair of Ms. Martha Stewart, and borrowed her idea of the umbrella sugar cookie. It was, after all, a shower. When it occurred to me that it was going to be a challenge locating an umbrella shaped cookie cutter (its unlikelihood seemed impossible to me when I incidentally found a cookie cutter online in the shape of a fetus ... but we’ll save that for her baby shower), my husband proposed making one for me. A rainy trip to Home Depot for a scrap of sheet metal resulted in a fine piece of art. Well done, Mark, well done.

Days

My skis and I both know it’s snowing on the mountain. They can feel it on their waxed-up undersides, and I can feel it icy on my skin while the rain surges through the gutter outside our kitchen window. We could make rivers out of their muddy gush. There is pumpkin bread in the oven. My husband got his Italian shoes repaired today, and Elizabeth is getting married in six weeks. There has never been another November day like this one. Tomorrow the sky will be gray folding over layers of gray, used rain clouds and bursts of cold sun. I love that there will be different things about then, that won't be true of now. Happy seventh day of November.

Delight

As promised, I decided that today would be a good day to share some wedding pictures. (Facebook) We were blessed with a fantastic photographer who gave infinitely more than his artistic abilities that day - he gave a great deal of his time and energy, his patience and tremendous skill. Though he makes it appear so simple, I can only presume photography is a great deal more involved than he lets on.

These snapshots are, even now, far more valuable to me than I could have imagined. Nick captured moments of our wedding that I missed, that tradition didn’t permit me to see, and that years and years from now I can think fondly upon with images to accompany my memories. That is absolutely priceless.

The day was, as my dear married friends assured me it would be, the briefest and fullest whirlwind of hours that ever we would be swept into. Our anxious readying, our trembling hands, our giggles, our unsteady knees, our short bursts of squeals and momentary panic, our emotions and excitement and thousands of butterflies beating about in our stomaches all seemed to force the hands on the clocks to spin and make the sun set hastily on our wedding day.

Prior to, I was given a wealth of happy hints and gleeful counsel from people excited for Mark and I - things like “remember to eat something at the reception!” (not unless we wanted to feed the butterflies), and “don’t lock your knees!” (how could I? They were weak at the sight of my new husband), and “plan to feed more people than RSVP’d!” (Italian meatballs made: 800. Italian meatballs left over: 0).

But by far the best advice - the rawest, truest, most exhilarating statement made to me was just shortly after Mark and I became engaged. Our good friend Megan said to us once quite plainly but with a ripened wisdom, “at the end of the day, you’re married, and that’s all that really matters.”

I’m delighted Nick captured the details so that I didn’t have to, so that I could think about those words and purely enjoy the wed-ing of our wedding day.

Playing House

Gaye Haugen asked me this morning at church if I’ve been learning a lot of new things since I’ve been married. She smiled knowingly. I promptly answered in the sense that it still feels as though we are playing house. I contemplated the fresh and obvious plots I have to effectively take care of this home - the trivial little things that I’ve accomplished with small huffs of pride, somewhat-successful dinner experiments, and humble morning tasks like bed-making and the assembly of hasty breakfasts for two before work. These are miniature triumphs compared to the greater call to a new bride. Let me broaden my reply more thoroughly.

The new things I’ve been learning, Mrs. Haugen, are surely some of the most fascinating, electrifying, and profoundly mysterious lessons there are to be learned. I’m learning about the care and keeping of a husband. Oh, how little we knew as young girls playing “house”! How easy it was to dismiss our “husbands” to work all day while we “cooked” and “cleaned” and rocked our “babies” to sleep. When we played as such, our husbands never really came home. They didn’t have rough days or emotional needs or empty stomaches. Our invisible mates were simply too many characters to play at once, so we never explored their companionship. (I shall taunt the memories no further, lest I dissolve the beauty of being young ;).

Gone are my days of drinking imaginary tea from pink plastic cups, and shopping for cutouts of tomatoes, and swaddling sleeping dolls. I now long for the hour I know my husband is on his way home from work. My greatest pining is to invest time in him, and the result is a surplus of lessons learned far more valuable than home economics! Whether he is coming through the door or on his way out, there is required encouragement and love from his wife. Yes, I’m learning lots of new things. Proper housekeeping is the core of a functional and organized dwelling, but a vibrant, thriving marriage is the rich and fertile topsoil out of which grows an abundance of living. Without that, what good is it for me to know how to cook a chicken or clean a toilet?

I look to you and your marriage, Mrs. Haugen, as the result of one flourishing from a well-cultivated topsoil. And I admire it way it ripples and blesses the people in your community. That, I know without doubt, is one of the most spectacular calls on every marriage.

Underway

I learned three things today: that I hate starting things (blogs especially), that taking care of a husband is not rocket science, and that oatmeal crusted to a wooden spoon for three days will not just magically “come off” in the dishwasher.

But I do hate starting things. Drafts, essays, research, prose, journal entries, introductions, cover letters, critiques, epilogues. I hate the blank page and the way it lights up the screen, and the dull blinking of the impatient cursor, and the way the first sentence takes up an awkward amount of space. I’m not going to enjoy starting this blog, nor be proud of this first post suspended on the page by itself, not even big enough to illuminate the blue scroll bar. But I’m going to start it for people like Nancy Carlson, and Heidi Marineau, my writing professors, and my husband. Mark and I started something very suddenly a month ago today. There’s no easing into marriage, or testing the water a little, or trial memberships. It’s a headfirst dive into something that wasn’t, then all the sudden was. It’s wonderful. It’s rich. I loved starting that, and I can’t wait to write about it.

I will be entirely honest and declare I’m not positive what the purpose of this blog is going to be, but I imagine it will eventually have one. I imagine that it’ll be a place for lots of words - lots of adjectives, phrases, broken sentences. I plan on using clauses and fragments to my heart's content because after all, every writer knows the rules are meant to be broken. As I blot ink on the page I imagine that lessons might be shared here, because lessons I am learning daily. There are lessons in being married, and taking care of a home, and making decisions (like should we get out of bed this morning?), and no longer belonging to myself. The evening of September 12th I was swept up into this lovely whirlwind of starts. In one day I became a bride, a wife, a daughter-in-law, a sister-in-law, an auntie. I went from one bank account to two, from no bills to electric bills, from gallon milk to half gallon milk, from my bedroom to our bedroom, from alone to together. Everything had a distinct starting point from which I began to shape my new life with my husband. This is something we just started, and I think I’d like to have a place to write about it. Please do not anticipate frantic entries of experimental French cooking, or overly sentimental outpours of emotion in my hand-clasped wonder at the world of marriage, or embarrassing moments of sheer terror as I begin to discover all the unsightly things about myself that only someone as close as my husband could reveal in me. I’d like to think this place a narrative for lessons - an account of a very new marriage, a very new life, and very young people. It smells like a glorious concoction. :)