Unexpectedly, a three-dog night

In the Australian outback, an Aboriginal custom is to sleep with one dog for warmth on a chilly night. A two-dog night signifies a night that's colder than usual, but a three-dog night is really frigid, a thermometer-buster of a night, when humans and canines all pile into one bed to keep each other warm.

Last night, with temperatures plummeting into the single digits, was definitely a three-dog night around here, but it ended up being much more literal than we'd ever figured.

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

Aisling and I both grumpily got up yesterday morning for our first week of religious education -- she in Confirmation class, me teaching 7th/8th grades -- since before Christmas. With the outside temperature hovering at a balmy SEVEN DEGREES, it was not my favorite sort of morning for getting into the cold van and driving, even though we took the sensible precaution of heating up many microwave heating bags and taking them along with us. Also by stopping and getting very large cups of coffee at our favorite mini-mart.

"Do you think the people arriving for 10:30 Mass would find it odd if I went into the coffee room after religious ed and warmed up a few of these bags for the ride home?" I asked Aisling, whose teeth were chattering.

"Yes, they will think you are weird," she shivered from behind her scarf. "But I will think you are weird too, and that's what really matters."

We drove on, sipping our coffee and luxuriating in our heating bags and faithful Anne was pumping out hot air at a steady pace not too far into our journey. After class, we climbed back in, disconsolately noting that not only did no heat remain, but also that we had no hot coffee and no microwave heating bags.

"I could just slip right in there-..." I began hopefully.

"No," said Aisling firmly interrupted. "No, you cannot use the church's microwave for heating up these dumb bags. Just suck it up and drive, Mom."

So we set off, noting that the country roads and lanes around the church weren't plowed nearly as efficiently as our in-town roads. The snow is deep and the ice is treacherous, and all in all, I was looking terribly forward to getting home to the warm house and having a nourishing bowl of soup while wearing my fuzziest slippers. It was truly not a morning outside for man or beast.

We found this out for certain approximately three seconds later when we turned onto a small road, a snowy country shortcut that lops a few minutes off our time. As we rounded the corner, Aisling and I simultaneously caught sight of a small, curly puppy struggling in the deep snow of a large front lawn, headed for the road where the going wasn't as difficult.

"MOMMY, THERE'S A PUPPY!" Aisling shrieked.

"AISLING, THERE'S A PUPPY!" I yelled.

I brought the van to a halt and said, "Aisling, get out and grab that puppy. It can't stay out in the snow in this kind of weather. It's going to freeze to death."

Aisling hopped out and the puppy floundered through the last few remaining yards separating it from the road. It was a friendly little thing and wagged its way up to Aisling, who scooped it into her arms and received a thorough face-kissing that was very endearing.

As she climbed back into the van with the dog, we heard a volley of outraged barking. Looking out, we saw a mother dog: thin, so horribly thin that I could see her ribs beneath her ragged coat even from a distance. Her fur was dirty and matted and there was a dark spot on her left side that looked like a wound, as if she'd been hit a glancing blow from a car or tangled with a coyote. The mother barked and barked as Aisling and I sat uncertainly there in the van, cuddling the pup.

"I don't think they could possibly belong to the people in one of these houses," I said, indicating the two four-acre properties on our right, each gorgeous house set well back from the road with sweeping drives approaching gracious entrances.

"That mother dog looks so skinny and filthy," Aisling said as the puppy relaxed in the warmth of her arms. The poor baby's bony little body was literally encrusted in snow, big matted balls of ice tangling the curly fur. We warmed my big scarf at the vent as we sat there and wrapped her in it (I did a quick underneath check to determine the gender); Aisling warmed our gloves on her hands and then used her body heat to melt the ice off the sturdy little legs and tail. Through all this, the puppy vibrated with chills like she was running on batteries, her golden eyes anxious in spite of her placating demeanor.

I looked out at the mother, who retreated to a greater distance, still barking loudly. Her frailty was even more apparent as we watched her shaking from the cold. All of a sudden, I knew the explanation for the presence of these two dogs on this lonely road: they'd been abandoned there by their former owners in the hopes that some kind, animal-loving family in one of the beautiful homes in the area would take them in. Obviously, that plan hadn't worked.

I've seen this kind of wretched treatment doled out to dogs before: Every dog Ma and Grandad ever had in their house out in the boondocks of Henry County came to them as an abandoned stray. Ma couldn't resist a hungry dog -- truth be told, neither could Grandad, although he did his share of grumbling about the hundred-pound bags of Purina Dog Chow that sometimes tipped over and scattered nuggets all over the garage floor.

Strangely enough, I'd just heard a local news report on Friday commenting on the enormous numbers of abandoned pets in the area; due to the horrible economy, people are having to move out of their houses and either can't take their pets with them to a new place, or can't afford to feed them. Maybe both. The humane society and animal rescue agencies in the area are full to overflowing, with far more pets being dropped off than being adopted. But better to leave a dog to the mercies of an animal shelter than to just open the car door and leave house pets to the miseries of a cold snap in an Indiana January.

"We can't save the mother," I said, tears in my eyes. "She's too timid to approach us and she could be so sick and hurt and hungry that she'd be a danger if we tried to catch her." The mother dog was a bit bigger than Hershey, maybe a fifty to fifty-five pound dog when in health. With the instinct of a mother to protect her young plus the other factors, I knew it just wasn't possible, but it just about killed me. I put the van in drive and pulled away.

"We can save this one, though," Aisling murmured, tucking the puppy under her chin.

We did take the step of calling my husband and alerting him to the fact that we were coming home WITH OUR NEW DOG, giving him about twenty minutes to process that information. Predictably, he spluttered, "Huh? What? A new WHAT? Where did you- ...oh, crap. Do you know how much it's going to- .....oh, crap. Puppies are a complete pain in the- ......ohhhhh, crap...."

Meelyn, who officially graduated from mandatory religious education classes last year with her confirmation, met us at the back door. "Oooohhh," she breathed, taking one look at the damp, bedraggled baby in Aisling's arms. "Look how sweet she is!"

Hershey and Wimzie were entranced by the new arrival, circling around us and sniffing with interest.

Hershey: "What the heck is this thing??"

Wimzie: "Oh. One of those things."

The puppy stared down from the shelter of Aisling's grasp and went, "Squeak!! Squeak-squeak!"
Hershey and Wimzie were both struck dumb with amazement. They looked at each other. They looked at the puppy. Then they both turned and looked at me.

"You brought me a new baby sister!" Hershey wagged, prancing up a bit on his back legs like a circus dog to smell the puppy.

"What fresh hell have you visited upon me now?" Wimzie asked dourly and plopped down on the floor to lick her nether regions.

Following the advice of Cesar Milan, we let the three dogs get to know one another in their own way. The puppy was scared to death at first, but Hershey and Wimzie lazily sniffed her and then wandered off to take naps. Within an hour, the puppy was snoring blissfully on my left, wearing one of Wimzie's old fleece jackets and enjoying the comfort of a microwave heating bag and a swaddling blanket and Wimzie was on my right, snoring blissfully and covered from nose to tail with the same throw blanket that was covering me. Hershey was stretched out between Meelyn and Aisling, his head on Meelyn's lap and his back feet on Aisling's.

"Now all we need is one more dog so that you can have one to cuddle too," I said slyly to my husband.

"All we need is one more hole in the head," my husband opined gloomily. "Or maybe I should make that one more hole in my wallet, to make it easier for the money to pour out."

I know. I know. It's going to be expensive. But I honestly don't know what else we could have done. I don't really believe in coincidences, so my thought is that we happened along that country road at exactly the right time to rescue that puppy. Jesus knows us, and he knows that we are not the kind of people who could leave a defenseless puppy there to freeze to death in the cold and snow. It was already bad enough leaving the mother behind, but we were given the chance to save that little dog, so we took it and I guess we'll have to hope that blessings will come from it and that this baby will be a sweet addition to our family.

We named her Zuzu, after George Bailey's youngest daughter in It's a Wonderful Life. Zuzu was George and Mary's little girl who came walking home from school with her coat unbuttoned and caught a cold; George visited her upstairs in her bed and put Zuzu's ruined flower petals in his pocket. Zuzu knew that whenever you hear bells, that means an angel has won his wings. Long live Zuzu!

A pressing need to be hooked on phonics

Our diocesan newspaper arrived on Thursday, as it reliably does. On the upper right hand corner of the front page was the picture of a beaming young woman with a teaser line below her photo that read something like "How this OLMC parishioner became a postulant."

Aisling grabbed up the newspaper, her small face a horrified gape of gaping horror. "WHAT??!!" she shrieked. "That is TERRIBLE! HOW could the newspaper print a picture of that girl, just sitting there SMILING??!!"

I took the newspaper from her, frowning in befuddlement at Aisling's ire, looking at the photo and the teaser. "I think it's very nice," I said. "She's just beaming. She looks so happy."

"HAPPY?" Aisling spluttered. "What does she have to be happy about? I think she'd want to hide in shame! Her family must be so embarrassed!"

Eyes wide, I observed my fourteen year old daughter and said gently, "Honey, you just have to understand that God calls people to different vocations. To you, her decision might seem strange or maybe even weird, although you've known enough of them by now that I'm honestly a little confused. To this girl, a vocation seems like the only thing in the world to do with her life. She's....called to it. It brings her joy and fulfillment."

Aisling looked at me as if I'd suddenly declared an urge to wash my hair with buttered peas. "You must be joking," she said flatly, giving me a tight-lipped, slitty-eyed look. "After all you and Daddy have told me and Meelyn about how sex outside of marriage is a grave sin and how our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit and we need to honor Jesus and respect ourselves and now you're telling me that this girl is called to this like a.....like a......lifestyle choice??!!"

Light dawned.

"Aisling. This young woman is becoming a postulant. NOT A PROSTITUTE."

In which I sew my own microwave heating bags for the girls

Before I get started on this, please let me caution my friend Katie.

Dear Katie,

You are such a good friend to me. You are so generous and loving, you have such a great dry sense of humor, you love margaritas and you are a bountiful fountain of good advice. I really enjoy your friendship and I have a sisterly affection for you, which is why I want you to stop reading, like, RIGHT NOW.


Hear?

I mean it. It may hurt you, either when you faint and fall off your chair when exposed to my hopeless idiocy and wind up in the hospital because you hit your head, or when you crack a rib from laughing and wind up in the hospital from a punctured lung.

Okay. Now that Katie is still reading along anyway has gone to get herself a Diet Pepsi, I will relate to the rest of you the story of the microwave heating bags I just finished making for Meelyn and Aisling.

The microwave heating bags are so lovely, aren't they? I wrote
this post detailing the simple instructions for making a microwave heating bag on December 19, and then this post about the U-shaped microwave heating bag darling Katie made me for Christmas on January 3 and all in all, my holidays were lovely and warm.

Since the weather outside is frightful, I decided to share the love and follow the simple instructions posted ON MY OWN BLOG to make cute bags for Meelyn and Aisling, but here's the thing: I thought to myself, You know, how hard can this be? You just sew everything in a straight line, right? And then put the filler in? And sew up the hole! Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy!

So I decided I didn't really need to read the directions.

I used 1/4 yard for each bag, although they turned out to be much smaller, once I trimmed off all the parts I goofed up on. (I buried those scraps deep in the kitchen wastebasket under some coffee grounds and used tissues so that no one will know how truly stupid I am when it comes to sewing.) That's my mom's sewing machine up there in the picture; Aisling's bag is on the right and Meelyn's is on the left. The folded paw-print fabric in the middle by the scissors is the fabric I bought to make the dogs each a small heating bag for their beds.

Doesn't it figure that I totally screwed up the heating bags I sewed FOR MY CHILDREN, while the dogs? The dogs will have the ones that will be perfect because I will have lots of practice making microwave heating bags by the time I sew theirs. Geez.

So I made Aisling's first, right? I lopped off a bit of the fabric from the end that I believe is called "the selvage," which is Sewing Speak for "the ends." Why the sewing people have to have this special lingo with words like "bobbin," "selvage" and "serger," I just don't know. It's like a club that they want to keep me out of because they know I don't understand and besides, it stresses me out.

I cut that bit of fabric off because it seemed like the bag was going to be way too long. Then I cut the fabric apart where it was folded. Then I turned the upside piece of fabric around backwards because every dummy on the planet knows that you have to do that. And then I plopped down at the sewing machine and impressed the heck out of myself by whizzing along in some lines of stitching that were more or less straight -- veering more towards the less straight if the truth be known -- and went around the rectangle of fabric with much back-stitching to make sure everything was nice and strong, remembering to leave an opening big enough to both turn the fabric inside out and also to put the dried beans in, which was my choice of stuffing.

Only. Yikes. It turned out, when I snipped the threads and whipped the little bag off the machine, that I had only turned the UPPER piece of fabric print-side-in. The lower piece was still discouragingly print-side-out. Oh, the HELL that is sewing. The unmitigated, hideous HELL of it all. I tried to rip the flannel bag open with my own dainty hands, but due to all that backwardsy sewing, it was pretty tight. I ended up having to just cut all the stitching off and re-sewing the whole thing, making DARNED SURE that both pieces of the cute ladybug print Aisling chose were facing inward.

Somehow, I managed to fill the bag halfway with beans without spilling them all over the floor; I just spilled them all over the countertop. Yay. Mindful of the spillage factor, I carefully returned to the sewing machine, which was sitting there trying to pass off its spurting laughter as coughing. I gave it a withering glance and it hushed up.

All I had to do was sew up the little hole, right? Does that seem like it would be too hard? Well, it was. First of all, the bag was too short to sit on the table while the opening was stitched shut, so I kind of had to jostle the beans around and re-distribute them in a way that allowed the bag to sit on the machine's edge, as Meelyn's is doing in the picture.

It probably would have gone more smoothly if I hadn't accidently sewn over a bean.

The machine protested, but at first I just thought it was being like a horse and not minding me because it could sense my fear. So I continued grimly on until the machine yelled, "OUCH! GEEZ, I'M SORRY I LAUGHED, ALREADY! THAT HURTS, YOU BIG BULLY!"

"Oh," I said. "Sorry."

I pushed the sewn bean back down with the others and carried on with the closing stitch, heaving a sigh of relief when it was done. It doesn't look all that great, but in the picture? I put the ugly side down so that none of you could see it, especially Katie, who probably needs smelling salts about right now.

One down, one to go! I knew how to do Meelyn's bag, especially the part about turning both sides of the fabric inward, so I pulled her fabric out of the Jo-Ann's bag with and air of casual expertise. I lopped off the SELVAGE, checked to make sure my BOBBIN still had thread on it and wondered for a few seconds what a SERGER is all about and then started sewing.

"Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!" said the machine, happily buzzing along, bean-free, as I pressed its pedal with my foot. "RRRRrrrRrrRrrRrrrrrRrrRRRRrrrrr!"

I was so casually expert-like, so nonchalant, so practiced, that before I knew it, I'd sewn the whole bag shut. I know you think I'm kidding. I know you don't think anyone could possibly be that freaking ignorant. But I assure you -- one could.

The thing is, I didn't realize my mistake until I was done with the sewing and went to turn the bag inside-out before filling it with the beans.

"Hey!" I said indignantly. "Who's the big dope who sewed this- .....oh, crap."

Once again with the cutting off of the stitches, the re-sewing, the humiliation. My right eye developed a tic, and I began to wonder why it would be a bad thing for the girls to be cold at night. Maybe I have this all wrong, I thought desperately. Maybe it will....build their characters?....if they're cold while I sleep in cozy warmth? I'm sure that's right.

Somehow, I got that bag sewed up the right way, turned it outside-in and managed to fill it with beans, which was very hard with my eyelid twitching and jumping. I carried the bean-filled flannel bag back to the sewing machine, where I managed NOT to sew a bean this time, sewing up the open part with ease. That was, in fact, the only easy part of the entire sewing-in-a-straight-line endeavor.

So if you don't mind, I am going to go warm up my own microwave heating bags -- the ones someone else sewed -- and go lie on the couch for a while. Hopefully my eyelid will stop spasming very soon.

About my previous post....

In my last post, which was three hours ago, I wrote flippantly that the local weather forecasters were wrong in their assessment of today's snow as a "winter storm."

"Winter storm," I scoffed as I peered out the front window this morning. "I could do more damage with a big fan and a bucket of cotton balls."

As it turns out -- and if you're easily shocked, I urge you to be seated before you read the next line -- I MAY HAVE BEEN WRONG ABOUT THAT. Because the snow? It has been piling up steadily for the past few hours and once again, you can't tell from this photo, but it is now snowing really, really hard. Why won't my camera show the snow?

So. There you have it. I never claimed to be a meteorologist, which is probably a very wise thing.

Will's "Winter"

We're smack in the middle of a winter storm here in central Indiana, although it doesn't look as if it's nearly as bad as the weather forecasters predicted. You can't tell from the photo, but it's still snowing, and I thought this scene, which I can take a look at from my dining room window by turning my head slightly to the right, was the perfect twenty-first century illustration for Shakespeare's fifteenth century poem. Although I have an uncomfortable feeling that I know who's playing the role of greasy Joan in this scene. Humph.


Winter
from Love's Labor's Lost


When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marion’s nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu

This is the last picture of Christmas 2009 because the Christmas season is now officially over and done. Gone are the gifts! Gone are the secrets! Gone are the cookies, the ornaments, the sparkly lights! Also gone are all the receipts from Christmas shopping, so I hope everything fits and we're all happy with the color and style because oops.

There's just something about taking down the tree, isn't there? When we put the tree up, it takes about three hours and we watch Santa Claus is Comin' to Town or Elf or Frosty the Snowman on television. There is eggnog. There are cheerful voices and glad cries of, "Oh, I've missed this one all year!" and "Haven't we managed to break that awful thing yet?" Everyone is happy, even my husband, who is often irascible and tetchy at having to deal with strands of tangled lights.

"Who put these things in here like this?" he scowls, lifting some chaotically disorganized lights out of the red plastic Rubbermaid totes we use to designate our holiday trimmings. "A bunch of chimpanzees? It must have been, because no human being could have ever deliberately just....FLUNG...these things in here like this, knowing that we'd have to get them back out next year and have to practically UNWEAVE them before putting them on the tree." He fixes us with a gimlet eye and we all casually avoid his gaze, picking lint off our sleeves or polishing our glasses or running a careless hand through our hair.

Because we know exactly what group of chimpanzees haphazardly heaved those lights into that box. Yes.

Taking down the Christmas decorations bears no resemblance to the putting up. First of all, there's no music. Just a tense silence punctuated by heavy, irritated sighs. Secondly, we look like a group of vandals, snatching stuff off the tree limbs here and there and chucking it all over our shoulders into random boxes.

"Meelyn, help me close this box," I order, pounding on the lid.

"Mom, there are breakables in there. Stop whacking it before you shatter something."

"I don't care. I'm sick of the lot of it. I'll glue everything back together next Christmas. Just help me shut this."

Aisling appears in the doorway, twined in the garland-and-lights that have been decorating the china cabinet. "What do you want me to do with this junk?" she asks.

"Find room in a box," I say shortly, still pounding on that red plastic lid. "If you can't find a box to squeeze it in, take it out back and burn it."

"What about the centerpiece on the dining room table?"

"Ask the neighbors if they want it."

"And what should I do with the mini-tree in the upstairs bathroom window?"

That tree is one of my favorite Christmas decorations. Our bathroom window, which is big, looks out from a gable on our house over a busy street, and I like to think that we're adding to someone's festive Christmas cheer when they drive down the road and see it twinkling away up there. I paused to consider.

"Open the basement door and heave it down the stairs."

This year, it took us approximately half an hour to remove all vestiges of Christmas from the house except for the nativity sets, which will be with us until Candlemas. After that, we'll be giving everyone -- porcelain, plastic and resin -- the bum's rush, hurrying them all back into their boxes and under my bed, where they'll no doubt say to each other, "Geeeesh, what's the hurry? One minute I'm kneeling there in worship and the next thing I know, badda-boom, I'm being wrapped in some tissue paper like a mummy and shoved into this box. And I'm clearly not Egyptian!"

Until next Christmas, then, here are Aisling and Meelyn before it all came down.

In the still of the night

Like many of you, I sometimes wake up in the night just because I hit a patch of wakefulness that's been randomly tossed in there with the REM cycles. "I'm a little bored with sleeping right now," I say to myself. "And the house is quiet....I can go downstairs and get a few things done.....have a little peace...turn on the television without someone's bitterly saying, 'You watch the boringest shows'....." And then I get up and completely enjoy myself, even though I'm pretty sleepy and, okay, a little grouchy by the next afternoon.

But then there are those times like, oh, RIGHT NOW. Many of us experience this, too: I am suddenly jerked awake by who-knows-what, and immediately upon the return of my consciousness I am thinking that there's some important paperwork regarding our health insurance that must be filled out and mailed in, and I forgot to make an appointment at the optometrist, and there's a winter storm warning, and I need to contact the public library and make sure I have the dates set for the second semester Shakespeare class, and then there's a trip to the travel agent to give her the first payment for the Stratford Festival trip, and with this cold snap? What is our gas bill likely to be? The thermostat is going out on the SUV and my husband had a hard time keeping ice from forming on the windshield on his way home from work, and will the plumber actually come today to see why the drains are acting the way they're acting, or will it be another day of no-show?

Then my thoughts stray from my internal Things to Do List to the more negatively ephemeral: Oh, God, a terrorist tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Day....and some judge in Vermont sentenced a child rapist for sixty days after he was found guilty for having a sexual relationship with a little girl for four years, starting when she was six. The molester was let out of on $10,000 bail and promptly raped a three-year-old....Is this going to be a good year in car sales or are we going to have another year of struggling to stay afloat?....Is a sick family member going to be okay, or is there going to be one of those middle-of-the-night phone calls?

I hate it, don't you? When your eyes fly open in the middle of the night and the weight of the world comes crashing down? It's bad enough having that default setting in your mind that runs like a news trailer, reminding you of all the things you need to do to keep life running smoothly at your house, but when you start in on the misery of suicide bombers and baby rapers and sick relatives, it drives sleep from you like a strong wind topples a garbage bin and blows trash down the street.

Maybe tomorrow will be a better night for all of us.

RECIPE: Cranberry-Pecan Biscotti

Now that we have a coffee maker, I felt called upon to make some kind of treat to go with each sweet, milky cup. Heaven knows, I'd like to just go out and buy six boxes of Little Debbie Dunkin' Sticks and let the wrappers fall where they may, but as I said earlier today, we're all watching our calorie intake and I have to keep a close eye on my blood sugar so Little Debbie and I have had to have a tearful parting, promising to get together and to stay cool and have a good summer. I comforted myself by buying Kieren four boxes of Fudge Rounds as part of his Christmas present.

I've spent some time on the internet researching biscotti and how to know a good recipe from a bad one and what goes good with coffee and would I have to have three thousand exotic ingredients, or could this just be a simple venture. After reading about twenty recipes, I cobbled together one that I thought would please the family. You can see it there above in the picture, where you also may note that I haven't yet got the technique for rolling the dough into logs and cutting it into the thin sticks by which biscotti seems to be characterized.

Here's the simple recipe, which tastes delicious, even if I don't quite have the correct shape. It's very, very simple to throw together, requires no fantabulous ingredients like the eyelash of a baby unicorn, and leaves you with very little to clean up. A keeper!

CRANBERRY-PECAN BISCOTTI

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup Splenda
6 tablespoons butter, softened
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup dried cranberries

1 beaten egg
2 tablespoons of sugar for sprinkling

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment or by spritzing it with cooking spray.

While the oven is heating, mix the first four ingredients in a small mixing bowl; set aside.

Combine the Splenda, butter, eggs and vanilla in a larger bowl and mix until creamy. Gradually add the dry ingredients, mixing until a soft dough forms. Stir in the pecans and cranberries.

Divide the dough in half. On a lightly floured surface, take half the dough and shape it into a log with your hands, kind of like you'd do with modeling clay. The log should be about nine inches long and about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Place it on the baking sheet and repeat with the second ball of dough. Flatten both logs slightly. Brush with beaten egg.

Place baking sheet in oven and bake for 25-30 minutes, until the logs are firm to the touch and golden brown on top. Remove from oven and cool on the baking sheet for fifteen minutes. Don't turn off the oven! The dough will have increased in size, so cut both logs in half lengthwise, and then cut into shorter "sticks." After the fifteen minutes of cooling, sprinkle the sticks lightly with sugar and return to oven; bake for an additional 15-20 minutes. Remove from oven, cool and serve with coffee. Store the remainder in an airtight container.

This recipe can easily be doubled, although you may need to use two baking sheets to accommodate your extra logs of dough. The yield will depend on how long you want your biscotti sticks to be, if you see what I mean. I intend to experiment by seeing if I can make my dough logs longer, so that I can make sticks that are both longer and thinner. As you can see from my photo, they're a bit short and fat. Kind of like their maker.

Epiphany - The Journey of the Wise Men (Day 10)

The road was long, with many a winding turn, but the three kings finally arrived in the manger today after making their way through the clementines and the laundry detergents and across the piano keys and many other treacherous byways.

They plan to stay and visit until February 2, at which time they're going to leave by a different path because, you know....Herod. And Mary and Joseph are going to grab the donkey and wrap up the baby and head out for Egypt, because, you know....Herod. Herod always figures largely in an unhappy end to the story of a miraculous, world-changing, life-changing birth.

Fortunately for all of these porcelain folks, however, they'll be packed away safe and sound in their box under my bed to await a renewed journey next Christmas.

First day back

Today is our first day back at school -- actually, the dining room table -- after two blissful weeks of Christmas break, and it hasn't been a marked success. It rarely is. *sigh*

It seems like both Meelyn and Aisling have experienced an unprecedented amount of brain drain in the past fortnight. How? How? I can't explain it. Meelyn has fared better than her sister, but Aisling has complicated the entire day by not being able to find her Biology 1 notebook, her U.S. History notebook and some other notebook...I'm so frazzled, I can't remember which. It is incredibly frustrating and the mood has been dour. To say the least.

Aisling did have a good piano lesson and came out to the van toting her suitcase full of music, as cheerful as a cricket. Meelyn had to work today at the lunch shift and had a pleasant day of it; she came home and immediately went to the gym, where she ran four miles in forty minutes, an excellent time.

Hershey has driven me nearly round the bend by asking to be let out a thousand and three times. "Come on, pleeeeaaaaaaaaase?" he says with his ears aloft and eyes all bright and hopeful. "Pleeeeeeaaaaaase? Just for a minute, I swear. ONE MINUTE. So I can bark at that nanny pushing her little charge in a stroller down the street. They need to be barked at."

I also ordered several books for Meelyn's second semester work, which starts on January 18. I bought the Traditional Logic 2, the next part of her Spanish 2 course and a computer literacy course covering Microsoft Word.

The day is very cold and snowy and to while away the afternoon, I am baking biscotti. The recipe I made, which I put together out of several I found online, features Splenda instead of sugar, chopped pecans and dried cranberries. They're just about ready to go in for their second baking and if they're good, I'll take their picture and post the recipe.

Whoops! Timer just went off! Back to the biscotti I go, while Aisling continues searching for that pesky U.S. History notebook.

Epiphany - The Journey of the Wise Men (Day 9)

The hymn on the music stand? Why, "We Three Kings of Orient Are," of course. These three don't appeared to have smoked a rubber cigar, but maybe that part's still to come.

At any rate, their journeys are almost finished: They're due to arrive at the stable tomorrow, where they will be warmly greeted by St. Joseph, the Blessed Virgin and also by a really cute but oddly Caucasian little Jesus.

It has been really fun photographing their odyssey through our house this year and the three kings have all been very good sports, especially about allowing me to take an action shot of them as they navigated their way through a bowl of clementines. After tomorrow's photo at the manger, we won't see them anymore on InsomniMom because, you know.....Herod.

In with the new (cup of coffee)

This morning, Aisling and I drove Meelyn to work because we needed to use the van to run some errands. On our way home, Aisling looked at me with wistful blue eyes and said, "It's sooo coooold outside. Can we stop at Dunkin' Donuts and get some hot chocolate?"

It sounded good, only I was on board for a cup of coffee more than the hot chocolate. I've been seeing many television commercials about Dunkin' Donuts' famous coffee and I've never had a cup, despite the fact that a Dunkin' Donuts opened up about four blocks away from our house. I've never had a donut from there either, and if that doesn't mark me as a person of iron willpower and sterling character, I don't know what would.

It was so windy and snowy that merely rolling down the window at the drive-thru made us both shrink back into the shelter of our coats and scarves. I placed our order: one hot chocolate, one medium coffee with cream, no sugar, and pulled around the building to the window.

The young man took my money, gave me my change and handed me the two cups. The hot chocolate smelled so good; its luscious aroma filled up the entire van. I eagerly drove the last few blocks to our driveway, absolutely longing for a warming slurp of this very delicious coffee I've been hearing so much about.

I didn't even wait to take my coat off before prying off the plastic lid on the styrofoam cup and stirring in three packets of Splenda. I replaced the lid, raised the cup to my lips and "Phhhhhhlllllaaaaaaaauuuuufffffff!!!!!"

That was the worst coffee, like, ever. I think it had been sitting in a pot on a hot burner since, oh, I don't know, OCTOBER? It tasted exactly the way burning tires smell. Bletch.

"What's wrong?" called Aisling, who was sipping her rich and foamy cup of hot chocolate. Bitter was my envy as I took the lid off the coffee cup and poured the offensive liquid down the drain, gazing at it distastefully as it swirled away and wondering what I could drink instead that would wash the inside of my mouth out.

"My coffee tasted like burning tires smell," I replied disconsolately, smooshing the cup into the trash.

Our old coffee maker died last winter and I intended to go to K-Mart today and put one in layaway, but I felt that I just couldn't wait. I could take the cost of a reasonably priced coffee maker out of the grocery money, I thought, seeing as how we still have leftovers a-plenty.

So off to Wal-Mart we went, huddled into our hats and gloves and boots. Once inside, we proceeded directly to the housewares section and make a selection: I am not a coffee aficionada and I just want something simple. No French presses. No elaborate grinders. No airline ticket to Colombia to pick my own beans. No machines that look like they could double as torture devices and give you a cup of cappucino at the same time. Just a standard drip, that's all.

I chose a Black & Decker model, pictured above, for $39.99, which is a considerable part of the week's groceries, but we have enough leftover turkey for at least two meals. Once I'd heaved the coffee maker into the cart, we jauntily strolled off to the food section where I bought a nice, hearty tub of Folger's Breakfast Blend (it promises to be mellow) and we went to the check-out where the cashier scanned the coffee maker and rang it up for $24.99. Yippee!!! Great excitement ensued and we left the store with a palpable air of triumph.

Tomorrow morning, we are all going to enjoy a lovely, rich cup of hot coffee to help ward off the winter chill and I can hardly wait.