Glædelig Jul!

After a much needed 8.5 hours of sleep on Christmas Eve, I sat in my hospital bed enjoying the darkened silence of the room. I considered sleeping past 6:30, since this will be last opportunity to do so for many Christmases to come. At least another 10 or 15 years, by my conservative estimate. But I wasn’t sure I want to take advantage of that. Besides, stuck in a hospital room for weeks, I needed to have something to look forward to. Something to make me giddy. The last few weeks have been so weird - not living with my husband or dog, or even my cat!; taking everything one day at a time, grateful for each day that I'm still pregnant, particularly since I've had a few close calls, including one that canceled my baby shower (my last remaining hope for some activity or item resembling a "normal pregnancy”) and another last week that got me the closest to delivery I've been, yet. Nope. I chose to be giddy and rise early to celebrate. Even if it was just me in my bed for a few hours, before Honey came.

I listened to Christmas music on my laptop and thought of Christmases past. Until I was about 12, we'd spend Christmas Eve at my grandparents' house. All, or most, of my moms' siblings would come, so the house was throbbing with cousins. My family would go to our church's candlelight service, usually over by 6 or 6:30 and then join the festivities in progress at Grandma's. It was loud, fun and largely unstructured. We'd eat tamales, rice and beans and chow on deserts. The kitchen was a traffic circle. Around 8:30 or 9, we'd open gifts and things would wind down around 10:30 or 11, when the cousins would start to head to bed and we'd head back home. Sometimes, this ritual would be in Dallas, at one of my uncles' houses, but it was pretty much the same deal. Christmas morning was just for our immediate family, opening our own gifts and Mom would make quiche. Her annual Christmas quiche brunch. We were never a "Christmas dinner" kind of family. We were a Christmas brunch family.

I’m wondering what future Christmases will be like with the new little one. This time next year, our kid will be just shy of a year old, so we might be chasing his/her little waddling bottom out of the kitchen, while Honey bakes up dozens and dozens of delicious cookies and he and I make chocolate truffles together.

My sister-in-law lives nearby and we more often than not spend Christmas and/or Thanksgiving with her and her family.

Her kids are way older than ours: high school and entering junior high soon, so I’m not sure what kind of relationship this kid will have with them. We’ve never spent Christmas or Thanksgiving with Honey’s father, since we’ve been together, to my knowledge. We’ve done a few with his mom and a couple with my family. But nothing that really establishes tradition. I suppose we still have a few years to figure that out. I’d just really like our kid(s) to have fond memories of playing with cousins and singing carols and eating traditional foods that they have memories of watching us prepare and grow up to want to learn to make. You know: like I had! (Side note: I tasked my mother with getting my grandmother’s tamale recipe, so I can learn to make them for Christmases future. Honey has perfected her pico de gallo, so if I can just make a passable version of her tamales, maybe we can at least keep the Mexican Christmas dinner tradition going.)

This barely felt like a regular Christmas this year. Even though we got a foot of snow. (Almost none of which I could see from my hospital window, as it looks into a courtyard!) This Christmas, my every thought has been on the safety of the little creature growing inside me. This Christmas, my focus has been on staying pregnant for one more hour, one more day; knowing that each day, each week means a healthier baby. I have no emotional or mental room for anything else, frankly. Just keeping this kid safe and incubating. I have my own drama to worry about.

Normally, we’ve got the house decorated by early December, holiday music wafts throughout the house, the kitchen smells of sugar and butter as Honey is constantly baking. I’m writing our Christmas cards and mailing them out to loved ones. And we’re scrambling to get gifts for family (my least favorite part of Christmas – consumer “obligation”). This year, my hospital room has received most of the decorations (for which I am grateful), and the house, none, as Honey has taken to preparing the house for the arrival of our little winter babe. Even though I have a chunk of Christmas music on my laptop, I’ve not listened to it enough. Mostly because it’s awkward to fetch my laptop when lying from a 33 degree angle. We’d not been able to go any Christmas parties, holiday shows or movies of the season. We celebrated in our own way, though. And all things considered, this was one of the best Christmases I’ve had in a long time. Just because Honey is so fantastic and it reminds me what my priorities are. And the visits from friends I got on Christmas day just added a luster to the day that I won’t soon forget.

One thing we know for sure: next Christmas will be far different from this Christmas. We’ll be out in public again. The house will be decorated. The music will be playing and David Sedaris stories playing and the kitchen will smell of Honey’s magic. Christmas cards will go out (yes, probably with baby pictures in them). But there will be an extra energy in the house. An extra layer of happiness. And I have a feeling that once that happiness fills the house, we’ll struggle to remember what it was like without it. Kind of like how empty and slightly sad the house feels when our dog is not there. When Babydog is out for the night, I’m always sad a little, and struggle to remember what it was like without her joy filling the house. All I know is that our house wasn’t complete until she came along, even though we didn’t know it (okay I kind of knew it would be, having had dogs before). I suspect it’ll be the same with the kid. And we’re very much looking forward to discovering that unknown joy and rediscovering the joys of a celebrate season with this kid!

I hope Christmas, or your respective holidays found you happy and well this year. Have a fantastic 2010!

… and I apologize for not reading your blogs in a LOOONNG time. In addition to my general tendency to procrastinate, I’ve been limiting my laptop time in the hospital, so I’ve fallen waayy behind. I can’t promise I’ll catch up real soon, but I’ll try my darnedest!

Challenge to a true Thanks-giving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Largely, I think, because it is what I so want Christmas to be: a holiday centered on a feast, on gratitude, on family and friends and spending time with one another, undistracted by notions of material obligations. Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving an official national holiday during the Civil War because he felt it necessary that we should pause and give thanks for our many blessings even among (maybe especially among) our worst trials. That there are always things to be grateful for. This Thanksgiving is challenging me to actually focus on thanks; to live up to Mr. Lincoln's original intent.

This year I will be spending Thanksgiving in my hospital bed, with my wonderful husband by my side. I won't get to overstuff myself and then go sprawl on the couch and shoot the breeze with whatever family I'm surrounded by. I won't have my favorite pecan pie; the only dessert I anticipate is the pumpkin mousse the hospital will provide. Honey has the turkey ready and will bring it and some sides from Boston Market. We'll probably play a game on my computer and maybe a card game; watch a movie and just hang out. Sadness washed over me this afternoon around dinner time as my hospital dinner sat before me. All my family will be spending Thanksgiving surrounded by loved ones, except for me. My brother with his in-laws, my parents with aunts and uncles, my in-laws with Honey's extended family at a wedding in Texas we couldn't attend. And I haven't even left my side of the room since last Thursday. Last Thursday since I've crossed this curtain. I've had exceptionally high spirits since I arrived here 10 or 11 days ago, but they suddenly began to crumble when I pondered how different this Thanksgiving would be from all the others in my past.

I began to cheer up when Honey came by for his (near) nightly visit. Honestly, he's all I need. And it's only one Thanksgiving. Next Thanksgiving will be completely different. And what an extraordinary opportunity to really think about what I'm thankful for and offer genuine thanks for those blessings. It's better than do what I usually do, which is to give my blessings a perfunctory blip of a thought and then dive into the traditional meal!

So what am I thankful for this year? In no particular order:

• That we are going to have a baby.
• That the complications with this pregnancy have been spotted early enough to mitigate them.
• That we have a delivery plan for this baby in the face of these complications.
• That if, heaven forbid, we have to deliver this baby this week, it is viable and would most likely survive and hopefully, eventually, thrive.
• That I have wonderful doctors.
• That I have a great nursing staff.
• That I have the window side of the hospital room.
• That I have a friendly roommate.
• That we have so many generous and amazing friends who love Honey and me so much.
• That this child will probably be one of the most-loved in history when he or she arrives.
• That I have great health insurance. That I have insurance at all! (Seriously glad for this.)
• That I have, at most, another 7 weeks here. (There are other women on this floor here for far longer.)
• That I live in an area where great health care is available to me.
• That I have a dog at home who loves me.
• That Honey and I have loving families.
• That the baby, by all available standards, is healthy.
• That my health has stabilized.
• That the baby likes to have dance parties in the morning and random parkour practices during the day.
• That I'm just an elevator ride away from delivery if we have a genuine "must do now" emergency.
• That we have clothes for the baby to grow into, at home.
• That we got a dresser for free and a co-sleeper for a steal.
• That, despite my irritations with my job, I know they want to keep me on-tap, even though I don't qualify for FMLA. I feel less in the cold about that.
• That our domestic life is stable, safe and loving. It's easy to take that for granted until you hear the concerns of other women in OB-emergency worried about their partners.
• That I have had good spirits throughout this, so far.
• That I have time to nap during this third trimester when I really need it.
• That I got to have a great, refreshing rehearsal weekend retreat with my fellow performers right before the incident that landed me here.
• And mostly: That I have an incredibly loving and thoughtful husband who lives the definition of standing by your spouse "in sickness" as well as in health. He's had to do it several times in the last few years, and I just pray that I'm as good for him when it's him who needs me, as he has been for me.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

* photo courtesy earlycj5 via Flickr Creative Commons

Christmas Past, Christmas Present, Christmas Future?

Two years ago, Honey gave me my first digital camera for Christmas, a Cannon SD800 Elph, and I've run with it. I was never much of a photographer, but thanks to the miracle of digital photography, it's rapidly becoming a hobby of mine. I'm teaching myself how to compose shots. I have a photographer friend with whom, some afternoon I'm going to go on a photo safari, and at some point, I'd like to get a consumer copy of Photoshop so I can edit my work. Thanks to my new hobby, I've begun looking at the mundane with fresher, more curious eyes. It feels good.

One of the gifts I got for Christmas this year was an all-in-one printer/scanner/photo printer. I've taken all these wonderful photos, but they still live on my laptop, or in some cases, cyberspace. It would be fantastic to finally start framing some of them and dressing the very naked walls of our house. Yesterday, I spent about an hour and a half scanning old photos from my childhood. There are hundreds more to go, but I knocked out quite a few. Including some from Christmases past. The image on the right is one such photo. It's from 1988. (I'm the amber-mopped tomboy in the orange tie-dye shirt, near the center.) Our family flew down to Mexico City to spend the holiday with our many cousins there. It was the first time I'd been on a plane since I was pre-literate, and I remember being afriad to fly. Then the downing of PanAm 103 a day or two before our departure convinced me that our deaths were imminent.

It's inevitable this time of year that my thoughts turn to past Christmases and reviewing old pictures certainly aid the nostalgia. Christmas isn't as fantastical for me as it once was, and I'm trying to figure out why. It's not the Santa thing. I never believed in Santa. If not yet the why, I can at least pin down when Christmas started losing some of its pixie dust. Junior high.

1988 was probably the last truly exciting Christmas for me. I was 12. Before we flew to Mexico City, we stopped in Dallas to spend Christmas Eve with my mom's side of the family, like we did virtually every Christmas Eve. I played with my cousins, we ate the tamale dinner Grandma fixed us, watched whatever Christmas special was on TV, played board games, unwrapped presents ... Christmassy stuff. When we got to Mexico, the party really began. At my cousin Carlos' church, we played with no-bullshit pinatas; no papier mache Sesame Street characters. These pinatas were star-shaped, with shells made of terra-cotta and filled with sugar cane and peanuts. And they were massive. And there were many. When a piece of pinata pottery fell on my brother's head, he sought my mom's arms for comfort until he realized that every other kid was getting beaned by breaking pinatas, and went back in. Pinatas are not for the permission-slip happy American weak in Mexico. For days we were surrounded by family. We ate good meals every night. There was laughter everywhere. The gifts we got were either homemade - like the crocheted clown doll my aunt made me - or typically Mexican-craft like the leather purse I got. I was introduced to new traditions like Dia de los Tres Reyes and la rosca. The former is also known as Epiphany or Three Kings Day, the traditional 12th day of Christmas when the wisemen's visit is celebrated. La Rosca is the bundt-like cake served on January 6, though we did ours early, on the first (we ate several, come to think of it); a baby charm is placed in the cake and whoever gets it has good luck. In Mexico City, I was tickled to discover that for every kiosk set up on the city square with Santa offering to listen to Christmas wishes, there were two or three kiosks of the magi offering to do the same. Christmas is when you get your little gifts, there; Epiphany is when you get your "real" gifts. It's something we kind of adopted when my family went broke. Our gifts were never huge to begin with - a cassette from a band I liked was usually the extent of it - but extending the gift-giving until Epiphany bought my family a little time time to buy on sale. 1988 was a Christmas brimming with non-stop celebration. It was the last one I can remember like that.

Within a month, we'd moved across the state; Dad had entered the ministry full-time (an overall great move for him, but a damper on Christmas from then out) and there was no doubt about it: puberty had completed its angsty takeover of my body. From a celestial high to a rocky low. There are many things I like about Dad being a minister: he's a good preacher; he's a great listener and a wonderfully sympathetic man; it's his passion; he's knowledgable about context (and thus not literalist). However, the one thing I really don't like about him being a minister is that he's tied to whatever church he's serving for Christmas Eve.

When I was 13, I was devastated to learn that we would not get to drive up to the panhandle or to Dallas to spend the evening with mom's entire family as I had every Christmas Eve of my life until that point. We had to stay put for our church's candlelight service. I love Chistmas Eve candlelight services. After all the happy songs, the readings and prayers, when the lights go down and the sanctuary is filled with scores of tiny flickering flames and we're all singing "Silent Night" and then the accompanist stops so that we're all just singing a capella ... damn, there are few things finer. But to be compelled to stay? Couldn't this church just wing it without a minister for Christmas? Come ON! Christmas EVE! WTF?

From then on, Christmas became less magical. The songs in school, the games and the family hoopla began disappearing. We had to stay put, so Dad could preside over Christmas Eve services and we lived in such a remote part of the state that no one ever came to visit us for the holiday. (Which made me mad, as we often piled into the car on Christmas morning to drive 10 hours across the state to Dallas. Only to miss half the cousins, as they'd all returned home; and to miss the tamales, as they'd all been eaten. Why couldn't they reciprocate?) Christmas 1993 was a lovely anomaly, however, because 8 or 9 of our Mexican cousins came up and partied with us in our burg. They visited for a week. We spoke so much Spanish in the house that I actually dreamt in Spanish. (Era fantastico!)

These days, we have no set family gatherings with our extended families. His sister lives nearby, so we often visit her family. But I often feel something just one-off is missing. Our nephews have no cousins with which to play, so they either disappear to play on the computer or whine for attention. We adults don't play board games; we just talk about work and life and it's just ... a visit. My family lives in Texas, and with Dad unable to travel due to ecclesiastical duties, it's incumbent upon us to visit if we're to celebrate Christmas together - which we've only done once in the 10 years Honey and I've been Christmassing together. But even there, my brother just watches football and we just ... visit. No music and merriment. Honey's parents live on the West Coast. Sometimes they come out for Christmas or we go there, but it's just ... a visit. Once we played poker with his dad and nephews, and frankly that afternoon saved Christmas for me. It was so good to play something. My brother is marrying a girl from Wisconsin. He's up there now. She wants to never spend Christmas away from her family, so I have no idea if we'll ever get to see him for the holiday again. Which sucks. The older I get, the more disconnected I feel from family fun. Even when we see family, it seems so chaotic and not as cheerful as it used to be. I really, really miss playing boardgames with aunts and uncles. I miss the tamale buffet. I miss the cheesy holiday TV shows playing in the room where the kids are (ahem, please not around the adults). I miss poorly banging out "Joy to the World" on whosever piano is available. I think it's time to start some new more mobile Christmas traditions that bind us together. But I don't quite know which or how.

Honey and I have an accidental tradition of listening to David Sedaris read his "Santaland Diaries," either as we trim the tree or on Christmas Eve. Maybe I'll learn to make tamales like Grandma and insist on that wherever we go. Or maybe insist on more boardgames or puzzles. I love boardgames at Christmas. Christmas, for me, is about three big things: glittery cultural accoutrement, the breathless anticipation leading up to Christmas morning, and cozying up to family and enjoying eachother. Each feels like they're falling shorter as I grow older. I want to learn how to get the magic back.

Chocolate Nutballs - The Recipe

Apparently, I made a few mouths drool with the talk of my chocolate nutballs and their picture. I've gotten requests for the treats themselves - only one of which I honored, because she happened to be in my kitchen and knows I'm easily overpowered - but I think Joe had the best idea: post the recipe.

For the last 5 or 6 years, I've been on Texas Monthly's weekly recipe list. Of the scores, if not hundreds of recipes I've gotten in that time, I think I've attempted only two or three. This recipe is one of them, reprinted here, complete with the text from the email, but the links are not hot:

You’ll find more recipes online at texasmonthly.com. You can also share recipes and food questions with other TEXAS MONTHLY readers at the Recipe Swap.

Chocolate-Grand Marnier Truffles

Recipe from Sierra Grill, Houston.

1 1/4 cups heavy cream
16 ounces Nestlé semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup Grand Marnier or Bailey’s Irish Cream
Zest of 1/2 orange 1 1/2 cups pecans, ground or finely chopped

In a heavy, nonreactive pan bring cream to a boil. Immediately remove from heat and stir in chocolate and butter until smooth. Add liqueur and orange zest and chill overnight. Shape into 3/4-inch balls and roll in pecans. Makes 6 dozen.

****************

After my first attempt, I hesitate to call what I made truffles. Hence, labeling them chocolate nutballs (because I am nothing if not mature and referential). The consummate engineer, Honey had a good idea to help me create more attractive treats that I'd be proud to call truffles and not "nutballs." He suggested that instead of rolling them between my palms like I'd do modeling clay, that instead I seek some silicon mold of half-spheres - like a novelty ice-tray - and let the chocolate chill in that. Then when it's all chilled, marry the spheres together, maybe with a little water at the seam. Since I'll be out and about today, maybe I'll swing by Sur la Table and see what they've got in that vein.

With only half the chocolate mix, I believe I made about 55 balls, following the 3/4-inch ball rule. After Darla made off like a bandit with about two dozen of them, Honey decided we needed to make them bigger and rolled the rest of the chocolate into balls about 1.5" to 2" in diameter, mixing them not only with nuts, but with confectioners sugar. Good idea. Since these balls are bigger, they're more satisfying and I, for one, am less tempted to mindlessly pop one in my mouth as I am when they're smaller.

Though we had Bailey's at home, I opted to use Grand Marnier because it gave me an excuse to buy it. Insted of Nestle, I used Ghirardelli 60% cocoa, because we had a few bags of that lying around. I grabbed another bag of the Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet and a bag of their milk chocolate when I was at the grocery store Wednesday. I'll try those next. When I feel like I've gotten the process down pat, I'll try darker cocoa, white chocolate, fair trade chocolate, rum, kahlua, cordials that a friend brought me from the Caribbean: all sorts of variations until I'm known as the truffle-lady .... not just a little nuts.

What's Molly Dreaming Now? Edition 8

I slept harder last night than I had done in relatively recent memory. Here is the journey I took through the sandman's world:

I had dinner with Tina Fey. She and I were eating massive sandwiches and I was talking to her about my recent health issues and how I'm still trying to cope with those, physically and emotionally. The ear she lent me was completely sympathetic. Poor thing was basically my therapist over hoagies.

Then I dreamt that I was at home with Honey, but we were in an apartment from which we would be moving soon. Our apartment looked like a larger version of one of my childhood bedrooms. I ventured into our kitchen and discovered we were hosting a sorority reunion (Kappa something or other), which was particularly interesting since I was never in a sorority and Honey scorns collegiate social fraternities. I didn't mind so much except that they had brought all these fantastic cream puffs, vegetable platters and liquor and it was all off-limits to me. In my own kitchen! They weren't even going to leave any leftovers with us! Ugh. One of the sorority sisters was a girl I went to high school with, Leah. Leah looked fantastic and had a great job and a little daughter and was happy. ... I still just wanted some puff pastries.

Then I was at work. What my job was was not entirely clear, but it did involve rolled fondant and it took for-e-ver! I was chugging along and chugging along and chugging along and when I finally looked at the clock, it was 4AM. I had been at work for 19 hours! The sun was beginning to paint the black sky periwinkle. I decided it was time to go home and sleep for a few hours ... because there would still be work to do in the morning. More fondant to roll, or whatever. And the staff I was working with was still plugging along. No one was quite sure when to leave.

Normally, when I post a dream, I'm a bit befuddled by my dream and want to hear if any readers have any thoughts as to what the dream "means." This time, I have no doubt.

Tuesday night, I had dinner with my best friend from high school, who was in town on business for a few days. She mentioned that some of my quirks reminded her of Liz Lemon, Tina Fey's character on 30 Rock. She agreed with Honey's assessment of me, in an imagined alternate choice-path, living as Liz Lemon. Why the apartment and why the sorority reunion in my kitchen, I still don't know. Why the denial of food? Still unclear to me, but I LOVE food, so maybe I'm feeling deprived of something and it's manifesting itself in my dreams as happy, sweet, puffy food. But I know exactly why I dreamt the third part of my dream: I am working lots of long hours, lately.

We've got a massive project at work, which will churn on for at least another 6 weeks, for which my average day has become 10 to 10.5 hours long, frequently longer. Yesterday was about 11 and a quarter hours, about 11 and 3/4 if you include the time I left my front door to the time I returned. This has been going on since about mid-June and will continue till early October, if I'm lucky. I'm feeling very stressed out; I'm not getting paid any extra and though I've finally been given responsibilities commensurate to my experience and capabilities, as well as delegation authority, my title still languishes in the dusty entry level.

I'm a zombie. I haven't been reading half of the blogs I normally keep up with - not because I'm not interested, but because I'm exhausted. I have to make appointments to leave at a decent hour (6PM) just so I can have a life or get home to feed my dog on time. And even then, it raises the eyebrows of my superiors, like I'm a slacker. I really like what I do but I detest that I can't have dinner with my husband every night, or that if friends want to meet at 7 for drinks I can't promise I can make it.

I'm feeling really stuck. Family is vital to me. I want to have dinner (preferably before 7) each night with my husband, just like we used to, just like my family did when I was growing up. Outside interests are vital to me. If I have a rehearsal at 7:30, I don't want to have to feel like an asshole for leaving at 7, or 6:30 or 6 or 5:30! Or even if I just want to go to a play or a movie. But, it's not just my office, it's like this anywhere in my line of work. In fact, my office is probably on the better side of work/life management for my industry, so I'm not sure looking elsewhere would improve the balance. I really love my line of work, though. Even though this particular project has a terminus, the time-stress will continue. Maybe not 11 and 12 hour days - though, why should I complain when everyone in this area works those hours in every industry, because we are all hyper-acheivers - but the stress of feeling like an asshole for leaving on time or at a reasonable hour.

I'm between a rock and hard place, I think. I love what I do. I hate that it impedes my real life. I despised my last long-running office. It was an insult to my intelligence and my creativity. It accounted for 70% of the reason I went to grad school - anything to keep the synapses firing. But I was out by 5PM, sharp. This job insults neither (though I'm not a fan of our products, per se), but the dinner hour is ruined.

So sorry to be dour. So sorry I haven't checked your blogs in a long, long time. Maybe in October?

Pup-cake

Sonnjea, over at Koji's Kitchen, always ends her posts with WMML, or "what made me laugh." Often, it's some antic that her dog Koji did during the day. Last night, we had a moment that made me think I should add a WMML tagline to my posts.

We have lots of reasons to eat cake in our house. Mine and Honey's birthdays and wedding anniversary, as well as Memorial Day and 4th of July all fall within roughly a 10 - week period. Plus, cake is a good thing and sometimes you just need cake*. We had cake last night and we indulged ourselves with a second helping late in the evening as we settled in to watch a movie in the den. Babydog, who often licks our plates clean if she's been good, was treated to Honey's leftovers. I took my time with the second piece. An entire second piece was just too much for me, so I scraped about half the icing to the edge of my plate, ate a bit of the cake and ate the other half of the icing. Babydog watched this all eagerly. I put her on a down-stay and then released her. She eagerly lapped up as much of the icing as she could and ate some of the cake. I took the plate away from her, so she wouldn't overdo it, and left her smiling.

Then, we watched something we'd never seen in our dog. Babydog had a sugar-high. She was grinning from pointy ear to pointy ear, panting. Her eyes were wide. She trotted over to Honey, sitting in his recliner, then over to me on the sofa. She'd jump up on the sofa with me and pace the length and come and pant and smile in my face. Then she'd jump off and then on again. Several times, she jumped up and climbed over the pillows to peer over the back of the sofa, like a kid who climbs monkey bars. She'd look over the edge and smile at us widely then jump off the way she came. Then she'd jump back up to peer over the back of the sofa again, pondering whether she could jump from a place so high - akin to a 10 or 12-foot jump to you and me, I suppose. She never did it. But she was so smiley and fidgety that Honey and I had to stop the movie to laugh at her. I half expected her to start saying, "you know what? you know what? you know what? you know what? I can curl my tongue." Or even better, " you know what? you know what? you know what? I can count to 200 by 5s; wanna hear?" I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd have climbed to the arm of the sofa and started belly flopping into the middle of the cushions or if she'd have started playing "the floor is lava."

That is what made me laugh.

*Cake is a large part of the reason we are married to begin with.

**note: The image above is not, in fact, Babydog. I just grabbed a picture off the "series of tubes" of a corgi eating cake. I accidentally left my camera at a friend's house during 4th of July festivities, so I didn't get to capture Babydog's mania. My friend promised I should receive my camera again, soon, with a few jokey pictures included. The last time I entrusted her with my camera, I found she'd taken a snapshot of hers and another mutual friend's cleavage.