Cookies and Counters and... in Everyday Ramblings

Not getting many pictures these transitional days. We went from weirdly warm to burr cold in the middle of one day. This is the lilac garden on this day 5 years ago. I wanted to put up a shot of the toy train Christmas display that they assemble and feature in our train station every year, but the shots I have aren’t very good.

Yesterday I finally got my cookie making mojo back! I made the Chocolate-Cherry Ginger cookies from the New York Times holiday cookie recipe extravaganza this week. They are so simple! One bowl, no mixer or aerobic stirring required, and the dough is easy to handle.

The hardest part was reading every sugar label in the grocery about four times to find the word turbinado without my glasses on because…masks. And deciding if I really wanted to spend a few extra bucks to buy grape-seed oil.

They are a lot like the ginger molasses cookies I have made in the past that are a big hit. I used cranberries instead of dried cherries. I had forgotten how Zen making cookies is for me.

Especially after the cats give up on me and go off to take naps. Before that it is pull an ingredient out, pick the cat up off the counter and place him on the floor, get out a bowl, put the cat on the floor, preheat the oven put the cat gently on the floor and so on and so forth.

You may remember I made valiant, valiant efforts, with pots and pans and egg cartons to train the cats to stay off the kitchen counter when they first came to live here. Game over. The boys for the win. They do surrender after about 25 minutes. Well, they do as long as the butter is put into the microwave until needed.

Speaking of the cats. We had our annual visit to the vet this week. 3 years rabies shots and the other vaccines. A renewal of prescriptions for Diego. Lab work. Lots of lab work. Carlo’s blood pressure was high, and the visit took a long time because they wanted to see if it came down. They think the big guy might have a nodule on his thyroid. Think, oh never mind thoughts about that will you?

I was able to go in with them. Diego is doing well. Thank goodness.

Mrs. Sherlock, who drove us, had downtime at the very high-end Goodwill across the street and snagged a couple of nice cashmere sweaters for not much money so she didn’t mind the wait. Still, she is jewel for doing it. We missed a church Zoom event because of the timing.

I have made the radical decision to take the last week of the year off from teaching. It is mostly to rest my voice. I am doing vocal exercises and am hearing some easing, but I fret my vocal cords are fried.

Still working on the mouth breathing.

Most of what Christmas shopping I am doing is done. Now we wait and see how things manage through the supply chain.

I had communication this week with both Mr. Zanzibar, who is turning 84 or 85 next month and Mr. POA (77) who, now that restrictions have lifted in California a bit, is going to a lot of movies. He loves movies. He would watch two a day if he could. It was so nice to check in with these old flames as I have been worried a bit about how they are getting on.

In thinking about why I haven’t been making cookies even though I love making cookies yesterday while I was thoroughly enjoying making cookies, I realized it had a lot to do with energy management. I was only teaching 2 classes when I last went on a cookie baking extravaganza. Now I am teaching 10. And doing Pull Up Club and getting cardio every day.

Duh.

I need to shift things around in the new year. I won’t have Pull-Up Club and, so far my teachers haven’t suggested another absurd challenge in the near future. I can manage the days I work with weights better and I am going to record my weekly mat class before the fact as hardly anyone is making it live these days.

It will be interesting at this point to see if I feel comfortable going to the gym again. People do, without consequences. But like the cats on the kitchen counter there are days where I think, game over, Covid wins.

In some ways it is easier to think that, than hoping that we might have those heady freedoms we enjoyed earlier back again. At least those of us who behave relatively reasonably in public.
Some of us are already acting as if there never was a game (or a virus) in the first place.

Last updated December 05, 2021