one winter's day

Now Playing: "Thirty-Year Retrospective" by Mark O'Connor. Track 15, "One Winter's Night".

Yes, my blog is under construction. New colors coming soon....

This morning after I woke up I sat in my room for awhile, snuggled in my quilt, writing in my journal and reading the first chapter of Ephesians. It feels so good to be able to wake up in the daylight and to have time to sit and read and write without feeling the pressure to start the day.

My mother took Laura and Stephen to Mrs. H's house for piano lessons at ten-thirty. Philip was at MTC for his last day before Christmas break. I put on "The Nutcracker" ballet and went on an archaeological investigation into the cabinet in the laundry room. My mother had assigned me the task of decorating the house for Christmas. I delved through various old cardboard boxes, loosely held together with flaky packing tape, and discovered the usual concatenation of old ornaments and garlands. I got out the little wooden puzzles that Mr. Spear carved for us out of wood. Each "puzzle" is made of beautifully-crafted shapes cut from one piece of wood--so there's a mother seal, with her baby cut to fit exactly in her center, and the three Wise Men, each one with a present shaped to fit under his individual beard, and a bird, and a couple of bears with interlocked arms.

I scrapbooked some in my room, too. Sarah came over to spend the day at about eleven forty-five, after MTC was done. She and I sat up in my room, talking and listening to Mark O'Connor. Laura joined us when she got back from piano lessons. I tried on Sarah's formal gown, a present to her from her younger sisters. It fits almost perfectly. I love the grey-blue color, and it's luxuriously smooth. Most importantly, my mother approved it. We warmed up leftovers for lunch.

After lunch, my mother drove Laura to the Fishers' house to do therapy with Christa. Sarah and I went shopping. We went to the new strip mall on the highway. In Ross, we looked at dresses and jeans. We looked in a couple of other stores, but Belk was too expensive, of course. For fun, on the way back to the car, we stepped into Petco. They have live pets and all sorts of supplies. We just looked around. A tortoiseshell cat, with a coat like smooth lacquer, peered dolefully at us out of a cage. Parakeets and finches and sparrows fluttered and flitted in small cages. "Ugh! I'm terrified of birds," Sarah gasped when a red-billed sparrow hovered toward her face. I teased her about it. We looked at the tropical fish, admiring cichlids and goldfish and betas. We looked at the ferrets, which were all sprawled, asleep, in their bedding in a warm heap. I laughed at one ferret when it yawned and smacked its sharp teeth at us. There were a couple of sad-looking rabbits in a cage nearby. Sarah and I both shuddered when we saw the rats and mice. The rats, because of their scaly tails, and the mice, because they were all bundled on top of each other, every-which-way. Their bedding was deep, and it seemed to bubble like a boiling pot because of all the mice burrowed down, twitching in their sleep. The guinea pigs made me chuckle, remembering my own guinea pig. They sniffed at us with bright eyes, and nonchalantly nibbled hay. We looked at the reptiles and insects, too. Sarah squealed when she saw a tarantula less than two inches away from her face (on the other side of glass), hidden inside a thick web. An intricately-made lizard, with bright indigo blue on throat and belly, rammed its pointed head against the glass and eyed us aggressively. I admired the anoles, who had wisely turned brown to match their branches.

We went to Wal-Mart next, where Sarah looked for jeans. As we drove back home, rain misted the windshield.

The house was very quiet. We set up shop in the kitchen with "The Nutcracker" and my mother's thick Joy of Cooking book. We decided to double the gingerbread recipe. We dumped things rather haphazardly into the mixing bowl. Sarah and I licked the molasses out of the empty molasses jar, smacking our lips at the sticky bitterness. Of course, at first there was too much flour, so we had to add flour at random until the dough stuck together. And the bowl was too small, so Sarah, stirring the concoction, splashed flour onto the counter. I finally scooped the mix into another bowl, and kept adding water until Sarah declared that it looked alright.

We halved the dough. I rolled it out on the counter so that we could cut out shapes. Hearts, stars-of-David, five-pointed stars, tiny gingerbread men, teddy bears, Christmas trees, and bells lined up on the greased baking sheet, like appliqued patterns on a quilt. We popped one pan into the oven and then produced two more pans. Gingerbread men marched in upright rows beside fat teddy bears and leggy stars. The smell of gingerbread--ginger and cinnamon and cloves--steamed from the oven. Soon we had three trays of deep brown cookies, thick and soft.

When Laura and my mother got home, Sarah and I tried to get Laura to make icing so that we could decorate our cookies. Laura was being silly, though, so Sarah and I decided to brew our own icing. I randomly chose an icing recipe out of Joy of Cooking. Sarah and I proceeded to throw it together with gleeful abandon, especially since Laura marched around, wagging her finger at us and telling us everything we did wrong. We measured nothing, but just tossed the ingredients in, and then, as a crowning insult, we refused to use the electric mixer, but mashed sugar and milk and shortening together with a blunt wooden spoon. It made a very thick, very sweet batch of icing, though none the worse for wear. I spooned it into four bowls, to which we added food coloring: electric blue, fluorescent green, deep pink, and saffron yellow. Laura condescended to help Sarah and me ice the cookies. She gave gingerbread men neat blue coats. Sarah put red buttons down one of the teddy bears. I plastered stars with yellow icing, which oozed down onto the cookie sheet.

Having let the icing set, I scooped some of the cookies into a tin for Sarah to take home to her family. Then I took her home. We drove through dark streets, leaving the gritty city for the bleak countryside. Grey trees, dun fields, dim sky, cold north wind, drab road past weatherbeaten houses. The lights were glowing out of the dining room window of the Spitlers' house, friendly, as the car crunched up the gravel driveway. I walked her to the door, then said good-bye and drove home.

At home, my mother was fixing supper. We had two kinds of noodles tonight: angel-hair noodles with beef, peas, and plum sauce, and thick noodles with cabbage, broccoli, and spicy Thai peanut sauce. I liked both a lot. After supper, we watched a couple of "Looney Tunes" episodes. While my father read Something Fresh, by P.G. Wodehouse, to Laura, Stephen, and me, I sat on the floor and scrapbooked. Mandy, curious, peered intently at Laura's sudoku board as though she didn't quite trust the little cardboard tiles. She finally decided that my scraps were more of a threat, so she sat down on the page I was working on, and ferociously chewed on some of the paper bits during family worship.

After family worship, I stepped into the green attic to put some things away. The sound of rain hushing on the roof was most beautiful, a gentle, rustling, plinking sound, as the rain hit the gutters. The dim fluorescent light flickered in the ceiling so that Stephen's miniatures, ranked on the pool table, seemed ready to spring to life.

I think the rain has stopped now. At any rate, it's time for some sleep.