Area mom loses, then finds, then serves amazing cookies

I can't say that there hasn't been anything going on, but I can say that, after the kids fall asleep, I really enjoy some nonverbal time late at night.  When the kids aren't talking, arguing, asking questions, barking orders, crying, yelling, etc., I'd much rather knit.

And it's easier to put down knitting, tend to a crying child--as I did just now, HERE, mid-sentence--than it is to return to something that requires verbal thought like, say, a sentence. Where I live, right now, is where the  mind meets the mundane.

Sometimes, though, like last Thursday, the daily routine becomes punctuated by a moment of grace. Often these miracles involve toilets or moving vehicles. Last Thursday's mini-miracle did, in fact, involve a car, but it did not hinge on seat belts, or safety, for that matter. But it was my fault for putting the cookies from Ezra's preschool teacher on top of the car.

I am the last person in the world you need to tell about not putting things on top of a car. I never, ever do this, because every time I do--which is so rare--every time, I forget whatever it was, until, oh, hours later. ....It will always end like that. But I was trying to insert three kids, the coats they had shed, two bags, and three melty cookies into the Golf. It's a two-door.  Onto the roof they went.

So when we got home from preschool and Elliott asks, "Can we have our cookies now?" I can hear, in my mind, something like the sound of air leaving a tire. Shhhhhh......Damn it, I think. I know exactly where those cookies were....

My failure to bring them home safely was not just my failure of my own kids--they love cookies, for sure, and these were Unexpected Cookies, even. In my own mind, I had failed Ezra's preschool teacher, because she is the most incredible preschool teacher ever. She had thought of Elliott, Ezra, and Ruth, and had made sure they had leftover cookies from Ezra's Teddy Bear Picnic. I had thoughtlessly left them on top of the car on the way home.

"Do you want to go back to try to find them?" I ask.
"Yes!"
Sure. It's 3:45 on a Thursday. Why not?

And so we go. I'm sure we can trace the three miles back to preschool, and I'm sure we'll see traces of a white napkin and three bear-face cookies. It seems crazy, but I'm sure we'll find them.

We get only three blocks from the house. There they are, sitting in the road at the edge of our neighborhood. Face-up. Uncrushed. Two were stuck together, thanks to the chocolate chips and the frigid weather. One was a little crumbly, but all were right there, in the intersection, waiting for us. The napkin is still wrapped beneath them. I jumped out, checked traffic, picked them up, and hopped back in.

The cookies must've slid off the roof so gently as I made the right turn that they just landed right there, as if placed by an invisible hand. The kids were amazed, but not as much as I was. To them, it made sense. We went back and we picked them up. They didn't understand the odds involved, the physics, the crumble, the luck.

"Did you eat them?" my brother Jimmy asked later when I retold the story on the phone.
"Of course we did," I answered. "What do you mean, 'did we eat them?' How could we not?"

On the day you were born

On the day you were born, your mother might well have been happy--maybe ecstatic--but she probably wouldn't have admitted, "Hey, I'm really enjoying myself." Elliott is five today, which means I'm 35 today, which means we've spent six birthdays together. I should be accustomed to sharing a birthday by now, and YES, Elliott is the loveliest birthday present a mother can imagine, etc.,etc. But damn, birthdays can be exhausting. Here I am, enjoying my birthday the best way an introvert can envision, and that's quietly, alone, in blissful, self-directed contemplation. Hurrah! Finally! It only took an entire day to get here.

That lovely banner behind the alstromeria is--ta-da--handmade, FINALLY, to replace our tired cardboard banner. The cake, one in a long line of construction cakes--also made by me.

I owe Elliott a post, about being born, and about sharing a birthday, and about all the lovely things mothers think about their children who are growing up before their eyes. But this evening's short post allows me to admit that I've had a decent but very tiring birthday. Perhaps that's the kind of birthday one has when one reaches the Uneventful Years.

The Good:
(1) delicious food, expertly prepared
(2) Elliott's banner day
(3) a family gathering, and everyone, including myself, behaved well

The Bad:
(1) Who do you think cooked the food?
(2) How much time did we spend looking for the Shu Todoroki diecast car that we still ended up ordering from Amazon?
(3) Duh!

An appreciation of things homemade makes something like a birthday difficult to enjoy without putting too much into it. But at the end of the day, I guess we can take pride in a birthday well done.

Normal quiet evening

It's our last night at the beach, and like all (good) vacations, it has come to the point of sappiness. I sit rocking the baby, who will not succumb to sleep--there's just too much to see and do, still--she continues to babble, squirm, bounce, and resist a rest. Between squirms, it's difficult not to notice every little thing, trying to catalogue the details in order to cement a memory.

Of course, the irony isn't lost on me that I do this at the tail end of a lovely vacation just as I do at home, when the average day hasn't been too memorable at all. But, as with kids afoot, it's always the little things that persist and become the stuff of rumination. 

But tonight it's stellar scenery. It's the moon, orange turned white, marbly and still, high in the sky already. The thin flannel clouds that no longer shroud the moon. And the gusty white noise of wind and surf, indistinguishable from one another. The moonlit water at high tide looks to threaten the beachfront homes across the street. From the rooftop porch, the night is simple and dramatic. 

The baby finally settles to nurse, and as I curl her in a blanket, she calms to sleep. I continue rocking, listening to the wind and surf, blinking away my hair, wondering about what we all wonder on such wonderful evenings: loneliness, and aloneness; family; mortality; the past, but prettier and too gone; the future, marching full on and full of tall orders.

A beautiful night. One of the many nights I've vowed to always remember, and of course I've forgotten every one. Because sleep calls so sweetly, and before I put pen to paper I put head to pillow, grateful for all those things that I fail to articulate before exhaling into sleep.

Good night, vacation! 

Incredulity and the Banal

What I thought yesterday to be my missing house keys, hiding in the pocket of a seldom-used coat, turned out to be a handful of hardened gummi fruit snacks.

Last night, instead of getting to work after the kids' bedtime, I spent an hour patiently reattaching the seven keys they had pried from my laptop.

The sites of my daily wonder never cease to amaze me, but it's an amazement that doesn't easily translate to the "outside," to a child-free world.

Food Review: Mike Sandwich

When you write a review of a meal or dining experience, you should generally take notes as you consume your food, and write things up soon afterward. Here I am, though, bucking such best practices as I try to remember a breakfast sandwich I enjoyed three years ago.

Bruegger's now offers (for a limited time) some kind of Maple Sausage Something Sandwich. It's a bagel, sausage, egg, and cream cheese. The bagel and cream cheese might be flavored. I haven't tried it, so I can't speak to its quality.

My first thought was, "Wow. Maybe someone told them about the Mike Sandwich." But a quick Google search yields nothing relevant for "Mike Sandwich." So let me be the first to put the word out on the best breakfast sandwich you'll find on this side of the chili belt, this side of the barbecue border, this side of the sweet tea DMZ.

You can order a Mike Sandwich at SPoT Coffee, on East Ave. in Rochester, NY. And if you find yourself there, you should. As you wait for your sandwich, take in the expansive space: it's an old Chevy dealership, from back when architecture meant something different, and a car dealership might have exuded a sense of beauty and grandeur. It's an Art-Deco-y place, with the glitzy chrominess worn off and reinhabited by an earnest coffee shop.

Your sandwich, when it arrives, is a bagel that contains within its halves a sausage patty, fried egg, a slice of provolone, and a generous spread of cream cheese. I didn't say it was healthy. I only said, and will say again, it's damn good.

You may not be nearby, but if you find yourself in Rochester (or near any of their chain locations, as I now realize SPoT has expanded in the northeast), do yourself an unhealthy favor. Hunker down and enjoy winter by eating-for-hibernation.

Birdwatchers

A new great thing--of the few great things--about Cincinnati in the wintertime is the opportunity for birdwatching. When nature is stripped bare, it's easier to see what, and who's, left during the cold season. We can now see seemingly far-off traffic lights flickering through the bare treetops. We glimpse neighbors we didn't know we had. But we're also seeing birds now.

Some dear friends gave us a terrific bird feeder stand, with hooks and spots for everything imaginable. After a false start with squirrels--I'm sure they'll be back--our recent snowfall and frigid temps brought the birds flocking to our yard. Hurrah!

We've hung the World's Cheapest Bird Feeder (free) and a suet feeder. In the past few days the birds have outnumbered squirrels by an appreciable margin, and so we're tickled pink. We've spotted:

Sparrows

House finches

Juncos

Chickadees

Tufted titmice

Carolina wrens

Cardinals

Downy woodpecker

I doubt we'll see anything exotic, but any little thing that makes our ho-hum corner of our city more lively is a step in the right direction. We're making small steps with the bird feeder.

Another benefit is that its location, just outside the dining room window, encourages more time spent at the table, which is a definite plus for my two fidgety, picky eaters.

Of course the cats enjoy the entertainment as much, or more, than we do. And I'm sure our hungry bird neighbors are happier still.