The Cookie Problem and other Musings
When I was pregnant with my eldest, I went in for one of my third trimester checkups and I was up about 2 lbs. from where I should have been. My doctor asked me what I had been eating, and I replied, “Ohh…..cookies and ice cream.” He laughed and said, “Finally! An honest woman!”
A couple weeks ago I took my car to get washed and vacuumed. When I looked at the floor mats, I realized all the others had a scattering of dirt and bits of trash. Mine had cookie crumbs. Sigh.
In high school I was expected by my mom to be skinny but she wasn’t at all available to help with normal eating (she had major depression), so I’d eat SlimFast bars for breakfast and lunch, supplemented by one of those huge chocolate chip cookies from the school cafeteria. Horribly dysfunctional eating, but it is what it is.
For the last 15+ years I have been a complete failure at baking chocolate chip cookies, which I consider to be a staple of childhood, motherhood and Americana. Cakes? No problem. Cookie bars? Most excellent (it’s the fudge frosting that makes it!) Fresh blueberry or raspberry pie with a homemade crust? You bet! But my cookies would turn out flat and crumbly; I think I was over-beating the butter and sugar. But recently a friend gave me a recipe for the kind with ground oatmeal in them, and now I am a competent cookies baker. Praise God.
I confess I’ve always had a problem with cookies. When I was growing up, my mom was always on Weight Watchers and there were never cookies in the house. She never baked cookies, heaven forbid. I remember a lot of canned tuna, dry baked chicken, and canned or frozen vegetables. And mom would never even put bread crumbs in meatloaf; it was just a lump of meat with tomato sauce and she’d throw in canned peas and carrots! Carbs were considered evil, even in meatloaf. Awful. So, I lived my young life in cookie deprivation. Sadly (or fortuitously, depending on how you look at it), I’ve been making up for it ever since.
On Pumpkins and the Like
While I’m not a fan of the ghoulishness that Halloween has become, I am a staunch supporter of pumpkins and pumpkin carving.
Nearby is a farm called The Pickin’ Patch. Starting in the spring, they have all kinds of pick-your-own berries and vegetables. We’d take the kids berry picking at least a couple of times each summer. We picked strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and it was wonderful. We made freezer jam with the strawberries, and I remember the most incredible pie we made with fresh raspberries. This is all when the girls were about 4-12 years old. We’d come home with boxes and boxes of berries. Contrary to expectations, this wasn’t cheap, but it was good, wholesome fun.
Of course we walked right past the veggies. I don’t think anybody has ever put picking broccoli in the fun category, unless you grew it yourself.
Come October it would be pumpkin season. We eschewed the grocery store pumpkins. Oh no, it was always The Pickin’ Patch. A huge field of pumpkins, fresh and lovely, just sitting on the ground among a few stems and plants. We’d take a hay ride out to the field with the girls, and browse around for the perfect pumpkins. Carving them was a mess and a joy, and we loved it. The girls looked forward to it every year, whether it was a beautiful and crisp autumn day or whether it was wet and soggy. Great memories.
The Fall Leaves
Growing up in Southern California, there’s not much to recommend fall. They are no deciduous trees – everything seems to just poke along with green leaves through the so-called winter. Rarely was there anything near a hard freeze. So moving to Connecticut over twenty years ago was a weather dream. Of course there are the fall colors – brilliant red, fiery orange, and golden yellow which puts actual gold metal to shame. Spectacular. Peak leaf season in Connecticut is mid-October, but the very first few rebellious trees start a light showing of orange in late August when the evenings cool, and it is joyous after the heat and humidity of summer.
But my favorite fall moments are when the leaves float slowly down from the trees, sashaying back and forth and catching the sunlight. It’s especially good when you drive down the road and the sun hits them through the shadows of the thinning tree canopy, and it’s almost like the most delicate snow. They are just so graceful and such a gift. Add to that the leaves already on the road that whoosh up around you as your car drives through and it’s beyond magical. A perfect fall experience which I look forward to every year. Even yesterday as I was sitting by my window, there was gusty wind. The leaves in the backyard would blow and fly and swirl in the air, and it was a complete pleasure to watch.
Our backyard it tiered, and our front yard is large. It’s standard to have much more land here than in, say, California where you are lucky to get 6’ between houses. Thus, we have a LOT of leaves and a lot of raking. Nearby towns with less wooded lots have curbside leaf pickup; you simply rake you leaves out to the curb and heap them in a pile. A city truck comes along and sucks them all up and, voila! you’re done. Not here.
In our town, you are responsible for managing your own leaves. Thus, for years my faithful husband has raked them, from the open lawn and from down and around the bushes, and then heaped them onto a huge tarp and made multiple trips hauling them uphill to the woods. You have to actually get them into the woods, otherwise they’ll just blow out again. A very long a tiring day. Hence, for the last couple of years we have hired the job done, known as fall cleanup. For more-than-a-few-hundred dollars a crew comes out and rakes and blows leaves, and either hauls them away in a truck, or trudges them up the hill. Either way, it gets done with less aches and pains in our house and then we wait ‘til spring, and the necessary spring cleanup. The last of our leaves are still falling, so it’s not quite time to schedule fall cleanup. I’ll just indulge in the last magical breezes that create a fantastical scene.
Socks
At my tallest, I was 5’10 ½ “. I’ve shrunk some, spine compression and all that, and now at 59 years of age, I’m more like 5’9 ½” if I stretch. Being tall I have big feet, which also happen to be narrow. By fourth grade I was 5’7” and size 10N shoe, kind of like a malformed puppy. After two pregnancies, my feet are now a women’s size 12N, and a 13 in athletic shoes (New Balance). So socks have always been a problem. In high school it never occurred to me that I had any other options than the socks available in Mervyn’s (the West Coast 80s equivalent of Kohl's). Or the slightly (!) imperfect underwear and socks we bought through the Hane’s catalog. My parents were no spendthrifts!
In college, I realized some places, like Nordstrom, actually carried women’s extra-large socks. I indulged in a few pairs but they weren’t much better, again NO stretch. And of course, not at all financially sustainable. All this time, I’d get new socks and very quickly my toes and heels would go through then ends. I just had to live with it.
Finally in adulthood I realized that men’s socks would have to be where I landed. I buy Gold Toe men’s quarter socks for sneakers and around the house in winter, and some men’s thin bamboo socks off Amazon for cuter for summer for Keds or for with my fuzzy snow boots. All in white. Lane Bryant carries bigger socks, so I have some of those in darks for dress shoes, and long pants, and Talbots used to carry knee highs for dress shoes, but discontinued them. Plus I still have some knee-high nylons. However, living in New England, none of this is really great.
If you want to keep your feet warm, you need wool. Wool is not stretchy. Women’s are too small, and men’s are ugly. And, you need them to come mid-calf so your ankles don’t get cold and, without stretchiness, they are just confining or don’t stay up. I’m tired of cold feet all winter; it leads to me snuggling under a blanket when I should be out living my life. Thus, this winter I am determined to find some comfortable, reasonably attractive wool socks.
This is the beauty of living in an ultra-commercial country. There are hundreds, nay thousands, of sock varieties and I am determined to find one that works. I confess, my social media and news feed have figured this out, and I am bombarded with sock ads; it’s hard to know which are reputable companies and most are so expensive, but I am determined and will report back later. FYI, Bombas charge $60 for a 4-pack of socks. Ridiculous!
Speaking of Social Media and my News Feed
It’s always interesting to see what the algorithms have concluded about me. A few years ago, they were convinced I was a surgeon, and I got waves of adds for surgical instruments. How it got this idea, I’ll never know. Next, it thought I was a business person, with endless CEO, leadership, and data analysis ads. Both of these are flattering, but totally inaccurate. More recently I’ve been getting ads from AARP and computer games which are supposed to improve my memory and mental sharpness. Terribly insulting. Damn insulting. Not sure where all of this will go next, but it’s one of many reasons why I am not happy with AI. The ads would be much more effective if they didn’t insult me or chide me for not being professionally successful.
This is where my mind wanders as I’m driving home from prayer group. I should be thanking God for answered prayers or praising him for his goodness, or at least praying on behalf of others. But no, I’m considering cookies, pumpkins, leaves, socks and my news-feed. There are reasons why we can’t read each other’s minds, because I think all this would be overwhelming or at least a little disappointing. We'd all go mad. But it put me in a good mood, and I’m happy to share it with you.
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