reds and greys

Winter Storm Hurcules is bearing down upon us. Well, it's actually already here. Matt is out shoveling, bless him, and I am still in bed. The little girls are raging and shouting in their usual way. Ermintrude is snotting everywhere. I feel, in my soul, that I will soon be joining her--something about the terrible painful feeling in the back of my throat and the wooly fog in my mind and the sense of immanent death. It really feels to me like I am lying here wearing Alouicious' new helmet, even though I'm not.

They all look so exasperatingly healthy. Even Ermintrude is busting with energy. Wretched children.

We all enjoyed ourselves this last week, even to the point of it being just a little too much. Goose, Cornish Hens, an extra Turkey, a Beef Roast, little sweet peppers stuffed with blue cheese and then wrapped in bacon, Trifle. Yesterday, as I inhaled a tub of gumbo handed to me by a friend, I resolved never to eat anything again for a least three days. But then I split open a gorgeous sweet dripping red pomegranate and squeezed it into my glass of champaign.

All the eating, it's so delicious, but I do feel that if it goes on things will begin to unravel in my life and mind. A diet, or a fast, is what's called for in the first days of the new year.

And a fast would be fitting to mark the sorrow of loss, of grandparent withdrawal. We had such a good time with Matt's parents! Ice Skating, Star Wars, meal after meal after meal, little outings to the store, lots and lots of patient loving attention from someone who is not your mother and who thinks you should be allowed to eat as much candy as you want.

The stark cold gray of winter was genuinely suspended for a brief bright week of inside light and gold and red. For a fleeting moment I wondered if God is calling me to give up complaining about the weather in 2014.

But then I thought, that can't be right. Complaining about the weather is really who I am in my essential being. So for 2014 I'm going to just try to read a second book. I read one in 2013 so I feel up to the challenge of reading another one.

Beyond that, I plan to just take whatever God sends. Snow? I'll try to deal. Suffering? Hopefully that won't be what he sends but I won't say no. Inclinations to Prayer? Those I'll take. More work? Well, that's to be expected. Good rich things? So many good things were given in 2013 and God was so good, I know there will be many good things to accept from his hand.

Happy New Year! 

ringing in the new year

 Matt takes his feasting very seriously. Last night we ate a lot of fancy little food and made hats and paper stars and a paper chain and then stayed, dedicatedly, up till midnight. This effort involved first watching Brave (fine but meh, if I'm perfectly honest, not nearly as good as Tin Tin from the night before) and then running in circles while Matt cleaned the kitchen with U2 turned all the way up, and then finally a little bit of Mr. Bean before watching the ball drop and being totally grossed out by all the kissing and by Mr. Bloomberg's happy lipstick embellished face surrounded by Rockettes. The vision of Mr. Bloomberg with his sweater and his rockets seems an ominous picture for tone and tenor of this New Year, but maybe I'm just being phobic. Anyway, the party happened at all kinds of levels. Elphine dressed up and sat around prissily drinking her sparkling cider and averting her eyes when anything turned out to be weird or gross.

 

The baby danced and wore a crown until we'd all had enough and flung her in her bed. She sees a camera (or a phone) and immediately strikes up a terrifyingly false grin and stretches out her hands in love. She also makes funny faces, when given the chance.

Gladys and Marigold ran in circles and joined in the general merriment. The boys drank vats of the sparkling cider and hoped that the bear in Brave would eat everyone (what a disappointment).

I sat in Matt's big chair and drank champagne and enjoyed Mr. Bean most of all. I find the whole specatacle of a lot of people in Time's Square screaming with Nivea hats and waiting to be on TV very strange. And the ball dropping at midnight is so over rated. The first year I heard of it I expected a large glass ball to be hurled off a tall building and smash on the ground. This, like the reality of the Alamo, has been such a disappointment in real life. However, the children were enchanted with the possibility of staying up till midnight, so it can't have been all bad.



So now on to the food, because that's what its really all about, isn't it? Here is the seafood with red and green pepper, onion and garlic, pickled jalapeno, hot chili oil, blue cheese and a dash of sherry from my very own glass.

Matt ate most of it because I'd tasted so much of everything before hand I wasn't hungry at all. Blast it. Elphine arranged the vast array of food artistically and in a good and rightful order.

 And here are the scrambled eggs with full fat cream and cheese.











And here are the cheese and pepperoni, arranged four or five different times because of being eaten off the plate as fast as they were put on. Not really worthy of a photograph in their own right but for the triumph of, for fifteen seconds, having a full plate of cheese and pepperoni before they're being eaten off once again.







And here are the little sausages wrapped in puff pastry which go very nicely with champagne or sparkling apple cider, of which none were left at midnight. I love how quickly they puff up, how easily they are made, how fancy they appear and how salty they taste. Whereas now the children are all relatively young and small, only one packet of little sausages was sufficient. As I laboriously cut and wrapped them, I imagined my future self with six teenagers sitting for several hours cutting and wrapping sausages and having them disappear with an even greater speed than the cheese and pepperoni do now. Sob.
And here is the crowning moment of my entire married existence.......
The Cherry Puff
Matt has resisted every single dessert I have made for the whole course of our marriage. I bake and he smiles and nods and walks by it all, fit, trim, disciplined, holy. Bread, Cinnamon Rolls, Apple Pie, Pumpkin Pie, Chocolate Trifle, Mango Cobbler, Persimmon Pudding, EVERYTHING, invented by me or even just executed very very deliciously. Until Now.
I took 15 seconds to lay down a puff pastry sheet, cover it with sour cherries left from the trifle, mix cream cheese, cherry guts and a teaspoon of sugar, mush it over the cherries and then lay over it all another sheet of pastry and he couldn't resist. Could Not. He ate a piece in the kitchen when he thought I wasn't looking and finished off everything out of the children's bowls and then put the very last piece in the fridge for later. Happy NEW YEAR!!!

And so finally we roused ourselves this morning to eat chocolate chip pancakes (well, the children did, I had a strong tea and hopped for a brighter tomorrow) and then Matt cooked a large turkey, as he is much addicted to doing, and we ate some more. And I waved my glass of Pinot around and held forth about the fact that I  had listened to the entire book of Romans this morning and discovered I was quietly hoarding some bad theology in the back of my mind but am firmly resolved to correct this faulty tendency in the new year, because, as we all know, Theology Matters.

So, A Happy New Year To You All! May God grant you many lovely things right away and may you eat of the fat of the land and sit in many comfortable chairs and be full of the knowledge of the love of God as the waters cover the sea.

revolutions

Several weeks ago Matt and I asked Elphine and Alouicious what they planned to resolve in the New Year, or, to put it another way, what resolutions they might like to make.

"For my New Year's Revolutions" Elphine said, relishing each word, "I will listen to all five volumes of The Story of the World, listen to the Whole Bible, talk less about myself, and be nicer to everyone."
Alouicious was less pious. "I" he said, "resolve to be more awesome."

No matter how often I try to get Elphine to say 'resolution' she persists with 'revolution', partly, I am sure, to spite me, and partly because it is cooler to plan a revolution than a resolution. Who are we kidding? Wouldn't we all like the whole world to be quickly, even if bloodily, better, not slowly and painstakingly improved in tiny ways that the stranger walking by wouldn't even know about? Last year I quietly settled myself to the loosing of lots and lots of weight--to get down to where I was before all the children, imagine--and to read through the Bible in the year, both of which I've basically, though not perfectly, accomplished. But the nose upturned young lady at the jewelry counter to whom I was trying to explain that the earring she'd sold me three days before broke the moment it came out of the tissue paper didn't know that I am much more awesome now than I was last year. I couldn't say out loud, "You shouldn't think I don't deserve to wear these earrings because, in fact, they will look fine on me and I know I'm not looking as fancy as you with all your necklaces and hair, but last year you would have despised me as much, if not more."

So this year, apart from resolving not to hate that young lady, but instead to pray for her or something (does it date me that I keep calling her young?), I am also resolving to
-finally read The Lord of the Rings even if it kills me
-read through the Bible again but in a different order
-post at least 200 times on this blog over the year
and of course
-be more awesome.

And my New Year's Resolution is....................

to blog more.
In obedience to my husband, who, when asked what I should resolve in the New Year, said, 'You don't blog enough. Why don't you blog more?'
to which I replied, 'the same could be said for you.'
So in 2009 the Kennedys will try to BLOG MORE. Maybe that will be our family motto for the year as well. Who knows.

Happy New Year

Matt is away for an hour so I am steeling the chance to use a keyboard that will allow me to use 'i', 'k', 'm' and some other interesting letters. I am able to read email on my little long suffering laptop and that's about it. BUT help is on the way. Patience is all that is required of me.

In light of that, I just wanted to wish you all a Happy New Year.
Last year I resolved this:
1. I'm going to loose the weight of 2 babies plus.
2. I'm going to pray and read the bible 5 days out of 7 (of course, 7 would be better, but if I make it to 5, then I can aim for 7)
3. I'm going to read 6 books. And I welcome suggestions on the books.
I think I did pretty well. My prayer life was so amazing I blew through a journal in a year and two months. I lost some weight (down to that last hardest five pounds) and I read six books except that it was really the same book over and over.

I'm sitting here thinking of what to resolve for, well, that would be tomorrow wouldn't it. But my son has just put his new battery powered train in his hair and tangled it all up. So I'll do that and go to a tutor meeting in a few hours and clean my kitchen and consider What Would Make Me a Better Person in 2009. Some of you probably have some very clear ideas already. Also forthcoming as time and a keyboard allow, an immense list of thanksgiving.