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pixel39I need a Happy Hum of Cookieness to hum.
I am on the sca-cooks list, which is amazingly chatty yet also amazingly has a fairly reasonable signal:noise ratio. A group of us do a cookie exchange--you bake enough cookies for everybody on the exchange to have some, send it all to the nutcase who's agreed to coordinate, together with some cash for return postage. Then the aforementioned nutcase makes up the packages with a sample of each batch of cookies, and sends them back. Thus I have a box full of little packages of cookies in my living room. Well, cookies, and a plum pudding, and two fruitcake-ettes, and a bundt cake-ette that I think is pound cake, and an orange spice pound cake-ette, and a bag of extremely potent pecan rum balls. Most of them are labeled as to who made them, and most of those also have the recipe. Wheee!
And one of the list members is posting all the recipes on his web site, so those of us who were big dorks and didn't even label our contributions, let alone include the recipes, can stop feeling quite so dorky about it. Yep, we're geeks who bake.
And that box has done more to make me feel like this is really truly a holiday season, than anything else has so far. I guess because even though I have never actually met any of these people, except one, we're still one big happy dysfunctional family, whereas my blood kin have rather splendidly fallen down on the job. NONE of my father's side of the family has said anything about Mom, now that she's gone. None of them. Nothing. Nada. Not one peep. I will stop feeling at all guilty about not attending my grandfather's funeral, now. I at least sent flowers, and called a number of times. I'd feel ashamed to be related to such self-centered people except that none of my friends are likely to meet any of them, and since they mostly live in Pennsylvania I'm not likely to encounter them socially. Actually, even if I lived in Lewisburg I wouldn't really have to worry about running into any of them in a social context. And the worst part of it is, that none of their behavior really surprises me.
That said, there are still cookies. And rum balls. And marzipan (now that I've figured out which bag is the marzipan, I know who made it). And a surfeit of styrofoam packing peanuts, carefully saved and lovingly sent back to me in the very same box I sent them out in.
And my bengal tigers are happy, and my gemsboks are happily reproducing, and even though my sea lions want more space, they are still reasonably happy. And the rhino is happy, and the chimpanzees are happy, and the zoo has won two awards for having nifty exhibits and being good to the animals and stuff. And the giant anteater makes whuffly noises. And the living room rug still does not show regurgitated cat food stains (which is good, because the frequency of Feline Gastric Reversal Events does not seem to have diminished significantly, even with a regular application of lubricational goo into the feline in question). And there is enough room in the freezer for all the pie crusts and a lot of the bread. And I still need to wear a belt with my jeans.
And there is a box full of cookies and packing peanuts in my living room. With rum balls.
So life does not actually suck, it's just my family who are idiots. And that's really not a huge surprise.
I am on the sca-cooks list, which is amazingly chatty yet also amazingly has a fairly reasonable signal:noise ratio. A group of us do a cookie exchange--you bake enough cookies for everybody on the exchange to have some, send it all to the nutcase who's agreed to coordinate, together with some cash for return postage. Then the aforementioned nutcase makes up the packages with a sample of each batch of cookies, and sends them back. Thus I have a box full of little packages of cookies in my living room. Well, cookies, and a plum pudding, and two fruitcake-ettes, and a bundt cake-ette that I think is pound cake, and an orange spice pound cake-ette, and a bag of extremely potent pecan rum balls. Most of them are labeled as to who made them, and most of those also have the recipe. Wheee!
And one of the list members is posting all the recipes on his web site, so those of us who were big dorks and didn't even label our contributions, let alone include the recipes, can stop feeling quite so dorky about it. Yep, we're geeks who bake.
And that box has done more to make me feel like this is really truly a holiday season, than anything else has so far. I guess because even though I have never actually met any of these people, except one, we're still one big happy dysfunctional family, whereas my blood kin have rather splendidly fallen down on the job. NONE of my father's side of the family has said anything about Mom, now that she's gone. None of them. Nothing. Nada. Not one peep. I will stop feeling at all guilty about not attending my grandfather's funeral, now. I at least sent flowers, and called a number of times. I'd feel ashamed to be related to such self-centered people except that none of my friends are likely to meet any of them, and since they mostly live in Pennsylvania I'm not likely to encounter them socially. Actually, even if I lived in Lewisburg I wouldn't really have to worry about running into any of them in a social context. And the worst part of it is, that none of their behavior really surprises me.
That said, there are still cookies. And rum balls. And marzipan (now that I've figured out which bag is the marzipan, I know who made it). And a surfeit of styrofoam packing peanuts, carefully saved and lovingly sent back to me in the very same box I sent them out in.
And my bengal tigers are happy, and my gemsboks are happily reproducing, and even though my sea lions want more space, they are still reasonably happy. And the rhino is happy, and the chimpanzees are happy, and the zoo has won two awards for having nifty exhibits and being good to the animals and stuff. And the giant anteater makes whuffly noises. And the living room rug still does not show regurgitated cat food stains (which is good, because the frequency of Feline Gastric Reversal Events does not seem to have diminished significantly, even with a regular application of lubricational goo into the feline in question). And there is enough room in the freezer for all the pie crusts and a lot of the bread. And I still need to wear a belt with my jeans.
And there is a box full of cookies and packing peanuts in my living room. With rum balls.
So life does not actually suck, it's just my family who are idiots. And that's really not a huge surprise.
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The Pennsylvania Gettys
Date: 2002-12-20 01:00 pm (UTC)Today is not one of those days.
I keep thinking I understand the dynamics of families
Date: 2002-12-21 09:06 pm (UTC)It's why I'm very resistant to the concept of the "chosen family," the way some people consider the groups that they've joined (including but not limited to Starfleet). Frankly, the only thing that a "chosen family" has in common with a family formed by biology or marriage is the urge to defenstrate some of them.
Sigh
Date: 2002-12-21 10:44 pm (UTC)I still maintain that the rest of the family are idiots. Especially that, er, um, *person* my cousin Scott married.