Marital Strife

Yes, it's true. Chris is upset with me tonight. Why? Because I made 5 dozen cookies . . .







. . . for the dogs.

I told him that if he really wanted one he could have one. The fiber content is roughly equivalent to that of eating three entire celery plants and it would probably keep him on the toilet all day tomorrow, but if he really wants one, there they are! He said, "No thanks," and rummaged through the Christmas chocolate stash looking for solace in the form of the kind with the rice crispies in them.

This is tough time of year for him ;)

So now that the doggie treats are done, I can hand out some Christmas goodies to the neighbors. Well, almost. I need to bake some bread, but then each family will get a small loaf of bread, a few jars of jam, and some cookies for their dogs (except the Millers who don't have a dog).

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Last Friday was Max's piano lesson (as usual) and I wasn't sure if we were having another lesson closer to Christmas or not. So we brought her the Piano-teacher-Christmas gift. Now, recently we'd had a few problems with getting to her class on time -- more problematic, we had some problems with me getting there at all. This was not entirely my fault. She went through a period where she was changing our piano-lesson time two or three times a week. Since my memory just isn't what it used to be and since in November I was up to my eyeballs in work, I plum forgot the "new" time two lessons in a row.

She was apoplectic at the time. I was sincerely concerned we were causing her medical problems, or worse, that she'd drop us and go find someone more punctual. So I offered to clean up my act if she'd just stop changing our lesson time.

She hasn't stopped changing our lesson time but she does it half as frequently.

Annnyway. So I wanted to give her something nice for Christmas, but as a former public school teacher, I never, ever, ever give teacher-type gifts that aren't consumable. NOONE needs 742,326 little dust collectors that say "World's Best Teacher". And noone needs that many candles.

So we made her my favorite loaf of white bread -- scalded milk, honey, butter, white bread flour, yeast -- it's so fattening and so delicious. And since my future BIL (who is from the Ukraine, as is the piano teacher) recommended tea and raspberry jam in particular, we went to Wegman's and found the Russian Tea Section (That's not a joke. They really have one.) and picked out two different boxes with the Kosher symbol on the bottom. We don't actually know what her faith is. But BIL said, "Her last name is Bernstein and she's a piano teacher from the Ukraine?!? I'm 98% sure she's Jewish." So we wrote "Happy Holiday and Snovem Godem" on the card and got the Parve tea, just to be safe. Snovem Godem means "Happy New Year." When I say it, it sounds awful as I am a Pennsylvanian-American, but when he says it, it sounds very festive. Picking the jam was a chore. Hmmm, regular raspberry jam? Or the raspberry cider jam? Well I know the blueberry jam came out well . . . . We picked the raspberry and the blueberry and then two others that I can no longer recall.

It's just that it all HAD to be perfectly perfect. This piano teacher has been wonderful for Max and she must be kept HAPPY.

Then, five minutes before it was time to go, I realized I had no basket to put it all in. So we used an Amazon box with the flaps cut off and stuffed it with blue tissue paper. Not very beautiful, but everything fit.

We went to the lesson, Max gave her the box, she exclaimed over its size (well, the little loaf of bread and boxes of tea took up a lot of space), and then we had the lesson and Max was pleased as punch because she had a little bag of sugary goodies for him.

Well, tonight she called (to reschedule the lesson for this coming week ::slaps thigh::) and said that she loved everything in the box, especially the bread (ask Jill, it really is the shizznizzle as Chris would say), and was really touched by it.

And I was just soooooooooooooo relieved. The piano teacher is happy. My work here is done.

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I'm feeling much better. I was feeling especially like death-warmed-over last night and Chris looked at me around midnight (as I was avoiding going to bed because my throat hurt more when I was laying down) and said, "You're not going to church tomorrow" and that was that.

I slept until 12:30.

TWELVE THIRTY.

IN THE AFTERNOON.

I can't remember the last time I slept that late. Even when we were having our weekend away together, I think 11 am was our record for sleeping in.

I do vaguely remember someone letting the dogs in at some point this morning. So I slept half the morning with Herself snuggled up against one side of me and Himself snuggled up against the other and I had weird dreams about meeting Chris for the first time and wondering when he was going to kiss me, only we were the ages we are now. The dogs probably had weird dreams about wondering when I was going to wake up and feed them.

So eventually I did. I spent the first half of the afternoon in the living room chair doing nothing and then I finally decided I should maybe do something. So I picked up the living room, cleaned up the back porch, spent a few minutes on the laundry situation and the decided to start dinner.

I made potstickers. I had to make the potsticker dough first. While it was rising I made the innards. Then I threw together the dog-cookie dough. I left it in the mixer and went back to the potsticker project. The dough should have made 24 potstickers. I had divided the dough into two pieces and the cut one of the pieces into 12 smaller pieces. Then I rolled out each small piece and put a spoonful of pork/veggie mixture in the middle, pinched the dough closed, and placed it on a greased baking stone. I'd done two and was in the middle of a third when the doorbell rang. It was my home teachers, come to bring us goodies and say Hi.

In the time it took me to answer the door, Emily ate the innards of the potsticker I was making and four pieces of potsticker dough. Sheesh. I threw away the piece that I'd been working on, covered everythign else in plastic wrap and put it on the counter away from Emily's nose while the home teacher's were here. They stayed about 15 minutes and left. I continued making the potstickers.I started rolling out the doggy treat dough.

Jill stopped by in time to eat some potstickers with the twins. It was while I was checking on the 2nd batch of potstickers that were steaming that I started thinking about Emily and that dough again. This was yeasted dough. I pictured it "rising" in her tummy. Oh, gosh!

So then I got to spend the next half-hour on the phone trying to find out what I could do to prevent bloat in my standard poodle, while simultaneously monitoring baking dog cookies, steaming potstickers, and preschoolers eating rice. (Milo gets tired of the whole fork charade and starts grabbing it by fistfulls to shove in his mouth. I don't like that. Ick.)

In the end we decided there was nothing to do for Emily by now -- over an hour and a half had passed since she'd eaten the dough -- except watch her. So far, so good.

The potstickers turned out well. Not perfect, but well. The rice was good though.

And now I am tuckered out and going to bed.