Tiny's favorite show right now is Sesame Street, so she will sometimes present me with the remote and solemnly say, "Elmo." Apparently, she is a fan of the red fuzzy guy. It's been fun to revisit the Street as an adult, and to see all the changes that have happened. I really appreciate that they have been helping to teach the littles good habits--the masks they all wore when chalk drawing in a special episode made Tiny understand wearing a mask herself (If Elmo can, she can), and Grover teaching kids to cough and sneeze properly warms my heart. They also did a few animated shorts that appear in the commercials at the end of every episode about hand washing, reminding kids when to wash hands and how to do it (and the songs are the recommended length of time!).
In one of these, Elmo has hype chickens. They raise the roof in the background before playing bubble-producing saxophones. It's pretty fantastic. I want hype chickens backing me up on various tasks, as I feel it would make a lot of things more appealing. At the very least, I think hype chickens would prevent me from fantasizing about running away from home while I wash dishes. Hype chickens need to be the new thing installed in all American homes. I would also have them ride around with me as I do errands.
I made a batch of cookies again this weekend, and I am always startled by how fast a single batch goes. When I was a kid, my mother did not bother turning on the oven if she wasn't making a quadruple batch. It wasn't like we weren't going to eat them, after all, and she could throw some in the freezer, too. Cookies were a process that took most of the afternoon, as she often made multiple kinds of cookies as long as she was in the process. A single batch of cookies takes less than half an hour, as long as you remembered to take the butter out of the fridge to soften. It dirties two bowls (one for dough, one for combining dry ingredients), one spoon, two cookie sheets, and (I'm so fancy) the cookie scoop. I don't usually make them unless we have a planned recipient for half of them, as my impulse control problems are shared by everyone in the family when it comes to cookies. I'm not joking. I caught Fuzzy munching on a cookie to tide him over while he assembled his breakfast--a bowl of cereal.
It's heady to realize I have the power and resources to whip up a batch of cookies just about any time my family requests them. It's smart that the girls don't know that. I got bored waiting the eight minutes for the cookies to bake, so I wandered into the living room, where Fuzzy and Kiddo were watching Super Bowl halftime shows on YouTube. When the buzzer rang, I thought it was too soon--must be the indicator that it's at the requested temperature--and idly considered waiting a bit. I decided to just check anyway. Nope. Done. Eight minutes is not a lot of time. It reminded me that my mother would get bored in the kitchen and walk to the other end of the house to play on the piano a bit. About three songs in, her head would snap up, and she would gasp, "The cookies!" before sprinting back across the house to fish the trays out of the oven. These would be the cookies that we would be encouraged to scrape off a little. This encouragement was not always successful.
I haven't seen a cookie that's "a little done" from my mother since I gave birth to her grandchildren. I'm not sure if it's because life has slowed down a bit, or because she now plays cards at a table within ten feet of the oven, but every cookie arrives golden brown. My children will never believe that Grandma ever made "extra crunchy" cookies, and at some point, I am going to be accused of miserly baking (only two dozen? Don't you love us?). Fuzzy might call them off, but there's a good chance his mouth will be too full to do it. This makes me wonder if my own grandmother might not have had as stellar a cookie reputation as I thought.
This was supposed to be about something else today. I'm sure I'll think of it and write on that topic tomorrow. If you need me, I'll be attempting to keep my toddler from flipping off of the furniture or attempting advanced yoga while leaning on my lap.
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