Magrilless

Christmas is a week from today? Hmm. Well, that can’t be right. I haven’t gotten everything ready yet!

I think back to last year. Last August (2007, that is), I had meals for one week determined and planned; I had already made the shopping list. By September I could finally start cooking some things and freezing them. We decorated the inside house and outside the house the weekend after Thanksgiving, even going so far as to pull out the extra mattress and lay out sheets. When the week before Christmas rolled around, I was doing “last-minute” things like making chutney, chopping vegetables to be roasted later in the week, grating cheese to throw in the biscuit recipe on Christmas Eve, baking bread for fresh bread crumbs. I was so proud of how prepared I was! Not that Christmas dinner wasn’t still an hour later than promised. And the birthday cake turned out to be exactly not what the birthday girl asked for. And we ate leftovers for about 3 months. (Turns out cooking for eight for a week does not mean cooking three meals a day with 8-10 full portions.) But I felt good going into it!

This year, it’s December 18, and I think I have main dishes in mind for Christmas Eve and day. Although I keep thinking that maybe what I have planned isn’t Christmas-worthy. You know, good enough to be served proudly to Jesus were he to show up for his birthday party. In fact, the only meal I’ve 100% planned is the deep dish pizza we’ll order the night after Christmas from the local pizza place. (It’s so beloved, in fact, that they sell it frozen in dry-ice lined packages for people to ship to relatives they really really like.)

How about I think of what I have accomplished already? Maybe that will take the edge off. The sleeping arrangements have been thought out, which involves Bill and I in the tent in the backyard. (Yes, I know that it’s cold to sleep outside, but our tent is pretty nifty, we have good sleeping bags, and the dog heats up really nicely when you snuggle up to her, like a very large, furry hot water bottle with pokey parts — gotta love those long long legs.) The tree is up and is fittingly decked, as are the other rooms in the house. We have done almost all the shopping, although no wrapping, for stockings. Maybe one more gift needs to be procured, so that’s pretty good. I did ask for time off from work, and there’s a super pumpkin pie recipe I want to try (instead of traditional pastry, it’s baked in phyllo dough all crimped up and drizzled with honey).

So I guess I’m in pretty good shape. The meals I have “planned” are pretty low-key, so they’ll be easy enough to throw together and Jesus won’t have to wait long if he decides to crash. And worst-case scenario, we’ll have a family shopping trip where everyone takes a seventh of the list (which I have yet to make) and fills their own basket with lasagna ingredients and canned tuna. Or we have lots of take-out menus on the refrigerator standing by. And I think I can clean the shower and de-cobweb the corners in a week. One week! Oh boy!

This morning as I pulled up to a stoplight where there was a Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins on the corner, the radio announcer gave the current weather conditions: partly cloudy and 24 degrees. I had the heater on full blast and the windows very slightly cracked (to avoid using the defroster which is A/C-related, thus gas mileage-reducing).

Waiting to cross the street at the cross-walk was a young woman carrying a beverage from the nearby DD/BR. She was wearing a windbreaker unzipped, no hat, no gloves, and her hair was wet. I think maybe her radiator in her apartment is broken so that hot air is constantly being spewed into her dressing space, therefore causing her to wear too little for the conditions outside? Maybe it’s even a relief for her to feel cold, since she’s always sooooo hot in her little apartment?

No, I finally concluded she must have some sort of physical condition which makes temperature regulation and/or registration impossible for her. The basis of this conclusion was the fact that besides her lack of appropriate dress, the beverage she was carrying, and currently enjoying, was a frothy pink icy slushy. Definitely there must be something wrong.

My boss, Mary, sent me an email last week asking if Bill and I would be interested in going to a volleyball game with her and her husband. They are regulars. They are in the booster club. They know all the players by first name. They are die-hards. What better way to be initiated into the volleyball universe than by die-hards? So we said yes, of course.

More excitingly, it was the beginning of the NCAA tournament. Friday night’s game was first round. Winning Saturday’s would get us to the Sweet Sixteen. And, there’s more! Since Mary and Jerry are so in there, they go to the chalk talks before games, where one of the assistant coaches gives a little lecture on their strategy for this particular game, anything unusual with the other team, how they’ve practiced, etc. Pretty cool! Absolutely we’d love to be your special guests! Count us in!

So we arrived at the gym 40 minutes before game time. (Actually we arrived an hour before game time but went to the video store and rented some movies to kill time.) We walked up to the front door and handed the (absolutely inept and clueless) senior volunteers (God bless em) our tickets. The tickets for Saturday’s game even though today was Friday. They stared at us. “Oh gosh! I picked up the wrong tickets! [stare] Since we have tickets to both [stare] . . . And we’re meeting some people [stare] inside. Actually they’ve invited us to the chalk talk [stare]. For the booster club? [stare] It starts in 5 minutes! [stare] Can I see if I can find them [stare] to let them know we’ll be back for the game? [stare] They’re expecting us. [stare] They said they’d be waiting outside the classroom door [stare] so I don’t want them to miss the chalk talk themselves. [stare] I’m just going to let them know we’ll be back in a few minutes. . . .” Eventually they piped up to inform us Bill had to stay as collateral, but I could go in.

I raced around trying to find the team room (thanks #1 for the directions!), only to find out that Mary and Jerry hadn’t arrived yet and there were a lot of interested faces staring at me. So I explained very hastily to the person standing closest our situation and asked that he please pass the message on to Mary and Jerry when they arrived. I found out later in the evening that this was the assistant coach, of course. He was very nice to the crazy lady.

Tear back to the car, we did, and hurried through the yellow lights to pick up the real tickets. Unfortunately, I’d recycled the tickets. (When I looked at them, I only looked at the times of the games. I got rid of the ones that said 5:00, thinking that these were separate tickets for the first game of Friday evening — Kentycky vs. Cincinnati — which we weren’t going to. We were only going to the 7:00 game, where the Illini were playing. Oops. There’s only ticket for the whole night. And the 7:00 tickets — which I kept — are for the game on Saturday, which will be the winners of both of Friday night’s games.) So where did I shove them in the recycling pile? They must be on top. Ok. They must be close to the top. Ok. Screw this. Forget order. Where are the little buggers? (They were in the box that dinner’s beans and rice came out of. Yeah, I don’t know either.)

And back we go to the gym. Miraculously we get our same parking spot! And we’re in time — 5 minutes to spare! Well, except that game 1 ran over by about half an hour and so we actually probably got back in time for the chalk talk. But the important thing is we got back in time for the game. Wisconsin vs. Illinois. It was a shut out. We won 3 sets to 0. Not a very evenly matched game, but super exciting for us novices! There’s no downtime in volleyball — lots of action all the time. Very fast paced. And since we were 2 rows up from the court right at the net, we got a couple fly balls over our way, and once almost a player too.

Saturday night was much smoother. (Well, duh, no choice about tickets to grab. There’s only one option.) We got to go to the chalk talk: I thanked the assistant coach for being nice to the loony lady last night, and we got to learn about the other team’s weird strategies and special challenges they presented and why we play two setters and the Chinese style of attack. Very interesting. And then we got to see it in action of course. It was a much more evenly matched game. Lots of long volleys and close (nail biting, palm sweating) scores. But again we shut em out: 3-0! Now we’re in the Sweet Sixteen!

It was all very exciting. A bit disappointing that now the season is over (for us attending games, anyway), just when we found out it’s so much fun! Hopefully there will be someone in Boston for us to follow. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves — GO ILLINI!

Bill, of course, didn’t get a holiday weekend at all. He was writing his NIH grant proposal from sun-up past sun-down every day (except actual Thanksgiving day, what with all the beer planned and all). I made sure I got something of a break though. Friday I did nothing. Well, I drove the dog out to play with some friends for a while and I took a bath. Those were my high points. A good day, Friday.

Saturday was again beautiful (near 50º!), and Tuesday was the last day the city would pick up our leaf bags, so a-raking I went. There’s only one tree in the backyard, but it’s big. Almost 2 dozen bags big. Question: Why is it that no matter what kind of gloves you wear while raking, you always end up with blisters on your palms? Heidi and Todd came out from next door too, so we had a sort of bucket brigade of leaf-bag assembly. One person to rake into piles, one person to stuff leaves into bags, one person to schlepp full bags into the garage. In no time at all (like, 2 and a half hours), the grass was greenly free again. Things always looks so clean, right after raking. Very satisfying.

Then on Sunday, I woke up and shoveled snow. Yeah, that clean green yard didn’t last very long. The weatherman warned us it was going to snow, but that usually means a dusting that melts by lunch if it sticks at all. Not this time, though. Snow meant cold cold temperatures, a stiff breeze, and a couple inches of snow over a sheet of ice. Still it has not melted away. The streets slush up during the day’s traffic, then freeze solid again when the sun goes down. It has been mighty treacherous. And let me give you some advice: Stay off of campus. The dumb kids don’t understand you can’t walk out into the street and expect a car to stop like normal. When there’s ice, cars can’t stop on a dime. They can’t even stop on a dollar bill. But we are safe and law-suit free so far.

So we have been hurtled into the coziness of winter. Next weekend (now that the grant is mostly done and almost submitted) we’ll deck the halls, maybe make some figgy pudding, and listen for the silver bells. After all, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

A long absence; much catching up to do. So first things first, I suppose: Thanksgiving!

We woke up late, had Bailey’s in our coffee, and watched a murder mystery in pajamas. Then we went on a nice jog to make up for the inevitable later beer consumption — a beautiful, sunny day, almost 50°!

Most of the cooking I had done in advance, so there was just stuffing and cooking the chicken and charring the brussels sprouts left to do. The cast of edible characters:

Roast chicken stuffed with citrus fruits
Homemade applesauce
Edible brussels sprouts
Brie baked with cranberry chutney
Whole wheat sesame crackers
Yam souffle
Stuffing out of the box (hey, you make applesauce, you get to have boxed stuffing)

At 3, Heidi came over from next door and we sat down to chow down and watch completely frivolous movies. And of course eventually dessert too.

Apple pie
Chocolate torte with caramel lime sauce