The Aftermath, or Malaria for Christmas

Ah, the day after Christmas.  I always have mixed feelings about this day.  On one hand, I am excited for the upcoming year.  On the other, I am sad that the tree has to come down, and that I have no more excuses to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas every night (although I guess I could use the writers’ strike as an excuse to continue).

We tucked in AJ last night.  He was very sad to have to put away his new things and go to bed.  I assured him that Santa wasn’t coming back to take the toys now that Christmas is over…he would get to play with them tomorrow, too. 

Since they are making toys with roofies these days, and I’m pretty old-fashioned, AJ didn’t get a lot of toys from Santa.  He mostly got puzzles and colored pencils and paper and things like that.  However, earlier this year he did sit on Santa’s lap and asked for only one toy: a Lightning McQueen race car.  He was the only kid in line not to cry on Santa’s lap, so what could we do as parents, other than make sure that the boy got his one wish?

AJ opened his presents yesterday, wide-eyed and full of peppermint.  He was so excited about his toy race car.  It’s one of those toys that makes noise, unfortunately.  It says a bunch of one-liners from the movie Cars when you shake it.  However, AJ loves it and it’s his Christmas present so we ignore the noise, even after the 546th time.

Now a little background: we still keep a monitor in AJs room at night.  We can’t hear what he is up to otherwise, and that kid is always up to something.  It’s been quite a while since we had to get up in the middle of the night for anything, though.

This morning at four o’clock, I shot up in bed after hearing a ripping, thundering noise.  What in the heck?  Was the furnace exploding?  Was a plane falling out of the sky?  Then the ripping noise turned into a long screeeeeeech and I heard a metallic voice say “The checkered flag is mine!”

Stupid race car.

In other exciting news, I got malaria for Christmas!  No, not the real tropical disease, but this:

It’s a stuffed malaria from Giant Microbes.  Now I can’t take credit for this find…we first discovered it from the greatest reality show ever made, Kid Nation.  Now one of the kids, the kind of kid who is going to grow up to either make great discoveries of galaxies, cure cancer, or eventually go off the deep end and shoot people from a tower, well, he collects Giant Microbes.  A clip of the show was of his mother on the phone, telling him that his microbes missed him (If that isn’t love, then what is?)  Further research resulted in the discovery of Giant Microbes.

Microbes come with an informative tag with information about the disease/malady they cause in real life, along with some of the devastating truth.  We don’t really think about malaria too much, but it kills a lot of people elsewhere, especially children.  So while my stuffed malaria may look cute and fluffy (AJ has named him ‘Wormy’) he is really representative of sinister death.  Maybe you will find a reason to purchase a Giant Microbe too.  You could send Black Death to your former boss, or that neighbor with the barking dog.  You could pick out a little somethin-something from the Venereal line(TM) for a former significant-other.  So many possibilities, and they’re about eight bucks per affliction. 

 

High Altitude Orange Marshmallows

Orange Marshmallows

I’ve been reading a lot of cooking blogs out there, and I have noticed that making homemade marshmallows is the thing to do this year.  So today I decided to attempt these fluffy tidbits myself, and I am happy to report the result:  Flufftastic!

I attempted to make a batch of fudge a couple of weeks ago and severely messed it up.  I did some searching on high-altitude candy making, and I have discovered where I went wrong.  So for those of you making candy and living above 1000 feet, here is a good candy-making temperature adjustment you can make:  decrease the temperature by 2 degrees for every 1000 feet.

Here is the recipe:

3 packets plain gelatin

1 1/2 cups water 2 cups sugar

1 cup light corn syrup

1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract

1/2 tablespoon orange extract

Food coloring (optional)

Powdered sugar

In a large mixing bowl, add 3/4 cups cold water.  Sprinkle the gelatin packets over it.   Cover the bowl with a paper towel and set aside.

Grease the bottom and sides of a 9×13 pan with vegetable oil and set aside.

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine sugar, 3/4 cups corn syrup and 3/4 cups water.

Cook over medium heat.  Stir the mixture until the sugar is dissolved.  Bring mixture to a boil.

Clip candy thermometer to the inside of the pan and cook syrup until it reaches 240 degrees (known as the soft ball stage).***  DO NOT STIR while you are waiting for it to reach this temperature. 

Remove pan from heat.  Add 1/4 cup corn syrup to the hot mixture.

Start mixing the gelatin with an electric mixer or stand mixer.  Slowly pour the hot syrup into mixing bowl with the gelatin.

Once the mixture is added to the gelatin, beat for 10 minutes.  The mixture will become stiff and more voluminous. 

Add vanilla and orange.

If you want to add food coloring, do that too.  I added four drops yellow and one drop red for a nice, light orange tint.

Pour the mixture into the greased pan. 

Let the marshmallow set for 8 hours, at room temperature, or until they are firm.

Run a knife around the edge of the pan. Dump them onto a cutting board or another flat surface that is dusted with powdered sugar.

Sprinkle/spread powdered sugar on the inverted side of the marshmallow.  Use a knife or pizza cutter to cut these.  If you think they will last for a while, store them in an airtight container or bag. 

***Since I live at 9000+ feet, I adjusted to 222 degrees.

 

Beef Eve…aka: Tradition Overkill

Traditions…I’ve always liked the idea of traditions.  This is possibly because I didn’t grow up with any regular, reliable traditions (at least that I can remember) but now with my own family, I can tradition-away all year long. 

Growing up, we never took an annual summer trip.  We couldn’t light fireworks that made noise because they would give my dad ‘Nam flashbacks (and there is nothing lamer than a ten year old kid with smoke bombs and snakes when the kids across the street got M-80s and got to blow up mailboxes).  We stopped going to church for Easter because everybody got jobs and started working every Sunday.  We didn’t have green bean casserole for Thanksgiving. 

To this day, I’m still not sure what a Yule Log is.  We never put lights on the outside of the house, because my mom was certain that the lights would catch fire and we would have to live in a cardboard box behind Albertsons all winter.  We usually got to open a present on Christmas Eve, but sometimes we just opened everything on Christmas Eve.  Then we’d have some kind of big dinner, and that would be really nice.  The menu changed every year.  We never, ever ate ham, because none of us liked ham all that much. 

The only thing that was certain in my house was that you could never be certain of anything.  Would dad steal my car after too many beers and bring it back with a huge dent in the side?*  Would the cat that rode around on my shoulder decide to be brave and cross the street in front of a speeding vehicle, and die?**  Would we decide to go out to dinner at a fancy restaurant, and would my dad, after too much wine at said restaurant, start retelling (loudly) about the time he got a tapeworm on the farm?  And would the ten other tables of patrons in the restaurant be so horrified that they would all leave?  Would the rest of us want to jump in the river, drowning ourselves?*** 

So in the midst of trying to struggling to find traditions in my past, I am totally over-doing traditions in the present.  I noticed this recently when my son and I were making Christmas cookies (Okay, I was making the cookies; he was smearing red icing on the dining room chairs).  I realized that I lost my cookie cutters.  This really, really upset me.  I managed to fashion some snowmen shapes from various sizes of glasses and lids; however I had to freehand the trees (they looked like arrowheads, according to Jesse), and forget about attempting to make stars.  Mostly, we made circles.  I tend to be a bit OCD about things anyway, but the fact that the Christmas cookie cutters were missing made me break into a cold sweat.  So maybe I am taking the need…the need to make Christmas cookies with my son a little too far?   

Here are some of the traditions that we have established so far…these are just the Christmas ones:

 - Put together a gingerbread house

- Christmas card assembly line, where each person signs the card

- Find or make one new ornament for our Wildlife Tree theme

- Make colorful Christmas cookies  (note to self…buy new cookie cutters for ‘0

- Watch Charlie Brown Christmas

- Make hot chocolate with real marshmallows and whipped cream

- Beef Eve

…what’s that you say?  What is ‘beef eve?’  Well, Beef Eve is our new tradition idea.  We have a bunch-o-family to visit due to various divorces, remarriages, etc. and of course everyone wants to eat dinner together on Christmas Day.  So instead of being the one to make Christmas Day dinner, we decided we will eat somewhere else that day (this year it will be ham at J’s mothers).  But Christmas Eve will be ours, and on Christmas Eve, we will roast a giant hunk of cow.  Forget about turkey or ham.  We ordered a 2 lb Chateaubriand from Kansas City Steak company this year, and while I was hoping my family would come visit, alas…it will just be us on Beef Eve.  (We’re glad…if you’ve ever had Kansas City’s Chateaubriand, you wouldn’t want to share the leftovers either)

Most of all we just like to say it.  Come on, say it:  “Beef Eve.”  It’s fun.

* This really happened, near Christmas 1995

** This also happened on Christmas Eve, 1991

*** This too happened, the day before Christmas, 1996

 

The Hazards of Christmas Cards

I mentioned before I am feeling a bit bah-humbuggy…it’s hard to get in the Christmas spirit, what with all the fun public assault rifle situations on the news, the constant “Holiday Tree vs. Christmas Tree” debates, the fact we have to now pay over a thousand dollars to fix our house after a crazy elk head-butted it, and now…now this.

So I am filling out some final Christmas cards and I got a paper cut from licking the envelope.  It is not fun to get a paper cut anywhere, but its really not fun to get a paper cut on your lip.  Every time I smile, frown, eat, drink, or brush my teeth, it stretches a bit and stings.  Lovely.

I felt a bit better after we got a little orange card in the mailbox.  The card instructed me to come pick up a package at the post office.  Now that’s more like it!  Packages start arriving about this time of year, so I was excited to go get the first one.  Usually, the post office has no line at all in our small town, but since the holiday season is upon us, there was a ten minute wait.  I waited, waited, watched the line slowly shrink down, and finally it was me.  I was next in line to get the package! 

I gave the mailman the card and he went into the mail room.  I wondered what the package would be?  Probably presents for AJ.  Maybe something I ordered for Jesse from Amazon.  There is something special about picking up a package, especially around Christmas.  Finally the mailman returned…with a big, fat, yellow…

phone book.

WHAT?!?!  I drove to the post office and stood in line for a phone book?!  Since when do they consider phone books a “parcel” or a “package?” 

Since it started snowing.  They usually leave a pile of phone books near the mailboxes, but they can’t now, since there is snow on the ground. 

If we got phone books once a year, like people used to, this would not bother me so much.  But for whatever reason, we get four or five phone books every year.  I guess there are more companies publishing phone books for the advertising.  However, I only need One. Stupid. Phone book. 

AUGH!

 

Christmas Letters - Part 2

Now here is the Christmas letter I’ve always wanted to sent out…purely fictional, mind you.  It would be a statement.  A Christmas letter that would send other Christmas letters running:

“Hey everyone. 

It’s the holidays again so here is my annual update.  Sorry I’m sending this on spiral notebook paper…I tried to pick off the little paper shreds the best I could.  Hope the ink isn’t too smudgy, I had to borrow a pen from my landlord and it’s not working too well.

It’s been a #$%& year.  My old man is still in the Supermax, but the boy and I try our best to catch the bus to Florence every other Tuesday so we can visit.  Last time we went though, the boy caught a nasty cold sore from kissing that plexiglass a little too much.  He really misses his daddy. 

Lost my job at the Wal Mart…boss said I didn’t greet very well.  So I’m looking for work.  I spotted a flyer on a telephone pole the other day though, said I could make up to five grand a week working from home!  I called the number, sent them a deposit to get started, now I’m just waiting to hear back!  Wish me luck.  Hey, as long as it ain’t sellin’ rat poison door to door again, I’ll be happier than a pig in s$&#!

The boy lost his arm playing on the train tracks last month.  You’d think that dumb little %$#& woulda knowed better after seeing his cousin do the same thing a coupla months ago.  Kids.  Pshaw.  I had to give the ER a fake address (Edna…if you get a bill, just rip it up) but they managed to sew his stump shut.  Those pros…prosth…fake arm thingamajigs are really pricey, so I made one out of cheesecloth and kielbasa.   As long as he’s wearin’ a sweatshirt, you can barely notice a thing!  I knew that Home Ec class would finally pay off one day.

The trailer burnt down the other morning when I was trying a new recipe for pancakes, I shoulda knowed better than to use motor oil, but I was out of canola.  We lost just about everything, which wasn’t much, but thankfully m’ brother finally got married and he sent me half his gift cards!  I never knew him to be so generous.  I don’t know how I’m going to spent that fifty bucks, but I’m ready to get started! 

Enclosed is a picture of my brother’s wedded bliss. 

 

That’s not their trailer though, that’s just the one where they had the ceremony. 

Happy Christmas to you all.

M

 

Christmas Letters - part 1

I’ve never sent out a Christmas letter.  You know, a Christmas letter.  The ones that inevitably arrive each year, from at least one person you know.  Christmas letters are photocopied and the opening line is addressed to everyone, therefore to no one.  Very rarely are Christmas letters signed.  Christmas letters follow a certain script…they go something like this:

“Greetings to your family from the Smiths! 

It’s been another fantastic year for the Smith family.  We hope your family has had a good year too!  We wanted to update you on the multiple accomplishments our family has had the great fortune to experience this year. 

Our eldest, Sam, finally graduated from Harvard Law School.  We are eternally grateful to his fiancee, supermodel Arlianne Wantaburger, for giving him the generous gift of paying off his school debt!  They plan on a small, 800 person wedding next Spring, depending on the weather in the Hamptons, of course. 

Kensington won first place at the state forensics competition, just two weeks after she led the Sweet Valley High track team to a record championship season!  She was a tad worried about getting scholarships since her GPA is only a 3.9, but this seems like these wins will seal the deal.  Will we have two children Harvard alumni?  Well, Kennie has another year before she has to start applying…but we are hoping the new Audi we gave her for her 16th birthday keeps her motivated!  Wow!!!

And last but not least, our littlest Benjamin has made great strides toward greatness.  Though only seven, he received his first real patent!  Both Sam and Kennie were eleven by the time they joined the ranks of inventors.  Benjamin has high hopes for his revolutionary new scanning technology, designed to detect maladies within the human body up to a year earlier than science can today!  We’re very proud of Ben!  Now if we could only get him to stop practicing the violin so much.  Granted, he is scheduled to appear on the Ellen DeGeneres show in three weeks, so we can’t blame him for wanting to be ready, but between the patent and his music, we barely have time to take him to karate lessons!

Richard and I both retired this year.  We spent the first week of our retirement in the Caymans, it was wonderful weather.  To celebrate Richard’s 48th birthday, I surprised him with a brand new car!  He returned the favor a couple months later by surprising me with a three week trip to Africa.  The flight there was just awful…possibly the worst experience of my entire year!  There was no soap in the airplane’s bathroom and I spent half the flight asking people for hand sanitizer.  Looking back, the whole experience really made me appreciate our easy access to soap in America, and because of the traumatizing experience, Richard and I have started Soap for Sudan, a non-profit group whose purpose is to send antibacterial products to developing nations.  Angelina Jolie will be introducing Richard at a White House banquet in February, where we plan to do some fund-raising.  If you’ll be in the DC area during that time, ring me and I will try to get you some tickets.  Laura usually hooks us up.  Who knew so many people had a passion for soap? 

Until next year,

Sandy Smith

XOXO”

 Puke. 

Sometimes the letters are accompanied by a photo that looks a little too much like this: