Home, Home on the Range, Part 2 of 3

Photo credit: Brother #2

One day of our holiday trip was sunny and fine, so a group of us drove out to the shooting range. Dad had given the cousins a gun safety lesson at home, so after watching an introductory video at the shop, we were ready to hit the targets with a variety of handguns. The kids got pretty good from 5 yards. I was so proud of them for trying this new and intimidating activity. We might make recreational shooters out of them yet... I mostly shot my uncle's Czech police pistol at 25 yards. My best shot was the second one I took at this Ace of Hearts, direct to the right atrium. BAM! I also tried my aunt's 6-shooter revolver. Not sure if I actually hit the target with that one: it's got quite the kick, as you can see in the last photo.

Photo credit: Dear Old Dad

Home, Home on the Range, Part 1 of 3

Dear Husband and I celebrated Christmas with my father's side of the family. We drove over the plains and flew over the woods to get to Grandmother's house. There we met cousins, aunts/uncles, my parents, and my younger brother. I had finished the chapter I was editing on Christmas Eve, so for the first time since September, I had no dissertation work that *had* to be done. Instead, I practiced both domestic and defensive arts, played cards, watched movies, talked, and ate, ate, ate.

With so many of us descending on Grandmother's house, I didn't want her to go out of her way getting cooking or baking. I mean, guests are cheap, indentured labor for the duration of their stay! So I volunteered to head the baking detail with my mother. She had offered to make her yeasty Christmas bread, so I suggested sugar cookies, figuring the cousins could decorate them together. Then somebody requested "something chocolate," and somebody mentioned the way rum balls help you survive family gatherings, and suddenly we had quite the list. In addition to 4 dozen sugar cookies, I decided to make cocoa rum balls (a two-fer!) and paleo snickerdoodles for my dad. One aunt and uncle provided the cookie cutters and decorating supplies, so we went to town.

Commenters on the online cocoa rum ball recipe said they tasted too strongly of alcohol, so I halved the light rum and added orange juice. The base is vanilla wafers moistened with syrup. For nuts I used Grandmother's immersion blender (above) to pulverize pecans for a true Texas delight. I rolled them in gold sprinkles to give them an expensive look (below). They were a big hit!

The paleo snickerdoodles were tricky. Made out of almond flour, coconut oil, and honey, they have no wheat, eggs, or butter. This batch turned out sweet but dry. Dad says he might have to tinker with the recipe to add some applesauce for moisture. (Photo: Mom using Grandmother's stand mixer.)

Photo credit for these two pics: Dear Old Dad

Finally, sugar cookies, which never fail to delight. In addition to the reindeer, snowmen, stars, and Christmas tree shapes, I showed my cousin how to roll out snakes of dough from the scraps and twist them into candy canes and wreaths. There are some at the bottom of second photo above. If you have food coloring, you can make them green or red as appropriate.

Photo credit: DOD

Meanwhile, the menfolk caught up on their shuteye...

Merry Christmas 2013!

Merry Christmas, from Dear Husband, Frau Doktor Doctor, and The Cat

p.s.--I loved choosing and wrapping presents and couldn't resist sharing two of them with you.

That is one jolly Santa Claus! He's bringing my grandparents a flask of a delicious amber liquid. Wonder what it could be...?

And it looks like my Father-in-Law is getting that miniature Hadron Collider he asked for!

Advent 2013

I recently participated in a "lessons and carols"-type worship service at our church on the 2nd Sunday of Advent. In addition to choreographing and performing a dance, and liturgizing, I also did one special reading the compiler of the service had picked out. A theater professor, TM has a great ear for dramatic readings. I liked this one so much that I was surprised and sorry I hadn't come across Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-) while researching Bay-Area poets this spring.

Ferlinghetti is a Beat poet who wrote "wide-open" verses. He co-edited the City Lights magazine and ran the City Lights Pocket Book Shop, where Allen Ginsberg and other counter-culturalists met. Before settling in San Francisco, Ferlinghetti had a peripatetic life, from New York to France to Mount Hermon (!) to UNC to the US Navy to Columbia University. He earned a doctoral degree from the University of Paris in 1951.

"Christ Climbed Down" is from his extraordinarily successful 1968 volume, A Coney Island Life of the Mind. With the exception of the dated reference to "tinfoil Christmas trees" (remember the Charlie Brown Christmas special?!), it is still timely for us during Advent 2013.

~ * ~ * ~* ~

"Christ Climbed Down"

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down 
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit / and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagon sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
with German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
for everybody's imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings

Der Milch-Geier

Kennst Du den Spruch Solomons, «Gestohlenes Wasser ist süß und heimliches Brot ist angenehm!»? (Sprichwörter 9:17) So geht unsere Katze mit Milch um. Schau mal an:

Vati, ich habe Durst. Deine Milch riecht gut! Bitte, lass mich es probieren.

Aber nein, mein Kind. Milch darfst Du nur einmal pro Jahr haben, und zwar an Deinem Geburtstag. Wenn Milch Dir so gut schmeckst, warum trinkst Du sie denn nie? Deine Geburtstag-Schüssel steht immer voll am anderen Morgen.

Aber Vati, Deine Milch schmeckt mir am aller leckersten! Ich kann es Dir nicht erklären...

Dance Marathon #15

Me with Laura, the Volunteer
Coordinator who was so
enthusiastic to see me!

This weekend I went back to my alma mater for Dance Marathon (DM), a fundraiser for the Children's Miracle Network (CMN). A "Dance Marathon" is a big, annual event at which (mostly college) students get together to raise money from friends and family in exchange for staying on their feet a ridiculous number of hours. The largest, longest, and longest-running Dance Marathon is the 'THON at Penn State, which was started in 1973, goes for 46 hours, and raised $12 million in 2013. That money goes to Penn State Hershey Medical Center Children's Hospital. In St. Louis, DM benefits both St. Louis Children's Hospital and Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital. Dance Marathon began at Washington University in St. Louis in 1999/2000, and at St. Louis University in 2011. There have been 15 Dance Marathons at WashU since then, because there were two in one year as the event switched over from spring to fall semester so as not to compete for participants and dollars with Relay For Life, another worthy cause.

Dance Marathon is a complicated event requiring months of planning. There are sign-up and fundraising campaigns to run, equipment to rent, teams to form, entertainment to line up, t-shirts and posters to design, supplies to buy. After dancing as a freshman (on Team Yellow, which won the Spirit Competition in 200!), I sat on the Executive Board for three years when I was an undergrad, twice as Public Relations Co-Chair, and once as the Overall Chair. As PR chair I designed campus ads in the wee hours when I couldn't study any more and painted a TON of posters to hang in the student center. As Overall Chair I coordinated an Exec. Board of about 20 other students. And every year I asked for donations. I generally find asking for money hard, but this is such a good cause. Among other things, CMN funds go toward school and tutoring services for long-term patients at St. Louis Children's, both NICU/PICUs, and the Bob Costas Cancer Center at Cardinal Glennon. CMN hospitals treat their pediatric patients regardless of their parents' ability to pay, because who can put a price tag on a child's life?

Plus, this is the kind of patient population I am hoping to work with once I get my MD. Every year there are one or two Miracle Kid "Ambassadors" who are the faces of DM. This year it was Hayden (right), who needed a kidney transplant from his dad while still an infant, and Hannah, who--having overcome bone cancer in one leg with a partial amputation and rotationplasty--was diagnosed with leukemia this spring that required lung surgery. I checked the CMN website and was relieved to recognize one of the kids listed there: Armoni was Ambadassor for my first DM and is doing just fine after a bout with lymphoma. Some Miracle Families come to Dance Marathon so their kids can share their stories and bask in the attention of dancers who want to celebrate them.

My family knows how big a part of my undergraduate experience Dance Marathon was. I mean, my wardrobe essentially consisted of a rainbow of DM tshirts. (They have since settled on green and pink as the primary color scheme.) So I was excited to be invited back as an alumna for this anniversary event: #15 for the campus, #5 for me. Luckily, I'm on fellowship this semester and was able to spend the weekend, though I didn't think my old knees could handle 12 hours (2pm-2am). So I signed up to volunteer, jumping in to help with sign-in, signage, and other early-event stuff. I did take a break in the middle to get some work done and catch a three-hour nap before returning for the big finish--and the clean up of the athletic complex. I had a hard time powering down after all that excitement, and it was the first time I had seen the hours between 1 and 5am in a long time...

The Dance Marathon itself is basically a big crazy party. Each hour has theme, complete with music and costumes. There are games and performances from dance and singing groups. And food. The "it" thing this year appeared to be pretzels (hard, soft, with warm cheese dip). Every hour the dancers learn a new section of the Spirit Dance that they all dance together at the end of the night, right before the big reveal of the total amount raised:

$151,936.11!!

That tops the $128,569.22 they raised last year by $23,000--truly impressive.

Watch the closing video to see what it was like. (Hint: I make a brief appearance in the conga line to the right of the frame around 1:27, I'm wearing a gray tshirt that says BELIEVE IN MIRACLES and the silvery halo of stars I acquired sometime during my last DM, in 2004.) The Chancellor and his wife have always been ardent supporters of this effort: she is the honorary chair, they make a generous donation each year, and they both come for the opening ceremonies. A more recent tradition involves them leading a dance on stage with faculty, staff, and their families. It's called "The Dancellor" (cufflinks, cufflinks, double-breasted suit), and I joined them this year for that and the conga line that followed. It was, alas, the only dancing I got to do, but it was worth it. FTK! (For The Kids!)

Happy Halloween!

Wombat:

The blonde one is Steve Irwin,
Crocodile Hunter.

Vampire wombat:

Vampire wombat with friends Captain Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (Battlestar Galactica) and Aang (Avatar: The Last Airbender):

Athena Cat photo-bombed our portrait.

Did you have a good Halloween? On Thursday I helped some friends with a toddler and a pre-schooler go trick-or-treating and hand out candy, and over the weekend I went to a party with grad school friends. They threw a sexy-themed party (it's  ironic, don't you get it? they're so meta!), but I went as a vampire wombat. Those don't really exist, but I discovered these big furry marsupials earlier this year and for some now-forgotten reason decided that "vampire wombat" sounded like a great Halloween costume. Mine consisted of a brown turtleneck, brown long-johns, brown socks, and black gloves (all borrowed from Dear Husband), plus a mask I made from a template I found on the internet. Apparently Australian children can learn about these animals and "play wombat," complete with burrows made out of chairs and blankets, the saw way we did with prairie dogs or badgers. I also purchased a pair of fake plastic vampire fangs and some vials of fake blood to complete the look.

My favorite part of Halloween this year was when Aang asked me to put in my fangs, and then shrieked in terror. My second favorite part was when she held my hand while trick-or-treating. Unfortunately, the fangs kind of hurt, and I couldn't talk in them. And the vial of blood I brought to the grown-up party started leaking in the plastic bag I kept the fangs in when I wasn't wearing them. When I put the vial in my mouth to try to produce the effect for a photo, the blood just filled up the fangs: I could taste it, but nobody could see it. Blech. Maybe better used alone than together.

DH even came to the party. He had a big concert weekend and so hadn't thought of a costume. Since he was still dressed from the wedding he had played, I told him he should tell folks he was an undertaker--and would be happy to take care of any bodies that might be left over after the party. He was also offering "free trial embalming." Funnily enough, no one took him up on the offer.

Total haul this Halloween: 3 Reeses Peanut Butter Cups (for DH), 3 Three Muskateers, 1 York Peppermint Patty, 1 box purple Nerds, 1 Bubble Pop, 1 Tootsie-Roll Pop, 1 roll Smarties, 1 cup "punch," 1 M&M cookie, and 1 piece of pound cake. Yep, that's pretty good. I'm thinking of repurposing the wombat mask as a werewolf for next year. Until then, happy scaring!