Scott and I have lived in our home for over 10 years now.  We’ve done a lot of remodeling in that time.  Floors, kitchen, walls.  We never had a house-warming, and we’ve really done very little entertaining.  Just once about 5 years ago, we invited a few friends over.  In the interim, we’ve hosted dinner a few times for people that one or the other of us were working with.  But nothing either of us really consider entertaining.

This is the year that changes.  We have decided to host a Christmas Party for some friends from church.  I decided that I would like to do some baking for this party.  On the menu would be my favorite, rum balls, and Russian tea cakes, and frosted cookies in the shape of stars and trees and bells and the like.

The rum balls were easy to make.  I made the dough on Thanksgiving morning, and that night, Scott and I stood shoulder to shoulder and rolled out the balls, dipped them in powdered sugar and hid them well.

The Russian tea cakes were a little more difficult.  I didn’t let the butter soften at room temperature, so it was a bit of a chore to mix it.  But, eventually that succeeded, and we have 3 dozen delicious cakes… I know: I’ve sampled them!

The cookies proved to be a bit more of a challenge!  Now, those who know me well, know I do not like to cook.  The concepts involved are just far too complex for me!  I can make a main course.  I can prepare a vegetable.  I can heat up biscuits and rolls.  But getting them all to be done at or about the same time is just rocket science when it comes to my abilities!

One of the problems I have with cooking… and it really becomes obvious when I try to make cookies from scratch… is the meanings of terms.  Lightly floured.  Roll until thin.  What’s thin?  Is paper thin too thin?  Is a quarter inch of cookie dough thin?  Or is it too thick?  And what should cookie dough look like to know if I’ve too much flour or too little in it?

Then there’s the preparation.

When we remodeled the kitchen, we put down tiled counter tops.  They’re very nice… but it’s difficult to roll out cookies on tile!  So, we hunted down a sheet of Plexiglas at our local Home Depot.  We wanted one of those old Tupperware pie thingies (that’s the technical term, I think) but can’t find them in the shops we visited.

We have a rolling pin.  So, we didn’t need to buy one of those.  It’s a nice one.  It’s set on an exposed shelf in our kitchen for nearly 10 years looking nice.  It’s never been used until I ground up the vanilla wafers for the rum balls.

Tuesday, the day came.  I gathered all my ingredients together, and started mixing them.  I sifted flour (did you know 3 cups of sifted flour is about the same as 1 and a half cups unsifted?)  Finally, I had a peanut butter consistency dough and put it in to the fridge to chill “for a few hours or overnight”.  By the time Scott got home from work, several hours would pass.  I wanted Scott to supervise the next stage… he knows what he’s doing!  But “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” was on TV and we watched that, first.  Then we watched a saved episode of CSI:Miami.  And then, it was time for bed!

Wednesday, I was gone from before 7 a.m. until nearly 8 p.m.  And I was totally exhausted.  So, no cookie rolling Wednesday.

This morning, I finally squared my shoulders, looked at the dough, and thought “Oh, how hard could this be, for cryin’ out loud!?”  I dusted the Plexiglas with a half cup unsifted flour.  Slick Plexiglas does not dust well!  I grabbed about half of the dough, plopped it down on the mound of flour, grabbed my marble rolling pin and rolled.

And that’s when I discovered that not all rolling pins are equal!  The dough stuck to the pin like peanut butter to the roof of a dog’s mouth!  And it clung there for dear life.  After peeling off the dough in great gooey gobs, I washed the pin, and looked at the dough.  I put my hands in to pull out a mass to try again, but it was like trying to get a handful of peanut butter.  It stuck to my fingers.  But just enough flour had adhered to the dough from the first attempt, I got the idea “Hey, maybe I didn’t put enough flour in the dough!  So I mixed some… a lot of some… flour in to the dough and kneaded it like a 2 year old with his play dough!

Then, I saw the parchment paper for the other item I intend to make, so I tried covering the dough with that and then rolling!  Success!  From there, I pulled out my new cookie cutters, and cut some santas (they came out looking like oh who knows? How does one describe those shapes?) and candy canes… another disaster shape.  I finally  discovered that stars, bells and trees were the easiest to make.  Each batch I rolled out got easier than the last, as each batch had more and more flour added to it.  I think I REALLY under-measured the flour when I made the dough.

Nikki got quite a bit of dough… my disasters ended up in her mouth.  Or mine.

But, I now have sugar cookies.

As I worked, images came to me of making cookies with Mom oh so long ago.  The wooden rolling pin.  The wooden surface she brought out for cookie making.  The consistency of the dough.  The next batch, should I decide to make them, should go so much more easily!

Now.  A question for my gentle reader.  Should I attempt that Buche de Noel?

Scott and I just got back from having dinner with Dad.  It was nice, we ate at Fernandos, a rather 3rd rate Mexican restaurant in West Omaha.  But the waiter was nice and the food wasn’t terrible.  Just too high priced for the quality.  Unfortunately, down in South O there are far better ones that provide much better fare!

I was kind of wondering going in to dinner whether Dad’s interest in Scott’s and my wedding was just one of those things that came up and would soon be forgotten.  But no.  Dad kept asking questions about it.  When were we going to do it?  Are we doing it tomorrow… which in and of itself is quite interesting.  Monday, April 27th was the first day we could apply for a marriage license.  But tomorrow, April 30 is actually the first day we can get married (unless we’d applied for a waiver.)  It was just really interesting that Dad is following all this so closely in the news that he is aware of the timelines.

Next he wanted to know if, after I made Scott my wife, if he’d take my name!  LOL.  Anyhow, I said no, we were going to hyphenate our names… he thought that was pretty good.

Now, that was pretty much the repertoire for Dad.  When are we getting married? What are we going to do about our names?  Oh, and what are we going to wear.  If you know Dad, he has his little repertoire that he almost seems to have prepared in advance.  When we get together, he’ll start in on his questions, and after a couple of minutes, he’ll start over.  So we’ll have variations on the exact same conversation several times for the evening.

In this case it was about Scott and my marriage… a marriage that we’re having primarily because, well, Dad wants to attend it!

In other news on the Dad-front, I got a call this morning from New Cassel.  They wanted to tell me “the whole story” so that if he started in to tell me it, I wouldn’t become concerned… Now that’s a sure fired way to start telling me something guaranteed to get me concerned!

It seems that two gentlement had gone to breakfast this morning, and had just gotten in line when the fire alarm went off.  It was a scheduled fire drill, nothing to be worried about.  After the all clear these two gentlemen returned to the dining room for breakfast, and had to wait in the lobby for the dining room to reopen.  These two gentlemen are a bit slow-moving.  When the doors finally opened, they started their journey towards the door, when Dad, a much faster walking individual came along, and popped in front of them.

One of the gentlemen took umbrage at this tactic of Dad’s, and grabbed Dad’s arm.  A verbal altercation ensued, and the other gentleman shoved Dad.  Dad’s hand was cut and a bit bruised.  But in the process the other gentleman was knocked to the ground (not be Dad but as a result of his own shoving of Dad.)  Dad, being the “wonderful gentleman that he is” (the words of the New Cassel staff) Dad attempted to assist the other man to his feet, but was rebuffed.  Dad was then taken to the health clinic to have his cut cleansed and bandaged.

The staff assured me that in no way did they consider Dad to be at fault.  The other man’s family was called, and they and the man were told in no uncertain terms that the shoving match was not the way to handle conflict.

All in all, it was kind of funny to me… in particular because they weren’t too upset by it either.  In fact the staff person who called me actually kind of chuckled while telling me.

And that is that!

Today started off innocuously enough.  Our typical morning routine: get up, watch the news, watch a little of one of the saved programs, get showered.

Then, we began to deviate from our schedule a bit.  Instead of Scott heading off to work, we drove down to the courthouse and applied for a marriage license!  The press was there, and we were interviewed by several stations and papers.  In the midst of it all, we were called and interviewed by Voice of America.  We met a few old friends we’d not seen in a long while.  The process of applying for the license went quickly, and before we knew it, we were done… only to be interviewed a couple of more times.

After dropping me off at the house, Scott left for work.  I settled in to watch morning news, and web surf… and to begin preparations for tonight’s CLM class at church.

And then it happened.  Screeching tires.  A THUD! Painful yelping.

I ran outside to see what had happened, to see a Rottweiler limping up the drive across from us.  I went over to see if I could help.  The family has about 5 kids.  Mom is off at work.  Dad is home, unable to work or lift anything due to injuries.  The dog was bleeding badly but just the sweetest little boy. (Ha! If a hundred pound Rotty can be said to be little!)

There was no way they were going to be able to get the dog to a vet.  So, I had two of the older boys load the dog into our truck, and with the father’s blessing drove them all up to our vet.  I really expected the worst.  But, doggy is going to have two teeth pulled, it’s tongue stitched up (it bit a huge chunk of it’s tongue off and that’s where all the blood was coming from.) And it may have a broken leg.

The family just isn’t going to be able to afford the costs of this treatment, and CB doesn’t have a place that would give the dog a chance.  So I guaranteed treatment up to a grand.  After taking the boys home, I told the father and he visibly paled.  I told him “Don’t worry about it.  You guys help us out in whatever way you can.  We won’t expect full reimbursement.”

I feel good about what I did.  I told God two things: “No dog is going to suffer on MY watch!” and “Now you BETTER get me that job!”