A word to the wise: When you make Mexican Wedding Cakes with margarine (because it’s all you have in the fridge) instead of butter and substitute half whole wheat flour for the white flour… Well. While they are vegan made this way, they just are not as yummy. Which is a good thing, now that I think of it. Those little cakes have ninety calories apiece! just thought I’d share that baking/dieting tip with you.

Looking for some real cooky recipes? Go check out Jenn’s Virtual Cookie Exchange. (Thanks, Amalah, for the tip.) Also an excellent way to check out a bunch of new blogs, if you’re in the market.

Now, gimme a cooky. We’ve baked chocolate chip cookies so far, the aforementioned Mexican Wedding Cakes, Peanut Butter Blossoms, and will make some fudge this weekend. And that is it. I mean it, Internet. I’m not putting on more pounds this season — I’ve lost twenty and they’ve been staying off, in spite of cookies. (Trick is to give them all away as soon as they’ve cooled, and not accept any from friends. Cookies, I mean. Not pounds. Damn, I wish there was a way to do that with pounds…)

Love,

WM

We’ve had some issues with homework lately. Delays, stalls, kvetching, rinse and repeat.

Yesterday I came up with the brilliant idea of letting the kids watch “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” on tape — but only after Wacky Girl had finished all of her homework. (Wacky Boy does not have homework until kindergarten, thank God.)

Ha! So this meant having her younger, pesky brother parked at the table with her, drawing self-portraits with markers (his “homework”) and asking her approximately every minute and a half, “Are you done with your homework yet?”

Hey, why should I be the only bad cop around here?

Really Nekkid, as in Newborn. The Wacky Nekkid Neighbors had their tiny (ha!) baby girl (nine pounds, two ounces; ed. to say make that THREE ounces) a little after two this afternoon, Monday, Dec. 11th, Two Thousand and Six. She was born Butt-Nekkid. She is born under the sign of Sagittarius, in the Year of the Dog. They named her Little Miss Patootie-Butt, Princess of Nekkidville, which I think is a grand name.

Wacky Girl plans to buy her a cowgirl suit. Wacky Boy will teach her to play marbles as soon as she is old enough.

Congratulations, and good job, mama.

If you’re trying to remember the planet names, you’ll remember them if you can remember this:

My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nachos.

M: Mercury

V: Venus

E: Earth

M: Mars

J: Jupiter

S: Saturn

U: Uranus

N: Neptune

That’s it! Oh, and my friend P is very mad that Pluto is no longer a planet. He is mad at the scientists. Our teacher told us that they call Pluto a “dwarf planet” because it’s so small. P thinks that it should still be a planet. I think it’s OK.

WG

From George Bernard Shaw:

“This is the true joy of life: the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

Yeah, that’s me alright — a regular force of nature. And this may be all you’re getting from me this week…

Book of the week: I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being A Woman by Nora Ephron. She is a funny, funny, funny lady. Sorry, I could never hope to be even one-tenth as funny as she is, so I will not try.

Christmas pageants are a lot of work, it turns out. If I was into pharmaceuticals I’d be taking a Valium right now.

(more…)

I can’t wait to get into bed with my husband at night. No, really. I cannot wait.

(more…)

This one is from my mother-in-law. So Christmas-y!

RED, WHITE & GREEN SALAD

For the salad:
One avocado (diced)
Ricotta salata, feta or queso fresco
Butter or Boston lettuce
12 cherry tomatoes
Small handful cilantro leaves
Four scallions (white parts only)

For the vinaigrette:
Cilantro (1/4 cup, loosely packed)
4 scallions (dark green tops only)
1-2 jalapenos (seeded and chopped)
1/2 cup olive oil
Juice of one lime
Large pinch kosher salt

Combine all vinaigrette ingredients, pulse in food processor.

To assemble:
Mix half of vinaigrette with avocado to prevent browning. Layer lettuce leaves, then tomatoes, avocado and then cheese, drizzle dressing on top.

Bon appetit!

WM

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anais Nin

How I see it: Dedicated, hardworking, stay-at-home mom who occasionally snatches a few minutes to write. Who sometimes sneaks in a phone call to a friend, or finds a half-hour block to make a series of business calls.

The way my kids see it: There’s the back of her head again. She’s always on the computer. She never pays attention to us. She never hangs up the phone. Here, I’ll scream and tip over the dog’s water bowl — that should get her attention.

I’d like to say that the truth lies somewhere in-between, but that’s not true. Their version is the “real” version. Anais Nin was right. So here I am, stalled out on another manuscript, trying to ignore the fact that Christmas is three weeks from today. New Year’s Day is four weeks from today. My husband and I will have been together ten years this May. Shouldn’t we do something fun? I mean — should we have a party? Take a trip? Get a babysitter for the weekend and go to the beach? The dishes are still undone. The laundry is never done. The house is a mess.

(more…)

See this. And have a happy weekend! We’re decorating the tree, listening to “Here Comes Suzy Snowflake” and baking chocolate chip cookies.

It’s a Winter Fucking Wonderland over here, to quote Wacky Grandpa.

Great article in this week’s New Yorker — “Little Hotties,” by Margaret Talbot — about the Bratz dolls phenom. Talbot describes them as having “…the sly, dozy expression of a party girl after one too many mojitos.”

Oh. My God. Nailed it. And the toy industry folks have made up a new expression: K.G.O.Y. — Kids Getting Older Younger, “…and talk about it as though it were a fact of modern life over which they have no control, rather than one which they have largely created,” Talbot says. Bastard toy execs. My daughter — my son, too, but my daughter, especially — needs to stay a kid for as long as humanly possible. Let her be a kid. I didn’t get to be one for long and y’know — it was too bad. It was too bad that I looked like an 18-year-old at age 12. It was too bad that by age 13 or 14, grown men were trying to play grab-ass and grab-tit with me and asking me for my phone number. Make that, handing me their phone numbers because of, you know. My mother. (No father = wolves lurking. When I meet fatherless girls I want to bring them to my house so Hockey God can do some hockey slashing techniques on any predators that come around. We could call it Wacky Mommy’s Home for Fatherless Chicks.)

Writer Naomi Wolf, She Who Speaks For All Things Feminist, is quoted as saying “If I were betting on culture as a form of stocks, I would get out of Skinny Barbie and into multiethnic, imaginative Bratz dolls.” Oh. Please. “Imaginative”? The kids like them because they’re slutty. And slutty girls get the attention, you know. And the phone numbers. Barbie’s problem always has been that she’s not slutty enough. I mean, poor Ken. Barbie, the tease. Always so busy being a vet. Or a doctor.

Wacky Girl requested a Bratz set last Christmas that came with its own bar. Its. Own. Bar. What the hell happened to Barbie’s Dream House? Camper? Damn.

“No,” I said, “You do not need to play dolly bar.”

“It is not a ‘bar’ bar,” she patiently explained to me, her stupid, non-understanding mother, “It is a karaoke bar. Where they sing karaoke.”

Yeah, AND DRINK MOJITOS.

This Christmas she still wants a Bratz doll. And now, being depraved on accounta she’s deprived, make that IS DESPERATE FOR A BRATZ DOLL.

“You just think they’re hootchie-mamas, don’t you? Don’t you, Mom?”