the gift of the electric blanket

I read a book recently in which the residents of a small town in Germany periodically receive mysterious gifts from a person they call the Unknown Benefactor. They receive only items that they really want but can't have for some reason - so, for example, a boy whose mother insists on dressing him in girls' clothing finds that a pair of lederhosen has been left for him at his home one day. So the Unknown Benefactor is all about anonymously providing necessary things. Like lederhosen.

What's most interesting about this book is that Raphael and I have an Unknown Benefactor.

Someone or ones left on our porch two days ago what appeared to be a new electric blanket. We found no note. We were unable to obtain fingerprints. The cops were no help. And Lila was not able to describe in any helpful way the precise smell of the person who came up onto our porch in broad daylight and left an electric blanket by the door. (Us: Did you know the person, Lila? Did you recognize their smell? What did they smell like? Did they smell like the neighbors? Did they smell like beer? Dirt? Broccoli? What? Lila: Rarf!)

We have reason to believe that the suspect - the Unknown Benefactor - may have been inside our house recently. Most likely as recently as the Cookie Party. Our reason is that only someone who had entered our house within the last two or three weeks would have known how cold our place is and how welcome an electric blanket might actually be.

We like having an Unknown Benefactor, even though it's been driving us crazy for two days wondering who this person is. We've questioned people. We've made wild surmises. We've considered the possibility that someone is out to get us (Unknown Benefactor - sitting at home rubbing palms together and twirling mustache: Heheheh! My plan is working! Any minute now, one of them will drop that plugged-in blanket into a bathtub full of hot water and they and their repulsive little house and that dog will be blown to smithereens!).

We've also used the electric blanket every evening - that's two entire evenings - since it appeared on our porch, wrapping up to watch movies and be warm for a pleasant change. We'd almost forgotten what warm felt like. And, in case the Unknown Benefactor is reading this, and unless this is all part of some diabolical scheme to rid the world of our little family once and for all by turning our own stupidity against us, we would like to say:

Unknown Benefactor, you totally rock. We love our new electric blanket, and we use it all the time, and thanks for not leaving lederhosen instead. And also...who the heck are you?

the day after Christmas

Santa: Ah, how I love relaxing after Christmas. The old Santa hat thrown onto the floor, stockinged feet up on the coffee table, cookies and coffee for replenishing the old bowl full of jelly. Ahhh.

Jenny (enters room): Wha-! Whoa! Santa, is that really you?!?

Santa: (jollily) Ho ho ho! Why of course it's me! Who else would I be? Clearly, I'm not Raphael!

Jenny (picks up discarded Santa hat): Can I try this on?

Santa: Go for it.

Jenny (tries on hat): Sweet.

Santa: So, how did you like your presents this year?

Jenny (voice muffled inside hat): They were awesome, Santa. I especially liked the microplanes. They shred Parmesan like butter. And Lila went bonkers over her Kong ball.

Santa: Ho ho ho! Who doesn't enjoy a good microplane, I always say! Pass me more of those delicious Pecan Sables, would you?

Jenny: So how come you're here at my house and not back home at the North Pole snuggling up with Mrs. Claus or a reindeer or, I don't know, a couple elves or whatever?

Santa: Well, ho ho ho, now. You see, I always hit the west coast last, of course, and, due to certain prevailing wind currents over the region during this time of year - what with the combination of helical airflow and the retrogression of relative voricity leading to the formation of a particularly nasty advection fog - I am often forced to head back east and take a breather before I can head back up to the old N.P. Don't want to slam the old sled into a seaside cliff or anything. Once the elves radio that the pea soup over Washington state's cleared up, I'll be on my merry way. (Waves a small radio around.)

Jenny: Oh.

Radio crackles.

Santa: Oop! There's Eddie now!

Radio: Bonkers Elf Boy One to Clausman. Repeat, Bonkers Elf Boy One, to Clausman. Do you copy, Clausman?

Santa: Ho ho ho! I copy, Eddie. I'm just hanging out in Tucson, having some delightful cookies and coffee! How's the fog situation?

Radio: Not good, Santa. Looks like you're going to have to stable the reindeer for awhile and hang tight. You doin' okay, Sir? You comfortable? They haven't threatened to turn you over to the authorities this year?

Santa: Ho ho ho, no they certainly haven't, my dear boy!

Radio: Good. You tell them we're watching every move they make. They show any hostility and we'll be down on them like glitter on tinsel. Bonkers Elf Boy One out.

Jenny: I never realized the elves were quite so militant.

Santa: Yes. They can be a little overprotective, I suppose. But they're cute as buttons.

(Thumping noises on rooftop.)

Santa: Ah, yes! The reindeer!

Jenny: Wait, there's reindeer on the roof?

Santa: Well, of course. Where else would they be? Ho ho ho!

Jenny: It's raining out - shouldn't they be under shelter?

Santa: Well, I don't want to impose...but perhaps we might move them to the patio under the ramada? Blitzie is coming down with a cold, I think.

Jenny: By all means, put them under the ramada.

Santa lets loose a curious series of high-pitched whistles, and the clatter on the rooftop increases and then ceases. Jenny looks outside.

Jenny: Shoulda made that ramada bigger, I guess.

Santa: Oh, they'll be fine. Last year, they spent the layover in the pound. Dancer got into an altercation with a pit bull. Sixteen stitches later...

Jenny: Poor Dancer!

Santa: Oh no. I'm talking about the pit bull, of course. Have you seen the antlers on these guys? (Slumps further down into couch cushions.) This is simply marvelous. I adore these spoon cookies.

Jenny: Will you be staying for dinner, Santa?

Santa: (sighs happily and closes eyes) Hopefully.

Radio crackles.

Santa: Oh, damn. I was just about to settle in for a long winter's nap.

Radio: Bonkers Elf Boy One to Clausman. Clausman, do you copy?

Santa: Of course, I copy, Eddie! Ho ho ho!

Radio: Time to come on back home, Sir. Washington's cleared up.

Santa: Well, now, Eddie, I just got a dinner invitation. And Blitzie's drying off under a ramada for a bit.

Radio: He still nursing that head cold?

Santa: I'm afraid so, Eddie. I'm afraid so.

Jenny: Why don't you invite Eddie down for dinner too? What's he, like your Right-hand Man?

Santa: He's Bonkers Elf Boy One.

Jenny: I thought that was his radio name.

Santa: Naw. That's his title. (holds radio to mouth) Hey, Eddie, you wanna come for dinner too?

Radio: What's for dinner?

Jenny: Leftover Guatemalan Christmas Dinner - pollo barbacoa and Raphael's mama's recipe for rice cooked with milk and corn.

Santa: Pollo barbacoa and Raphael's mama's rice recipe.

Eddie: Muy excellente, Sir. I'll be down as soon as I can.

Santa: Take the Fiat, Eddie. Ho ho ho! (to Jenny) Eddie's Colombian. This is certainly very nice of you. Much nicer than the Diet Coke and bag of Fritos they fed me down at the jail last year.

Jenny: It's the least I can do, Santa. Those really are kickass microplanes.

Santa: Ho ho ho!

Reindeer: (reindeer noises)

Lila: Bark bark!

Raphael: Feliz Navidad and Pollo Campero to all!

Jenny: Happy Holidays!

Radio: Sir? Do you copy? Speedway's closed at I-10. I'm being detoured downtown. Do I take a left or just go straight at Congress? Oh, por Dios. It's a one-way street. This Day-After-Christmas traffic es muy horrible...

some advice

When making mulled wine, I would suggest you remember the sugar. Otherwise, you wind up with hot wine with peppercorns floating in it. And nobody asks for seconds of that.

Cookie Party 2008 was a rousing success, I think. Plenty of cookies. Plenty of mulled wine with sugar included. Plenty of Christmas music. Plenty of Christmas lights lighting stuff up. Plenty of totally inappropriate conversation concerning the different names for certain parts of the female anatomy. You know. Classy grown-up stuff like that.

It was a whole lot smaller this year, the Cookie Party was, yet I somehow neglected to take this into account while baking, which means that we have been left with a whole lot more leftover cookies than we typically have to deal with.

I discovered some gems this year. I love these Pecan Sables, and I found these little lemon cookies to have a texture and flavor that grew on me. I didn't sandwich them, as the recipe describes, but I didn't miss the icing. They pop into your mouth with disturbing glittery ease. Disturbing. Glittery. Ease.

So I guess it really doesn't matter if I forget to add sugar to the mulled wine from here on out. I'll just keep the cookies coming. Shouldn't be a problem.

why the blog neglect?

I'm spending all my free time baking Christmas cookies, that's why. You might think I'm exaggerating, but I am not. I jammed a whole slew of spoon cookies when I got up at 6:10 a.m. today, then went to work where I mentally shuffled my Christmas cookie job duties all day long in order to determine the best way to maximize the two days I have left before the annual Cookie Party, and I just finished baking nearly eighty painfully tiny jam-filled butter cookies that I started mixing at approximately 6:10 p.m. - is that proof enough for you? Who would be this crazy? Did my mother teach me this? If she did, I'd like to have a word with her.

for julie's birthday

My sister has made some requests:

1. That I write something. Someday. About something.
2. More specifically, that I write something about Jack, my 1.25-year-old nephew who I have met approximately three times if you count that picture I saw of Julie while she was pregnant.

Alright. Here goes:

"My son knows all his body parts."

I'm on the other end of a long-distance call with my sister, who gave birth more than a year ago to a boy named Jack. "All of them," she says adamantly. "He's a prodigy."

Her story certainly sounds believable. As far as I'm concerned, she's provided irrefutable evidence as to the genius of my nephew. But I'm a reporter, and I've got to stick to facts.

"Just stick to the facts, ma'am," I say. "Can you provide facts to substantiate his indisputable brilliance?"

"Sure," she responds. "He has a vocabulary of, like, twelve words. Most two-year-olds only know two-word sentences and he already knows one-word sentences."

"Interesting," I say.

"And did I mention he knows all his body parts?"

"You may have."

"He knows his head. And his toes. And he knows how to resuscitate himself using paddles."

I have to admit this sounds pretty advanced for someone who's not actually a paramedic. "How old did you say he is again?" I ask.

"One. Two. One-and-a-half. Almost. But he could go to middle school tomorrow. He's short, but he's smart. He can almost feed himself stuff like yogurt."

"Most impressive," I offer.

"He likes yogurt. What he doesn't like is every other type of food."

"Can we go back to the paddles?" I ask.

"Oh, right. He puts them on his chest and makes a noise. It's cute. And it seems to keep his heart beating. So, you know, two birds with one stone..."

"His daddy's a doctor," I suddenly remember.

"Well, yeah. I don't know crap about paddles. He's learning about xanthan gum from me. He can almost say it, too. To most people it sounds like he's saying "BAWW!" but actually he's saying 'xanthan gum'. Mama's little genius. He's gonna be a scientist. He's practically a scientist already."

"I've heard a rumor," I say hesitantly, "that he likes his grandparents more than his parents."

"That's a lie!" Julie shrieks. "A lie! I'll claw your eyes out!"

"It might not be true," I say quickly. "Can you comment on this horrendous rumor?"

She calms slightly. "Well, tonight his grandparents babysat while his dad and I went out for my birthday dinner...can we talk about the sublime bacon-flavored foam that was on top of my scandalously expensive scallop...?"

"No."

"Well, okay then. Apparently Jack ate a cookie for dinner. After his Advent calendar chocolate. If there's any reason someone might insinuate that Jack prefers the company of his grandparents over that of his parents...!"

"It's because of that," I insert.

"Well. Yes. The point is, while I was amusing my bouche, my poor son was eating waxy chocolate and fortune cookies. I'm thinking about suing,frankly. This cannot stand."

"What was his fortune?"

"'You are the center of every group's attention.'"

"That's pretty funny."

"I don't follow you."

"Because it's true."

"What...? Oh my god, can you hear him?!? He's totally BREATHING! He's sleeping AND breathing! See? A genius!"

but i digress

You would think with the holidays approaching, there would be ever so many things for me to babble on endlessly about, ultimately saying nothing substantive about any of them. You would be right. And also wrong. I have so much to say about the holidays and holiday events and holiday gift-wrapping extravaganzas and holiday this and that and the other that I have been rendered speechless. I don't even know where to start, so my solution has been to avoid the blog all together.

It seems to be working so far.

I have lately found many other ways with which to spend my time, such as writing endless critiques of the writings of other writing students, laboring for days and days over my own stories so that I can receive towering stacks of critiques in return, searching the internet for Christmas gift inspiration, making long lists of Christmas cookies from which I will cull eight or twenty of the tastiest for parties, and watching helplessly each night snippets of Stephen King’s 1994 made-for-television miniseries “The Stand” which remains (as I vaguely remembered and despite the inexplicable allure of its oddly violet-lit rat-filled faux cornfields) a horrendous, horrendous example of why I don’t watch tv anymore.

Also, for reasons unclear to me, I have been lying in bed at night trying to come up with cool ringtones for cell phones.

My boss has a phone that makes cozy little cricket-y noises when it rings, which I particularly enjoy. And the old-fashioned me likes my ex-co-worker Heather's ringtone - the brrrri-i-i-ing of the old-timey telephones we had when I was a kid, in the days before appliances such as microwaves became ubiquitious in the American Household.

Was I really alive during the time before microwaves? I believe it to be so, though I rely so heavily on the microwave now that ours has begun to make a strange grinding sound when it microwaves and I fear for its longevity. The Guatemalan has threatened not to renew the presence of a microwave in our kitchen if ours kicks the bucket or begins to irradiate the house or whatever microwaves do as they give up the ghost. But I say, until they make it so that I can zap things into cookedness with my iPod, a new microwave is not not happening around here.

But I digress.

Here are some of my cell phone ringtone ideas:

The sound of a microwave whirring, complete with a beep. The roar of a lion. A bunch of panicked voices shouting “Fire!” Or how about an alarm clock going off? I also like the idea of a creepy stalker voice saying creepy things like, “Why hello there. I’ve been watching you all day long. Those jeans make your thighs look like giant, luscious root-vegetables – mmm, how I love root vegetables. Well, bye now. I’ll see you tonight – through your bedroom window.” Things like that, so that when your phone rings in the supermarket, it thoroughly freaks out the woman who’s standing in front of you in line. Hee hee.

OR...what about personalized tones? My dog making growly Wookie-noises, for example. Or my nephew making his adorably high-pitched staccato “hi!” over and over again. Can you already do these things? I bet on some website somewheres you can totally turn your child's first words into a ringtone. I wouldn't know since my phone works only intermittently at best.

But I digress.

In conclusion, that's what I've been up to during my blogging hiatus. Thinking up ringtones, watching "The Stand", planning for Christmas, and wishing I could cook food with my iPod. That's it. I'm sorry.