RECIPE: Chocolate-Cinnamon Sheet Cake

This is just one of the best cakes in the world. So deliciously chocolatey -- if you like that sort of thing, Kayte -- and it's big. So it goes well with a family gathering. I took one to CousinFest so that we could just munch on a piece whenever we wanted. Susie ended up having some neighbors over for an impromptu party after the fireworks, and it fed everyone who wanted a piece and there was still a little bit left over for guilty snacking. By the end of the four days, it was gone.

This is a big one at family reunions, parties and, er, funeral dinners, plus it featured largely at James Whitcomb Riley Elementary School back in the 1970s as their featured Happy Birthday cake for each month of the year. It's known in some places as Texas Sheet Cake and in other places as Picnic Sheet Cake, but it's known everywhere as y-u-m-m-y. There are several variations on the recipe -- some call for buttermilk, some call for sour cream, others for more or less cinnamon -- but this recipe is from my cousin Cathy.

The most important part of this cake is the pan it is baked in -- a jelly roll pan, which is 10 1/2 x 15 1/2 x 1. That's what'll give you the nice, big cake.

The second most important part of this cake is the icing -- the velvety, scrumptious, home made icing. I dare you not to lick that spoon.

CHOCOLATE-CINNAMON SHEET CAKE

2 cups flour
2 cups sugar

2 sticks of butter (I know, I know....)
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 cup water

1/2 cup sour cream
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 400^oF. Combine sugar and flour in a large heat-proof mixing bowl. In a medium sized saucepan, bring the butter, cocoa and water to a rapid boil. Pour into the flour-sugar mixture. Stir in sour cream, vanilla and cinnamon, eggs and baking soda; pour into an oiled sheet cake pan and bake for 20 minutes.

ICING

1 stick of butter (yes, I know)
6 tablespoons milk
4 tablespoons cocoa

1 teaspoon vanilla
1 pound powdered sugar

1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts, optional

In a saucepan (preferably the same medium-sized one you just used for the cake) bring the butter, milk and cocoa to a boil. Add vanilla and powdered sugar and stir until velvety smooth. Pour over hot cake as soon as it comes out of the oven. You can sprinkle the cake with nuts, if desired.

Allow cake and frosting to cool completely on a wire rack before cutting. Icing will set and be firm.

The movies we watched: Mamma Mia, The Sex in the City Movie, Slumdog Millionaire

Susie had to make about a thousand different phone calls in order to get a new bulb in the projection machine in their theater room; it turns out that this one company, while they were very anxious for Susie to purchase the (expensive) bulb, they weren't all that fussed about coming out to her house to actually install it. So she had to call a different home theater company, who told her that something more needed to be done other than just the bulb, but they were polite and respectful and there, so they fixed things up and were just leaving as Carol, the girls and I arrived. We wanted to hug both guys, because movie watching has become an integral part of the CousinFest experience.

Here's what Susie ordered from Netflix and my ratings of the same out of five stars:

Mamma Mia *

This musical movie starts out in a dicey manner with the 20-year-old soon-to-be-married Sophie reading her mother's diary from two decades back. She greets her two bridesmaids at the dock of some island in Greece where her mother, Donna, has a little hotel, reading bits of Donna's diary out loud to them as they posed adorably on rocks and next to trees. Where is the proverbial sniper on the grassy knoll when you really need him?

As it turns out, nobody knows who Sophie's daddy is because her mother has had what the diary coyly refers to as "dot, dot, dot" which just in case you're brain dead or haven't otherwise clued in by the third time Sophie says it, means "sex" with three different guys in the same month. To the tune of Abba's "Honey, Honey," the three chippies all rhapsodize on how romantic it is that Sophie's mamma has been a great big slut back in the day, and that's where Carol and I both looked at each other, puzzled.

"I thought you were supposed to be embarrassed if your mamma was a ho," said Carol.

So did I. Anyway, we made it through about fifteen more minutes so that we could see Donna (Meryl Streep) and her two friends Rosie and Tanya, all of whom were straight out of central casting: Donna, the bohemian free spirit; Rosie, the tough, smart alecky bestselling author; and Tanya, the serial-divorces, high-maintenance society queen. It was just like The Big Chill without the funeral and St. Elmo's Fire without Judd Nelson's hair and The Breakfast Club without the teenage angst and how in the world was this stinker ever nominated for all those awards?

"Do you hate this movie?" I asked Carol hopefully.

"I do. I really do," she said. So I went downstairs and asked Doug if he could make it stop.

"I knew you wouldn't like it!" he said triumphantly.

Susie wasn't at home when Carol and I started watching Mamma Mia. By the time she got home, we were already watching the "Sex in the City" movie. She was very disgruntled that we disliked Mamma Mia and accused us of not truly appreciating the music of Abba, which is a terrible thing to say to people who went to high school and college in the 70s and 80s. We were chastened, but unrepentant. Mamma Mia went unwatched.

The Sex in the City Movie **

We did watch this one all the way through, but since Carol and I had neither one ever seen the HBO series "Sex in the City," our lack of appreciation for the trials and triumphs of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda -- and good grief, doesn't anyone have friends who are just named "Lisa" anymore? -- made Susie a little edgy. Carol and I kept talking irreverently during scenes that Susie felt were important, so she kept stopping the DVD and scolding us, filling us in on the backstory so that we would watch with a more respectful attitude.

My first problem with this movie is that I hated Miranda, who couldn't even interact with her own child long enough to sit through a spaghetti dinner at a restaurant without the nanny there to run interference. My second problem is that I hated Samantha, after whom I would never sit on the same toilet seat unless I had a sandblaster and a vat of bleach because from the way she described her own sexual experiences, there is no telling what is crawling around up in there, if you know what I mean. My third problem is that I found Charlotte a bit smug in her own version of happily-ever-after and only the fact that she poughkeepsie'd in her pants after accidentally opening her mouth and allowing shower water to go in while in Mexico made her more tolerable.

I liked Carrie, though. She was okay. For all her feminist stylings, I found it very strange that she was willing to allow her boyfriend of TEN YEARS to buy a penthouse apartment for them to share, until one of her friends pointed out what a vulnerable position she was putting herself in. She went ahead and did it, though, and it bit her in the rear end, just like you might imagine.

Here are two points, though:

1) I live in Indiana and I just can't make myself care all that much about Prada or Manolo Blahniks (Susie's friend Liz calls them "Vanilla Colonics," which I thought was the wittiest thing I'd ever heard) and although I can appreciate the style and beauty of a Vivienne Westwood wedding gown, I can't imagine myself worshipping it.

2) I am a Church Lady AND a Girl Power type of person and I couldn't believe that Carrie was willing to be dated for TEN YEARS and have an apartment bought for her without any type of meaningful committment other than a custom closet. Where I live, we still say things like "Why buy the cow when the milk is free?" and darned if that very concept wasn't played out, right there in this movie! I felt extremely vindicated.

After ten years of dating Mr. Big, Carrie suddenly begins to realize that by moving into (his) penthouse (not theirs) and giving up her own apartment, she's putting herself in a potentially devastating situation. So she cajoles Mr. Big into a half-hearted marriage proposal that could have put frost on a January radiator. When he jilted her on their wedding day, forcing her to leave their wedding venue in her gown, I don't think Carol and I were surprised at all.

When they finally were able to talk via cell phone, Mr. Big asked Carrie why she hadn't been answering her pages -- I don't know where he thought she was supposed to be carrying her phone -- and then meweled like a sniveling little nancy-boy, "Will we still be us if we get married?"

WHERE is that sniper on the grassy knoll??!!

Carrie tried to tell him that they were, indeed, going to still be "us," trying to reassure her gallant groom that they weren't going to turn into Pamela Anderson or Britney Spears or one of that ilk and whoever they're with right now and have drunken fights that ended up with new tattoos all around and naughty videos posted on the internet. To no avail! Mr. Big wasn't big enough and it all just goes to prove that if he was that in to her, he would have asked her to marry him about nine years ago.

The Carrie went ahead on her honeymoon to Mexico, but her friends came along and took care of her and it was very sad, but very sweet.

During all this, there was a lot of shushing by Susie and a lot of peremptory commands to "pay attention because something important is getting ready to happen" and Carol and I teased Susie mercilessly.

There were a lot of subplots that involved some characters maybe getting a divorce and others splitting up because the female partner wanted to be free to have all the unrestrained sex she desired -- I would rather poughkeepsie in my pants myself before using the toilet after that woman -- and a new baby. Some of it was nice and some of it was just downright awful, including a number of extremely graphic sex scenes that caused Carol and I to shriek and hold sofa pillows in front of our eyes.

"You mean the title of the movie didn't clue you in that there were going to be sex scenes?" said Susie incredulously.

At the end, I was horrified -- horrified! -- that Carrie went on to marry Mr. Big after experiencing ten years of dating, one half-hearted marriage proposal, and the cruelest and most selfish rejection possible, all because he got down on one knee and proposed to her in her custom closet, when she went to the penthouse to pick up a pair of Vanilla Colonics she'd left there. There wasn't even that much apologizing or 'splaining or couples therapy, or anything.

I just didn't get it at all. From the literary standpoint, it was kind of like an ancient Greek drama where the plot has become so hopelessly tangled that they playwright uses the device of the deus ex machina to descend from the heavens and say, "I am a god! And I declare that everything is now better! Because I have said so in a god-like manner!" From the modern screenwriters' standpoint, I suppose it was more of a thing about "This movie is already about six hours long, what with all the gratuitous sex scenes and the shots of Carrie wearing quirky yet haute couture-y outfits, so we'd better wrap this thing up. I know! Let's have them get married!"

Although this movie had its nice parts, the bad outweighed the good for me, especially that acquienscent Girl-of-the-Eighteenth-Century ending. I suppose it would have helped a lot if I'd seen even one episode of the series so that I could have connected with the characters more, but I didn't have the opportunity to know their history. I appreciated the depth of their friendship and how they were willing to care for one another, though, and since that's how I feel about Carol and Susie, that was one thing I connected with completely.

Slumdog Millionaire *****

This movie was extremely engrossing -- I really can't say "entertaining," because that word implies a light, frothy sort of attention that one might pay to a movie like, oh, just to pull a title out of the air, Mamma Mia. Anyway, engrossing. As in "unable to look away from the screen, even when I wanted to." It was a painful movie to watch, but it really raised awareness of how hard life is in some places of the world. I mean, I already knew something of the plight of the poor in India due to reading about Mother Teresa's great good works, but oh, my goodness. Just seeing the searing poverty on film makes me feel sad for ever complaining about eating tacos and spaghetti over and over again last winter.

Just in case we didn't understand things, Susie explained the plot in detail to us as things went along. Here's what I took from the plot:

The story is about three little musketeers, orphaned brothers Salim and Jamal and their friend, the girl Latika. Salim and Jamal are protective of one another and they take on the care and comradeship of Latika after the anti-Muslim attacks in 1993. The three children survive on the meanest streets possible through the craftiness of Salim -- it's obvious early on that his shrewdness is going to land him in a sticky mess somewhere along the way, and sure enough, it does. But not for about fifteen more years.

Jamal loves Latika from the very beginning. They're maybe about seven or eight when the movie begins, but his devotion is unswerving. The two children are separated by events that transpire, find one another and lose one another again in a series of circumstances that is very painful. Sometimes, you just feel like your heart is going to be torn in pity.

But then Jamal winds up on India's version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire and he is brilliant at answering questions. He answers questions based on the experiences he's had in his life, most of which have been things that would have killed a lesser man like Mr. Big. Naturally, the producers of the show can't figure out how this uneducated "slumdog" knows the answers to all these difficult questions, so they resort to punishment to get Jamal to confess his cheatin' ways.

Since everybody in the world has apparently seen this movie except for me and Carol, I'll say that things turned out well both in terms of the money and in Jamal and Latika's loving, loyal friendship, which had turned into something more. It was a blissful ending, and when the whole cast assembled in the train station after the credits to sing and do the Bollywood thing to the song "Jai Ho" (which means "Victory to Thee"), your heart just melts in happiness.

It was a hard movie to watch, but the action was non-stop, the story was excellent, and the ending was the stuff all good romances are made of. No half-hearted proposals and wishy-washy last minute cold feet from Jamal -- he was a pure-hearted, uncompromising beloved who could move any woman's soul, maybe even witchy Miranda's.

And I simply cannot stress this enough....

Down a couple of posts from this one is the Ziploc Omelette recipe that Carol brought to CousinFest '09, courtesy of her friend from church who owns the bed and breakfast. Susie and I agreed that this is a brilliant way to cook a number of omelettes at the same time -- they turn out of their plastic bags perfectly cooked and perfectly shaped.

I was so impressed, I decided to make them for our dinner yesterday evening, our first dinner post-Fest. A trip to the grocery for the week's food supply was necessary anyway, and say what you will about Aldi being kind of charmless and grungy-looking (I won't even try to deny it), they have some pretty good deals on produce. I bought a bag of Vidalia onions, a carton of lovely mushrooms and two robust and fragrant green peppers for about four dollars. Those items, plus cheese and some lean ham were destined for four two-egg Western omelettes topped with hot salsa.

I also bought quart-sized freezer bags at Aldi, a necessary requirement for the boiling part.

I made a couple of modifications to the recipe, including three tablespoons of milk and half a tablespoon of melted butter to the plastic bag, but other than that, I did everything just like Carol's friend's recipe instructed: put in eggs, smoosh to scramble; add ingredients, smoosh a little more; remove as much air from bag as possible; place bag in boiling water for around eighteen to twenty minutes, turning the bag over in the water at the halfway point.

Except for one thing.

I ever the thrifty cheap-o, DID NOT BUY ACTUAL ZIPLOC FREEZER BAGS. That box of bags at Aldi said "quart-sized" and "freezer" and I thought, well, there you go!

It turns out that you should also look for the word "Ziploc" if you ever intend to make this recipe. Unless, of course, when you remove your Ziploc omelettes from the pot of boiling water, you'd like to consume them with a garnish of melted plastic bag along with them.

So last night, the girls and I had to go into warp speed mode, chopping more green peppers, mushrooms, onions and ham -- thank heaven the cheese was already shredded or I probably would have lost my mind -- and I got out more eggs and scrambled them fast. The veggies didn't really have time to cook properly, so we ate our eggs with crunchy vegetables, which gave me a stomach ache later.

Ziploc. Ziploc. Ziploc.

The long way home

CousinFest '09 had to eventually come to an end, so Carol, Meelyn, Aisling and I said a tearful goodbye to Doug and Susie yesterday at about 1:30 p.m., with me thinking we'd have a regular, uneventful five hour drive ahead of us. It turned into about a six and a half hour drive because of a massive bottleneck of holiday traffic south of Louisville, but who's counting? Besides me and Carol, that is.

The was one event during that wait on the freeway that provided us with some entertainment. During one particularly loooooong period when we were at a complete halt, a young college age guy got out of a car about four ahead of us and loped over a couple of lanes and down a hill on the verge to a clump of trees -- he was obviously in desperate need of a bush stop. He looked over his shoulders, chagrined at the idea that the entire northbound lanes of interstate travelers in his immediate vicinity were avidly interested in watching him pee (you just can't look away from something like that; Carol and I tried, but failed) but managed to get things going. Unfortunately, so did the traffic. We began to roll forward for the first time in about ten minutes, picking up speed.

The guy looked over his shoulder again, noting the fact that the car with his three friends in it was beginning to move away, although they were trying to go as slow as possible (haha, I just made an error in the word 'possible' just now and struck the i key instead of the o -- that's a pretty funny typo) and he finished things off, zipped up and began to run frantically. The problem was that the faster he ran, the faster the traffic began to roll.

"Oh, f-------------------!!!!" he yelled as the three lanes sped up. His friends were in the far lane and I couldn't imagine how the poor guy was going to be able to dodge traffic in the right and center lanes to get back to his ride, where two other guy were hanging their heads out the windows watching for him with anxious but amused expressions. The driver was rolling along as slowly as he dared, but the people behind him were getting a little terse: Their lane was going much, much more slowly than the center and right lanes.

As we passed their car, we called out, "HE'S COMING!!!!!!"

"THANKS!!!" they bellowed.

"Poor guy," I said sympathetically to Carol. "You know he probably sat there, holding it as long as he could before he felt like he was fixin' to bust." (I always adopt a slight southern accent after a few days with Susie.)

"I bet he'll never travel without an empty bottle again," she replied.

We got back to Carol's and shifted over a mountain of luggage from her car to ours and the girls and I took off for home without even going in for a pee pee break ourselves. Other than the fact that Aisling tried to read a thick Arbonne catalog aloud to Meelyn and me all the way home, the trip was uneventful, although I did have to threaten to stuff her into the trunk if she didn't stop rhapsodizing about skin care, spa treatments and cosmetics. I mean, I like the Arbonne products too, but that doesn't mean I want to hear a fourteen year old twittering on about them for hours on end.

On the other hand, Aisling is going to make an amazing, top-notch consultant someday. Susie may end up with that white Mercedes solely because of the white-hot heat of Aisling's enthusiam. It almost burned up that catalog.

They're making me crazy

Susie and Carol are making me watch the frikkin' Boston Pops fireworks and singy-song, complete with awwwwwwwwwwful country music. Make them stop. I am the baby cousin. I should always get to do what I want to do and they should let me because they are much, much older.

Recipe: CousinFest Omelettes

Carol has a friend who owns a bed and breakfast, and this friend uses this recipe to cook made-to-order omelettes for her guests. It's a great way to make a number of omelettes at the same time.

Ziploc Omelettes

Ziploc freezer bags in the one quart size (they must be freezer bags, not regular)

Omelette stuff like crumbled bacon, diced Canadian bacon, diced cooked potatoes, shredded cheese, chopped onion, etc.

Large pot of boiling water

Instructions:

Each person takes a Ziploc freezer bag and breaks two eggs into it - you can add a sploosh of milk or water and salt/pepper if desired. Smoosh the eggs around in the bag until "scrambled." Add the desired fillings to the bag and shake. Remove as much of the air from the bag as possible; shake.

Place the plastic bags in the boiling water and cook for fifteen minutes if you like your eggs "juicy." If you prefer well-done eggs, boil your Ziploc bag for twenty minutes. If your water pot is big enough, you should be able to cook 6-8 omelettes at a time.

Remove the bags from the pot CAREFULLY. You might want to carefully dry the bag off on the bottom to avoid getting water on your plate. Open the bags and the omelettes will roll out easily, shaped like little logs or loaves.

Later that evening....

I have judst had a gret big peach fuzz buzz, so plleze excuse ny typimg.

Hahahaha!!! Just kidding, Mom!!! It was only big, not great big.

Carol just got back from a Corvette ride with Doug and Susie's neighbor, Tom. Tom has a very red, very shiny, very convertible-y Corvette. It is, as the girls would say, hawt. (Frankly, so is Tom, who is married to the sweet and hilarious Liz. Liz used to be Snow White at Disney World - isn't that the cutest thing?)

We are getting ready to eat cedar plank grilled salmon, roasted new potatoes, grilled asparagus and some other stuff that sounds really good, but I have been released from KP duty (did dinner last night and lunch today) so I am sitting inside in the air conditioning tapping away while everyone else is sweating like a hog outside by the grill. The grill, just in case you wondered, is bigger than my entire house. It has an outside refrigerator and sink, too. Plus a long counter made of unpolished granite. The house, I believe, may possibly be bigger than my entire city, and with more bathrooms.

We spent the entire day ouside by the pool. Carol brought this pool toy consisting of two round Velcro-ed catcher's mitt-type things with a Velcro-covered tennis ball and we had a great deal of fun playing Monkey in the Middle with Summer, the golden retriever, playing the part of the monkey. She is the funniest thing you have ever seen, swimming in the pool.

By the time we'd spent four hours outdoors in the breeze and the sun and the chlorine and the heat, I looked like something that had just climbed from the primordial ooze in one of the golf course's water hazards. I had problems that even Arbonne was going to be pressed to resolve. It took me way over an hour to fix my face and my hair and Susie kept coming up to my suite and saying, "WHAT'S TAKING SO LOOOOOOOONG?!?!" It's hard to explain ugly to someone who does beauty products for a living.

Aunt Peg is here to join us for dinner and fireworks and she is impatient that we haven't yet eaten dinner and the fireworks are supposed to start soon. It is getting a little darkish outside. Hmmm. We may have to slam all this delicious food straight down our gullets in order to waddle over to Tom and Liz's to watch the display.

We have to watch one of our Netflix movies tonight. Slumdog Millionaire? Mama Mia?The "Sex in the City" movie? Which will it be?

Live from CousinFest '09!

It is 8:30 in the morning and I am sitting here in Susie's living room looking out at an absolutely gorgeous morning complete with SUNSHINE, which was notably absent in Indiana last week. The big windows at the rear of the house look out on a golf course and a golf cart just whizzed up to the green beyond Susie's pool and several happy looking golfers got out, chaffing each other.

Susie jus came in from a shower combing her wet hair. She has to teach a yoga class at 9:30 and Aisling (and I think Meelyn) are going to go with her. I asked her if we were going to have breakfast after yoga because I didn't think they'd want to eat breakfast before getting all bendy; Susie just replied -- no kidding -- "Yes, but I did have a little breakfast anyway....I had a brownie and a cup of coffee."

That's my girl! Combining healthful exercise with calories, fat and caffeine! Now if she could just cut out the healthful exercise......

Carol just came downstairs with wet hair and a comb, looking for moisturizer. That shouldn't be too hard to find here since Susie is a crack Arbonne consultant. I have never used such luscious bath products as I used this morning n my own shower. Arbonne love!

We got here at around 11:30 a.m. yesterday and Susie made us a fabulous grilled chicken salad with leafy greens for lunch, only Carol wouldn't eat one bit of lettuce that she said looked "hairy." I just mentioned this to Carol and Carol said dismissively that it looked like something Susie picked out of the yard.

Susie is cajoling Meelyn to come to yoga class (the one Susie teaches) at the club's fitness center. Meelyn is unconvinced, having gone to yoga with Susie and Aisling last night. Susie said, "You need to get stretched out and blah and blah and blah..." I'd like to tell you what else she said, but I blacked out when she began speaking of exercise.

Susie said, "Now, we can get a rolled towel to support your neck and a rolled mat to support your knees and you don't have to do anything you don't want to do, so go upstairs and get dressed."

Meelyn replied, not unreasonably, "Well, then, I don't think I'll go."

This went back and forth for a while and it was finally determined that Meelyn would not go and that Aisling was Susie's favorite little cousin.

Last night I made a thick, garlicky ragu for dinner with whole wheat pasta and bread with garlic butter. Carol made a spinach-artichoke dip that was packed full of cheesy goodness -- we're back on the cheese again this year. Of note: Susie had a cream cheese and green chili spread ready for us to snack on. It looks as if again this year Susie will bid us goodbye with a kiss and a colon cleanse tablet.

The only sadness of the whole day came when Carol and I were home alone while the others were yoga-ing and Carol, who was making strawberry daiquiris in he blender, somehow managed to take the blender's pitcher off incorrectly, allowing strawberry daiquiri to flow, like, everywhere. We found out that strawberry daiquiri is not very fun to clean up.

Carol scooped some into a teaspoon and held it out to me. "It was going to be really good," she said, crestfallen. I opened my mouth and she tipped the mixture on the spoon into it; she was right, it was really good. Only I'd been oping for, like, a glassful.

Neither one of us had the brains enough God gave a goat to figure out how to put Susie's very expensive Cuisinart blender back together, so we had to remain dolefully unbuzzed until they got home. There was cussing involved. We explained to Susie that we'd broken the blender and Susie said, "Ohhhhh nooooooooooooes!!! Howwwwwwwwwwww????"

Carol held out the pitcher. "This came off and it won't go back on."

"It won't go on," I elaborated. "It came off."

Susie gave us a strange look, performed a split-second twisting motion with the pitcher and he blender base, and whooaaaaaaaaa!! There was the blender, magically restored!

Carol and I won't be applying to Purdue University's engineering program anytime soon.

Lunch today is birdseed salad and more bread and a veggie pizza to snack on. Grilled salmon for dinner! Swimming and sunning this afternoon! More later!

Then the rest of the week happened....

Last Sunday was such a slow and boring day, I thought I would just fossilize from boredom. Things were so dull, I spent about two hours watching different music vids from the seventies and eighties on YouTube and ended up getting all maudlin and weepy over "Peace Train."

Then I went to bed and woke up on Monday morning and whoooooooaoaaaaaaa, here it is Friday! How did that happen? I started writing about four different posts which never got finished and are forlornly waiting in my drafts file to be published. But on the other hand, Kieren is now finished with driver's ed class and the teens, Dayden and I went to the pool twice and to Nanny and Poppy's house once; I made a new kind of cookie from Dorie's cookbook (Baking: From My Home to Yours), Meelyn had her first job interview and I mortified the three teens by giving them a looooooong Church Lady talk about premarital sex after watching the episode titled "Innocence" from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's third season DVDs. Meelyn got the job! It was an eventful week.

The best thing yet is that CousinFest '09 is coming up NEXT THURSDAY. There are lists to make! Suitcases to pack! Lemon bars to prepare! Busy, busy, busy!

CousinFest '09 date confirmed

I am so terribly excited! CousinFest '09 will be taking place over the Fourth of July weekend, July 2-5. One of the reasons for my great excitement is that the fireworks we'll be watching are the ones displayed from the suhh-waaaanky clubhouse in Susie's neighborhood; my family is accustomed to going to the local Payless parking lot where fireworks are set off while our fellow citizens sit in battered lawn chairs in the backs of their pickup trucks, eating Doritos, talking NASCAR and yelling at their kids, who are trying to stab each other with sparklers: "Travis, I'm gonna haul off and belt you one if you don't stop that sh*t right now! You're fixin' to put out your sister's eye with that thang!"

I'm thinking in Susie's neighborhood, there is probably a separate fireworks display for the kids and the nannies, so that the adults can be free to sip their wine and murmur "Oooohhh! Aaaahhh!!!" in their cultured Southern accents. Susie will be the one standing up and hollering, "Oh, look, did y'all see that one? It was PINK!"

I wonder if Carol will refuse to raise her hand as a visitor at Holy Spirit for the third year in a row. Yes, I have been keeping track. And yes, I am holding a grudge. Two years in a row, she's left me hanging to stand up and say my name and where I'm from while she slumps there in the pew, snickering wickedly at me and refusing to make her presence known.

We don't know yet if Lilly can come: she is very busy with work and with working on yet another college degree; you'd have thought she'd be content with that MBA, but no....She has to go on proving that she's smarter than the other three of us put together, but we do not hold that against her. She, in the same manner, is gracious and forgiving of the fact that, compared to her, Susie, Carol and I don't have the brains God gave a goose.