The Smallest Beast I've Ever Seen

Yesterday, on my way to Connecticut with a trailer full of stuff, I was passed by a little red Fiat. The license plate said "666." Apparently Lucifer drives a 500 with Vermont plates.

Cookies!

My sister is in Florida visiting our grandmother this weekend. I'm at home frantically packing, hoping I can get everything out by the end fo the month. So I'm more than a little jealous of her, but I figured I'd try to find a silver lining by asking my sister if she could casually find a way to ask Grandma to bake cookies so sis could bring some home for me.

My sister asked me what kind of cookies I wanted, so I told her my top three, figuring she and Grandma would pick whichever one they had on hand or had the ingredients for. The next email said, "so grandma and I are making cookies on Monday, because she doesn't have all of those and wants to be sure you get all that you want."

I... um... okay! I keep forgetting that Grandma's the giving type. Mum definitely isn't, and I didn't see Grandma for many years before last summer, so I'm re-learning how to interact with someone who's more than happy to go out of her way to make someone else happy. It's a nice problem to have.

For The Birds

A flock of birds lights in my front yard, and Maeve takes up defensive position at one of the windows in my office.

"Mer-er-er-er-er!!"
"You tell 'em, kitten."
"Merrrrr-er-er!"
"Are they dastardly birds?"
"MEW!"
"Silly question, since all birds are dastardly, right?"
"Mer-er-er!"
"Pity there's a window between you and them, or you'd show 'em what's what, right, Maeve?"
"Mew."
"You would. I know. Fierce huntress."
*Maeve looks at me like I'm crazy*

If there were any doubts about me being a crazy cat lady, let this put them to rest. I am, clearly, a crazy cat lady. Even my cats think so.

Gadget!

I'm in the process of moving to Connecticut, there being no suitable work that I can find where I live in Vermont, and today's tasks include packing up my bed to go into storage, because I'm borrowing a smaller one to fit into the tiny room I'll be inhabiting for the next six months or so.

My mattress topper needed to be rolled up, so I got the first tuck going and sort of leaned my chest against it while I reached out to keep the corners tidy, and a gleeful voice in the back of my head shouted, "GO GO GADGET BOSOMS!!!"

Keep in mind, I've never actually seen more than a few minutes of anything in the Inspector Gadget franchise, but the "go go gadget [body part]" phrase is such a part of pop culture that it's part of my personal vernacular, too.

I'm glad I'm finding things to giggle about, because, for the most part, this move is saturated with sadness, regret, and a sense of failure. So I'll take my mirth where I can.

Beat It

When you raise, or know people who raise chickens, you sometimes (frequently, even) find yourself in the position of having an abundance of eggs. You may also, if this happens a lot, be sick of quiche, egg salad, and scrambled eggs. This was where I found myself recently, and so I started asking everyone I knew if they had any favorite ways to deal with tons of eggs.

My grandmother, who grew up on a dairy farm in upstate New York and remembers a life without electricity or indoor plumbing, provided the most helpful response for my lifestyle: pound cake. With a recipe taking four or five eggs per loaf pan, it burns through eggs quickly, and it also freezes well. She cuts her cooled cake into individual portions and then freezes them for later use. A little pound cake, some fresh fruit, some whipped cream, and voilà, easy dessert!

To the best of my knowledge, I had never made pound cake before. Maybe once, twenty-five years ago, for 4-H, but not more recently than that. So I didn't really know what to expect, either with the preparation or the result. I picked the older of my go-to cookbooks, a monster of a tome from the 1960s, since pound cake is a fairly old-fashioned thing, and followed the directions, using my stand mixer.

After it was in the oven, I checked my other go-to cookbook, and realized my mistake. The secret to good pound cake is: beat it. Beat it to within an inch of its life. The wet ingredients should have so much air beaten into them that you worry they'll float away, because between two sticks of butter and two cups of flour in that one little loaf, it's going to be a solid brick if you don't.

So my first attempt came out a little... dense. Still quite tasty, but decidedly solid. I vowed to try again, new knowledge in hand, and see if I couldn't do better. My second attempt is currently in the oven, having been beaten like crazy with my hand mixer, and it's already got considerably more loft than its predecessor.

If at first you don't succeed, find more reference material and try, try again!

Cardigans

My father was an old-school professor, and dressed like one: tweed blazers, patched elbows, corduroy trousers, though not necessarily matching or in good repair. He had a bunch of rather bland-looking cardigans, too, which I've just inherited as part of my sister's effort to get Dad's house emptied and on the market. Up 'til now I've been using hooded sweatshirts as an extra layer in my chilly house, but they have their shortcomings, and Dad's cardigans are a much better fit, so I'm thrilled to have them.

I'm discovering, as I catch myself in the mirror, that there's a firm line between looking academic and looking like a bum when it comes to cardigans, and it has a lot to do with whether the shirt under the cardigan has buttons on it. Buttons: academic. No buttons: bum.

Today I look like a bum, but a warm one, so I'll take it.

Provenance

In cleaning out the house we grew up in, my sister has run across all sorts of strange things. The other day, we found a box labeled "historic utensils," which contained half a dozen egg beaters (anybody want some vintage eggbeaters?), some random bits and bobs (including glass straws that are going straight into active use at my house), and a few pounds of silver-plated flatware.

As I'm polishing the flatware, I'm doing a little research on it, and I discover that I've got a dozen large spoons made by Victor Silver Company, which primarily (solely?) did flatware for hotel/boarding-house use. The pattern doesn't match anything I've found pictured so far, so I can't pinpoint a location or year beyond the 1920s-30s, but they came from Dad's parents' house, which suggests downstate New York.

In any other family, it would be safe to assume that these dozen spoons were bought or gifted, but in our family, that's less likely. Our grandmother was a known kleptomaniac. The one memory I have of her is from when my parents took her and us out to eat, and after the meal she opened up her gigantic handbag and began loading it up with anything that would fit, from salt shakers to salad plates, and even the vase and artificial flowers that adorned the table. My mother was embarrassed, Dad was used to it, and I was too young to understand, but that was the first and last time we went out with her.

So, looking at this silver, the most likely explanation for how it got into the hands of a working-class immigrant family is that Grandma pinched it. I'm not sure how a story like that would play on Antiques Roadshow, but I think I'll plead honest ignorance if/when I get to the point of selling them, and simply say I don't know where they came from before my Grandmother.

Kinda wish I knew, though.