Just thought I'd ask

Today on our way home from the Christmas shopping-birthday party, we decided to get a cheering cup of hot chocolate from Paradise Cafe. The attendant behind the counter asked me what size I wanted -- "large" is the word I was thinking -- and then said, "Would you like some whipped cream on that?"

There are some questions that are just so obvious, they shouldn't even have to be asked, and when it comes to cocoa, the size? It should always be large. And the yea or nay to whipped cream? Please. YES!

Not at all sorry

Dobby and Zuzu make quite a team. Yesterday they were playing together in the living room, tugging a toy back and forth and chasing each other around while I was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher and in the laundry room matching socks. I was listening to some Christmas music and kind of humming along to myself when I noticed that all the noise of the dogs playing had ceased. That set the Mommy Alarm a-whirling and I went to the living room to see what they were up to, with a strong and clear remembrance of Meelyn falling suddenly quiet at age two and going in to my bedroom to find that she'd drawn quite a large picture on our newly painted bedroom walls with my tube of mascara.

The two dogs had somehow managed to snitch a peppermint candy cane off the tree and were so absorbed in eating it, they didn't even noticed when I came into the room and took their picture.

I plan on telling Santa to bring them each one piece of coal and a big, big bottle of violet-scented dog shampoo for Christmas.

The mall at Christmas time will do that to you.

The girls met some friends at Castleton Square Mall in Indianapolis today to celebrate the fourteenth birthday of their friend Chelsea and I designated myself as the mom who was going to follow them from store to store, lurking around outside (there aren't nearly enough places to sit in Castleton Square) and waiting for the herd of seven girls to exit, say, Bath & Body Works, so that I could follow them to the next store, say Aeropostale, and wait outside there. As it turns out, I am not one of those moms who is ever going to just drop my kids off at the mall and let them roam around unsupervised and Aisling told me that my methods of Teen Tracking and Security were about as subtle as a punch in the face.

"Don't you trust us?" wailed my friend Bridget's daughter Emily when I told her that she couldn't walk down to Borders with Meelyn. I squinched up my eyes to gaze down the long, long corridor with Borders at the end of it, looking small and far away.

"Oh, I trust you just fine," I replied, looking back at Emily. "But the other people, the ones who might try to snatch your purse or brush up next to you and pick your pocket or whatever? It's them I don't trust. And I prefer to have you in my sights so that if I see someone grab your purse -- or you -- I can run up behind them and make them deeply sorry they were ever born."

We walked around the mall for about an hour, me tagging along behind them, and by the time they went in the final store of their choice, I was completely tired of walking around and wanted to go straight home and put on my slippers. As I was shifting from foot to foot and more or less patiently waiting for my little herdlings to come back out of the shop they were in, I happened to see this large plushy white bear in the window of the candy store next door.

He looked, I decided, exactly like I felt, like he'd plopped down with an "oof!" and a dim hope that someone would ask him if he'd like a foot rub.

At the circus

Last week at this time, I just wistfully recalled as I looked at the clock, we were at Conseco Fieldhouse in downtown Indy at Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circus, sitting in our amazing seats and settling down to watch the show with cold drinks, candy and a bucket of popcorn big enough to bathe a baby in. If the popcorn had been eaten first, of course.

The young man in the photo is my cousin Patrick, the guy who got us the FREE tickets and the VIP backstage passes. Isn't he handsome? He looks just like his dad, who is Susie's oldest brother, Skip. Patrick is twenty-five and is employed by the circus as a stagehand -- my husband and I were so impressed by this adventurous choice of jobs that we kept apologizing over and over again to Patrick for being so boring and middle-aged.

"I feel very, very forty-something," my husband said, sadly chomping on a Starburst. We watched Patrick and the rest of the stage crew rapidly dismantling and rolling up the enormous net the aerialists had been using in their act. "If I had to bend over and roll that net and walk forward in that crouching position, I'd never be able to stand upright again."

"I know," I agreed gloomily, digging into the popcorn vat. "The only thing I can see myself doing here with any competence at all is, well, what I'm doing right now. Popcorn?" I offered him the buttery tub and he shook his head disconsolately.

My husband took a drink of his soda pop and said, "I think we might as well face the fact that some people have interesting jobs that take them all over the country to see many different places and do all kinds of unusual things and other people are us."

"Look at Patrick now!" squealed the girls, who had taken to giggling slightly and blinking their eyes whenever his name was mentioned. Truly, it was almost as much fun watching him with his fellow stagehands as it was watching the show. Your eyes naturally tend to be distracted by the elephants and the white ponies wearing plumey hats and the trapeze artists flinging themselves around in the air, but watching the crew make the show happen so that everything goes smoothly and no tiger ran amok or llama went careening into the crowd and no high wire acrobat went crashing splat on the floor.

One of the best parts of the whole show was when Patrick took us backstage on the floor level, said with a smile, "Wait 'til you see this!" and then led us around a corner and down a ramp where we suddenly saw a fenced herd of elephants -- ELEPHANTS!!! -- standing placidly in some scattered straw. Among them was the sweetest little baby elephant you have ever seen, right there not ten feet in front of me, snuggling up next to his (her?) mother's side and looking around with innocent amazement.

He also showed us the clowns' dressing area -- the girls and I went past with a quick step, whistling, and looking everywhere we could but at the place where we might see that most dreaded of childhood terrors, a full-on clown.

We were able to meet lots of clowns later, out on the floor of Conseco during the pre-show and we found out that not all clowns are like the one from Stephen King's It or Xander's nightmare clown from his sixth birthday party, the one with the jolly laugh and the butcher knife on Buffy. That was a nice thing to know and one of Patrick's clown friends said to us -- well, okay, said to the girls -- with a flirty wink, "The white-face clowns are scary, but we don't have any white-face clowns in this circus. Besides, not many clowns are as handsome and personable as I am."

He really was cute, so I had to agree.

Those "silent monks" and Handel's Hallelujah Chorus

I posted a different version of this "silent monk" video last year, but this year I chose this one, not only because you can see the stage straight on (last year's clip was filmed from the audience, stage right), but also because of the hilarious commentary on the actual YouTube web page: this was a skit performed at a Baptist church, but some people didn't seem to realize that it was all just a joke, a funny bit of lighthearted Christmas fun, and expressed some unintentionally humorous bits of unecumenical fussiness. And plus, those monks? They aren't actually singing and holding up their lettered signs at the same time; that's a recording playing over the church's sound system. And some of them have bosoms.

There's a really long intro on this video -- the action starts at 1:47. I hope you enjoy it -- I think it's so clever.

HOW TO: Cut a beautiful paper snowflake

I posted this YouTube clip a couple of years ago and it's such a good one, I thought I'd bring it out again and dust it off so that we all can go find the scissors and a piece of paper and make beeyootiful snowflakes with the kiddies to hang on the Christmas tree. If you are a complete idiot about the whole folding-and-cutting process -- and I will frankly admit that I am -- this is your go-to video.

RECIPE: Hot Fudge Cake (lower sugar recipe)

Hot fudge cake is one of my favorites to make when we want a little something sweet in the evenings, especially at this time of year. Hot fudge cake is the kind of cake that bakes on the top into a crinkly, brownie-like crust and then has a layer of "hot fudge" underneath; you don't slice it so much as you scoop it. After baking, you keep it in the fridge covered with plastic wrap and when you want to serve it, you dig out a wedge with a spoon, dribble some of the topping over it and then microwave it for a minute or so. It heats up very nicely and comes out of the microwave all steamy and cocoa-fragrant, ready for a dollop of vanilla bean ice cream or a squirt of whipped cream.

It's a nice little dessert for cold evenings, if you're not too susceptible to the ravages of sugar, that is, both in your bloodstream and at your waistline. Which is why I tinkered with this recipe from a magazine my mom gave me (that's their image, by the way; I kept taking pictures of my own cake and with my decidedly amateurish photo-taking skills, I kept coming up with images that looked like bowls of roofing tar) so that I could reduce the amount of sugar without reducing the rich, chocolatey taste. I think I was successful, so I hope you'll give it a try if you're a sugar-avoiding chocolate lover and let me know if you liked it.

By the way, this is one of those recipes that's usually baked in a 9x9 pan, but I have a family and we like a sweet treat in the evenings, and if I bake this in a 9x13 baking pan, we can have a piece for about four nights running, which is very nice indeed. If you don't want that much cake -- and if you don't, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU??!! -- then just cut the recipe neatly in half and use the 9x9 pan.

HOT FUDGE CAKE (lower sugar recipe)
Ingredients:

Cake:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups Splenda sugar substitute
1/2 cup cocoa powder, divided
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk (1%, 2% or whole, your choice)
4 tablespoons butter, melted
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Topping:
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1/2 cup Splenda
1/4 cup cocoa powder
3 1/2 cups hot water

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, combine flour, Splenda, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Stir in the milk, melted butter and vanilla until smooth.

Spread mixture into a 9x13 baking dish that's been lightly coated with cooking spray. Combine the topping ingredients (brown sugar, Splenda, cocoa) and sprinkle them over the batter. Pour hot water over all; do not stir. Bake for 35-40 minutes. Cake will be jiggly when you take it out of the oven because of the fudgy "topping" underneath the baked cake.

Serve warm with ice cream or whipped cream. Re-heats very nicely. Looks cute with some festive red and green sprinkles on top.

Looking a lot like Christmas

We went to the Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circus at Conseco last Thursday at the invitation of my cousin Patrick, who works with the show as a stage hand. And that is my cousin Patrick, not my brother Patrick. My brother Patrick would be much more likely to invite me to a seminar on the current tax codes and I don't think tax seminars feature aerialists or gaily trotting white ponies with blue plumes on their heads, so I'd have to politely decline. Or maybe not politely. It all depends, doesn't it?

Anyway, I have lots more on the circus in another post, but it was just one of those perfect evenings we got to enjoy as a family where every moment was more fun than the moment that came before it. I hadn't been to the circus since age ten (my parents took me to Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey in old Market Square Area in downtown Indianapolis, which I don't remember nearly as much as I remember seeing Van Halen in that same venue with my friend Julie about twelve years after the circus) and it was just delightful. The two hour performance zoomed by, and when we walked out of Conseco, the most beautiful snow was flying thick in the air.

Since we were downtown anyway, we decided to take the girls to see the "tree" on Monument Circle, a treat that we were able to pull off only because we now have our TomTom GPS device and were able to find our way from the field house to the monument -- a distance of maybe two blocks -- without getting hopelessly lost and driving the wrong way on a one-way street, or mowing down a pedestrian coming out of Nordstrom's laden with Christmas shopping....

So there you have it -- my shot of the monument on the circle (along with a small portion of the SUV in front of us) with the Christmas lights and the blowing snow and although you obviously can't hear it now, we were playing a Johnny Mathis Christmas CD in the van. It was a lovely, festive, happy evening.

Cute little ugly baby

This is the best picture I've ever taken of Dobby since we got him a month ago, mostly because he is so rarely still that every time I point the camera at him, he immediately starts whirling around like a spinning top as if he's trying to find the best pose: "This way? How about this way? Like this? Or did you like this one better? Wait! I've got a whole new one...."

He was sunbathing on the couch in this pic, looking dapper in his blue plaid sweater. I adore his pink nose and his sticky-up ears and especially that little wrinkled hairy chin. We kiss him ten thousand times a day and coo over him with disgustingly syrupy baby talk and always make sure that his jaunty winter jacket -- the one with the faux fur-lined hood -- is securely velcroed up so that hims won't get a chill on him's widdle chest, 'cause we don't want that Mister Baby Sweetie-sugar to gets sickies, now do we?

*ahem*

Sorry.

His, mine and all the styling products in the world

The man in that picture is the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven, the brilliant composer who gave us his Fifth Symphony and Ninth Symphony, as well as those standard assignments of piano students everywhere, Moonlight Sonata and Fur Elise.

He gave me his hair.

I have a drop or two of German blood, and although Beethoven left no legitimate children, historians have speculated that he may have fathered several offspring on the wrong side of the blanket. I think I may be the descendant of one of those children, because honestly - look at the man's hair. Mine looks just like it, except dark. But the waywardness? The total abandon with which his hair is throwing itself about on his head? The stick-up-ishness and pointing in all directions? That is MY HAIR.

One day, I'll get up and heave a sigh of relief after spending a good half hour or so trying to make sense of what God and Ludwig put on my head. A good hair day is never really what I have. I use the term "acceptable." An ACCEPTABLE hair day is a banner day for me. But the very next day? It's as if a war broke out between my scalp and my follicles overnight and I look in the mirror with mounting dread and a bit of raw fear. That is an unacceptable hair day.

Today is an unacceptable hair day, which is why I posted a picture of Grandpa instead of myself.

Okay, eeeewwwwww!

The girls and I were listening to the radio while in the car the other day and we heard this little tidbit of information: 70% of all women DO NOT WASH THEIR HANDS, EVER, after using the restroom and some percentage of the remaining 30% only wash their hands if there's someone else in the restroom with them, some person like me who would be totally judgmental and be all, like, "OH MY GOSH, you pig! I can't believe you didn't wash your hands and now you're probably going back to your desk to eat a hundred calorie pack of Keebler fudge rounds and how gross is THAT??!!" Only I wouldn't say that out loud. That would be rude. No, I would say it silently in my head and then leave the restroom and tell the next twenty people I saw. Why, you ask? Because I was brought up to have manners.

Anyway, I'm not all that good at mathematics, but I believe I am correct in saying that out of every ten women you see, seven of them did not use soap and water or hand sanitizer after they peed the last time. Which might not be that much of an issue if the last time they peed was, say, four hours ago because a lot of their pee germs have probably been transferred onto their mobile phones, computer keyboards, coffee mugs and the like. But if you see ten women exiting a restroom and seven of them head toward you to give you a friendly greeting, RUN.

All I want for Christmas

When my husband saw this "as seen on TV" product on, well, the TV, he immediately called me into the room. "Hey, honey!" he yelled from his cozy seat in the recliner. "You've gotta see this thing!"

I was out in the kitchen loading the dishwasher and I sighed as I dried my hands off, thinking that if I had a dime for every time someone hollers, "MOM, C'MERE!" or "HEY, HONEY, YOU'VE GOTTA SEE THIS!" I could hire a maid to do my dishes and I could comfortably loll around in a swivel chair so that I could turn myself this way and that, amiably viewing whatever my family wanted me to see. Unless it was something upstairs, and then they'd have to wait.

My husband was happily zooming back the action on the DVR so that I could see whatever-it-was from the very beginning, and I was betting on some kind of football action that was going to involved lots of men running on a field, one of them carrying the ball (which I can never see) and nearly all of them doing pugilistic things to one another (which I can see, and which makes me cringe.) "You'll never believe this! As soon as I saw the first few seconds, I knew this was for you."

Here's what he saw:



At first, I was a teeny bit honked off, because can I be honest here? The women in this video appear to be very young - definitely under thirty. And this product seems designed for the over-eighty demographic, doesn't it? I mean, how many twenty-five year olds are worried about losing their balance in the tub and toppling over the edge while trying to wash their feet? I, on the other hand, being (*ahem* ) what the French politely call "a lady of a certain age," am indeed worried about falling over in the tub, mostly because I don't have a great sense of balance due to injuries suffered in a car accident back when I was the age of those CHILDREN in the Easy Feet commercial. Plus Beth once told me about a colleague of hers -- a woman in her thirties -- who slipped in her shower and went crashing through the glass shower doors with unpleasant results. So evidently washing one's feet can be unexpectedly hazardous.

Besides, there's just nothing I like more than a foot massage and my family members are surprisingly reluctant to oblige me in this comfort. I recently told Aisling that I'd just love it if she'd give me some coupons for free foot rubs as a Christmas gift. That way, I explained, she wouldn't have to spend any money on me and the foot massages would be something I would totally enjoy.

Aisling eyed me apprehensively and said, "I'd rather just spend the money, thanks."

I'm not sure why they all balk so much at this. I don't think my feet are any smellier than anyone else's and thanks to my husband's generous nail spa gift certificate for a Mother's Day present, I don't have unsightly calluses. My toenails are always nicely painted and trimmed and my feet themselves are actually one of the best looking parts of my whole pumpkin-shaped body, featuring lovely symmetrically aligned toes that are not bony or otherwise weirdly shaped. But anyway, the Easy Feet foot washer seems like an idea whose time has come, and at only $14.99, the price is certainly right.

I've dropped several broad hints and I'm hoping that I will be the happy recipient of an Easy Feet massager this Christmas. Keep your fingers crossed for me.