That’s our niece/goddaughter — fourth from the front, right in front of the sax player — marching with her high school band last week in the Magic Kingdom, Orlando.
Monthly Archive for April, 2006
The only shot I got
I would have got a much better shot of the four big ol’ turkeys that wandered into a corner of the backyard if JDog hadn’t come to the door and started barking. Just like a dog.
I had just sat down to work when I looked out the slider door and there they were. Four of them, just kinda strolling across the yard. I grabbed the camera and slid out the door. They’re not going far very fast, I thought, ’cause the big dumb things are walking right into a fenced corner. Plenty of time to get a few shots off while they discover their predicament and figure out what to do.
Then came the dog and they took off in flight. Big, a little awkward looking. Over the back fence and away. I’ve never seen them near the neighborhood, although I’ve seen plenty on the backroads and in the wooded areas around here. Like the sleeping raccoon we had in our tree one winter and the giant turtle that made its way across the yard a couple of summers ago, the turkeys were probably a one-time thing.
OK. Back to work.
First-time biscuit making
Suze made dinner tonight: "Sunshine" chicken, fresh snap peas and buttermilk biscuits.
She was a little nervous about the biscuits because she’d never made them before. I coached her through, but she didn’t really need it. They turned out fine. Just like the rest of the meal.
View from the dining room window. It’s why she lives here.
On Friday, my friend Clare and I went Up North to visit another friend of ours, who lives on the shore of a smallish lake in Benzie County. Leah lost her husband suddenly last fall, and though we’ve kept in touch (Clare better than I), this was the first chance we’d had to visit.
The three of us worked in different offices of the same ad agency years ago. Clare was PR, Leah a writer-turned-account exec and I started out proofreading. After I fanagled my way into a copywriting job, I worked with both of them. Most of my assignments at first were for Leah’s projects, and she played a big part in molding me into the writer I am today. She was and still is a stickler for detail, and in the days before widespread email use, we’d spend hours on the phone going over my copy, tightening, clarifying, making every word count. Much of my own insistence on excellence today is the result of mentoring by her and a couple of the other communications pros we worked with.
Back then, the cottage was a summer place, but when the agency was struggling and had to close its satellite offices, she and her
husband Jim sold their house mid-state and moved to the lake. Jim retired, and Leah held a marketing job at the nearby music camp before landing as marketing VP at a northern Michigan hospital.
The village is pretty typical of small towns up and down Lake Michigan’s eastern shore: busting out with tourists and vacationers from June to September and fairly desolate in winter. Most employment is dependent on tourism, and many of the locals, if they’re not retired or independently wealthy, commute to cities 30 or more miles away for work. Leah is the consummate networker and in addition to her immediate neighbors, she knows practically everyone else in town: the guy who owns the cool market with the fresh bread and great wine; the woman who runs the gift and kitchenware store and who rents out upscale tourist apartments upstairs; the couple who run the local bed and breakfast; the municipal maintenance guy and the car repair guy; plus local artists, musicians, real estate people.
Even though she’s got a wonderfully suppportive circle of friends, her family’s far away and winter can be long. Leah says there’s been many a night when, driving toward home on drifted-over or ice-filled roads she’s wondered, "What am I doing here?" Then the car crests a hill outside of town, the lake comes into view, and she remembers.
Suze decided that her dad’s birthday cake should be made from scratch. ‘Course any cake she makes is made from scratch. She’s like that.
I had to take her to the store to get her ingredients on Saturday afternoon (I was supposed to be working, but oh well). Chocolate chips, unsweetened chocolate, buttermilk, whipping cream. So far so good.
I dropped her off at home and went back out to run a couple of errands. While I was out, she called me. "Will you get me a carton of whipping cream?"
"You bought one already."
"Yeah, but I accidentally put it in the cake and it was supposed to be for the frosting."
So I bought another carton and took it home to her. The cake was in the oven, starting to smell good. I sat down to write.
Pretty soon she was wailing in front of the open oven. "Oh no! It’s ruined!" The cake batter was pouring over the sides of the pans, onto the racks and down onto the floor of the oven, where it was starting to burn.
When I asked, I found that not only had she put the cream in the batter, she also had put in all of the called-for buttermilk.Too much liquid. And now a mess. So we eased the pans out of the oven, turned it off, removed the racks. She assembled her ingredients to start over. I went out to get more buttermilk.
When I got back, she had cleaned up the oven and started it heating again. While she added the buttermilk to the new batter, I cleaned the gunky half-baked cake off the oven racks and put them back. She poured the batter evenly into the pans and slid them into the oven.
I sat down again to write.
Not 10 minutes later, she was leaning over the open oven, shrieking again. Once again, the batter was spilling over the sides of the pans.
"What size pans does your recipe call for?" I asked, out of ideas about what could be causing the problem.
"Nine inch," she said, as if that was the only size cake pans could be.
"You know that those are eight-inch pans, don’t you …"
If you guessed that I went back to the store for 9-inch cake pans, you’d be right. What are you gonna do? The girl was making a cake for her dad’s birthday. From scratch. And I needed new cake pans anyway.
As you can see, she finally got her cake baked (but not until today) and frosted (when the family was already an hour late leaving for Muskegon to visit Grandma for her birthday). It turned out really well. And best of all, I didn’t have to bake it. 
At first I fell for it. Then I laughed.
A friend called with some disturbing news. Not the kind of thing you usually joke about. For a minute I fell silent. Then there was laughter on the other end of the phone.
"April Fool!"
For about a half second I felt a little peeved. Then I had to laugh. It’s a good Fool’s Day joke if the other person falls, even for a few seconds.
We don’t do April Fool’s Day in our family. I honestly never even think about practical jokery until I get a trick played on me. Why? Because the time others spend thinking up their pranks is time we spend in panic mode that typically leads up to a birthday celebration: What to buy this year? (Mom, you always buy Whitecaps tickets!) Where to go to dinner? (No place too expensive this year) What kind of cake: scratch, box, or bakery made? When will everyone be home so we can sing Happy Birthday?
Yeah, my lucky husband was born on this day some 40 odd years ago. As you can imagine, he’s heard all the jokes. And practical pranks just have never seemed like a fair thing to pull on someone’s birthday. On top of that, his mother’s birthday is just a few days later, on the 4th, as is that of one of my dear brothers-in-law. Easter or Palm Sunday have been thrown in the mix more than once in the last 29 years. So you can see why the tomfoolery of the season is lost on us.
Now that you know this, you also know (as my friend does) that I am one person you can get on April Fool’s Day, simply because I’m not paying attention. And when you’re laughing ’cause you tricked me, take a minute to call my husband. And wish him a happy (fool’s) birthday!
