Get your oven mitts on - It's holiday cookie baking time!

I enjoy the winter holiday season very much, and now that we actually have snow (and sadly subzero temps), my family has been getting in the mood now for more than a few weeks! One of my favorite parts of the holiday season is that I am totally justified spending hours and hours in my wonderful kitchen stocked with high qaulity bakeware and a full baker's pantry.

Equally important to my friends and family gift list is my holiday baking list. Timing is everything, in understanding what you can freeze, what travels well and what needs to be made right before gobbling up by families.... So, in an effort to get ahead, I made one of the easist and popular cookies on the list.... Peanut Butter Kiss cookies... behold the wonderous rack O'Fat and goodness:

Other candidates for this year's treat platter:

• Iced Sugar Cookies
• Decorated Gingerbread Cookies
• Toffee
• Spritz
• Pumpkin Bars with cream cheese frosting
• Cherry Bars
• Haystacks
• Pistacio Biscotti
• Thumbprint cookies
• Macaroons

I think I'm missing a few... any suggestions? What are your favorites?

The need for healthcare reform - in person

I'm a pretty healthy person for my ripe old age of 43. Now, that's not to say I lead a healthy lifestyle, the remnants of a grilled cheese sandwich and fries that I just devoured for lunch are a testimony to it. What I really mean is that my lifestyle has not manifested in a way that requires medical attention... yet.

So, I go in for my annual physical and requisite mammogram (Screw the recent panel recommendations, I like my breasts too much to ignore them) every year, and once in a while, I go into urgent care because I slice my hand open doing a volunteer project. In other words, I'm paying a lot for my little routine exam, but that's OK, I believe in everybody doing their share for the common good.

Alas, aside from whipping out my checkbook yesterday, I couldn't really do my share. I was sitting in the packed waiting area chair, looking forward to the the annual boob squishing and visit by the cold speculum, and in the twenty minutes I waited, two separate families walked away without seeing a doctor because they didn't have insurance and couldn't afford it.

These were clearly people caught in the middle - unemployed, couldn't afford COBRA or private insurance, and didn't have the cash resources to pay for a visit. So they left without treatment.

I am horrified for the parents who can't offer relief to their sick children. One little boy was howling, holding his ear... the other was a teenage boy who was coughing up a lung. I was very saddened, and felt bad for the clinic administrators who had to refuse them, the parents, and the kids.

We need something to change and we need it now. We should put politics aside and leave stupid wedge issues out of the discussion. True patriots would see the country slowing sinking to it's needs because of health care. Our nation's position as a world leader in industry, democracy and technology has been jeopardized by the deficit hawks who aren't interested in paying for the foundation our citizenship depends on - our health.

There's star in the tree

Seriously, about a year ago, my husband and I were being lazy and hanging out in bed one winter saturday morning. We were talking, just staring out the window and he noticed that a conflagration of branches in the maple tree outside of our window formed a perfect star... like the one you drew as a kid. You can only see it if you are lying on the bed at the perfect angle. 1 foot either way, and you couldn't catch it.

We watched it through the window the rest of the winter, and when spring came, and the tree leafed out, we said goodbye to the star. Then when fall finally came, we got into position and looked for the star. We didn't know if the tree had outgrown it, or if it was lost in the cities tree trimming activity.

It took a few minutes, but we finally found it - the star shape completely intact and unchanged. I honestly feel like I would have shed a tear if it had been demolished.

It reminded me of when I was a kid and I'd take a bath in the tub in the bathroom next to my mom and dad's room. There was just a bit of paint peeling from the wall at the very top. It looked like a face. When my mom passed away and we sold the house, the bathroom was painted and the face was gone. I was sad then too....

Why is it that unique things created by nature or circumstance are more precious than man made things?

Life after Nano

One last post on my Nano experience - I promise, I'll be done obsessing about this after this post... for the last two days I have been experiencing withdrawal like symptoms, a mild depression, if you will. I guess it's a pretty common phenomenon amongst nano-er's marathon runners and the like (I didn't really just put myself in the same company as marathon runners did I? I didn't mean to!) .

As posted previously, I crossed the 50K line at about 10:45 PM, all alone, the house was full of sleeping children, dogs and husband. And although I really did want to do a loud victory lap, I instead just emailed my document to myself, validated my word count, shut down my computer and turned on Criminal Minds. No Champagne toast, no pats on the back, no post implementation happy hour.... Nope, I guess that is the life of someone who pukes out words on a piece of paper or a screen. Solitary. Alone with your own crappiness or awesomeness, take your pick. I told my kids the next morning, they were happy for me...my husband took me out for a celebratory cocktail the next night, and so it feels a little more like a win. But it won't be a good win until I finish. On Vacation, in December.

I did learn some things about myself in the process, though:

1) Quantity was not a problem for me. I hit the 50K with only a few days where I had to put myself in solitary. I suspect that the quality of my writing is at a C+... I'll let you know. Otherwise, I proved that given enough dedication, I could write a complete 162 pages without issue. I'm kind of proud of that fact!

2) The creative lion (what some people call their muse) I used to have inside of me (Whom I loved to tame on a regular basis) was just in a self induced Coma. She woke up when I started the project, and I hope that she won't go back into the coma now that I know she's still there. I surprised myself at how far out ideas just came up. I do still have the ability I thought I lost.

3) I have many pet phrases that I use when I write, and they are wrong! For example: "Oh, she's an idiot" Gene thought to herself. Since when do people think to someone other than themselves/ IS think even a transitive verb. Ack!

4) I like writing about food. How it looks, tastes, smells, all of it. I may explore this avenue further in next year's project.

5) it didn't matter that I dropped my typing class in high school in exchange for a more useful elective (Advanced Humanities)... I type mighty fine, thank you Mrs. Anderson (My teacher).

6) I really can't have any noise in the background to write. It must be utter silence, or just white noise. No TV, Music, conversations. I'm a real loner. That's my Myers Briggs "I" coming out.

7) A blank page really doesn't scare me. Just start, and it comes.

8) I am very motivated by progress against a goal. I've said for years that I'm not, but I was wrong. If you can graph it on a bar chart it makes me move. I need to remember that.

9) I really do enjoy creative writing. I'm a business writer most of my days, but I do like the idea of fabricating a reality and putting it on a piece of paper.... wait a minute, maybe those are the same things!

10) No one was surprised that I finished. Not my children, my husband or my friends. When I've told them I've finished the challenge, they've all said. "Of course you did." I guess it's been a long time since I've seen myself as finishing something that I'm proud of....

That last one, by the way, is the reason I started the project. I needed to know if I still had it in me to succeed, with no one but myself to blame. As many obstacles as we face in the day to day reality of the job, or family pressures, it doesn't mean they completely block your success. Take a lesson from a river - if you find your way is blocked, create a new way to get through.