baking x 3

Last night we baked chocolate cherry "Black Forest" cookies in honor of the holidays. Baking with a fourteen-month-old is fun, but definitely a two-person (plus the baby, of course) job.

A list of things she *can* do:
+Lick spoons (if you're not afraid of the raw egg in the cookie dough)
+Pat the electric mixer to encourage it as it runs
+Pull measuring cups out of the drawer
+Stand on a chair and heckle us

A list of things she *thinks* she can do but probably shouldn't:
+Run the electric mixer
+Crack open eggs
+Stick a utensil in the bowl while the electric mixer is running

A list of things she surprised us by doing:
+Whisk together several ingredients in a bowl (with assistance)
+Show no interest whatsoever in eating the powdered sugar
+Put measuring cups and utensils back in the drawer when asked

The lesson is that our children are constantly surprising us and are certainly capable of things sooner than we can possibly imagine.

Also, baking cookies is universally a great activity for parents and children to do together.

[soporific]

The thwacking thump of wet clothes
beating on the washer door;
The chugachugachuga chortle
of the dishwasher, laughing to itself;
And merriest of all, the whoosh-vroom
vacuum, spinning sordid stories.

This apple-scented afternoon
you're a cyclone of cleaning, a laundry lunatic.
And you ask, Darling, are you drifting?
It's these appliance-driven whirs,
lullabies of our modern life,
that make alertness impossible.

[truculent]

Your violence is not
the blue bruise,
cold terror, hold-up
I'd come to expect
from my last go-round.

Your violence seeps at the edges
like we've overcompensated
for wobbly construction
with too much glue
oozing and spreading

The end hurts all the same
and we are hurtling toward it.

[irenic]

Ares is the god of war, so
who's the god of peace? you ask,
my toes jammed up
under your knees,
twisted under the blanket,
the way we sit on hazy Sunday afternoons
watching football,
old episodes of Jeopardy
(category: Greek Gods),
and cooking shows.

A golden leaf
snub-nosed and brown-edged
twirls beneath your busy fingers,
like an ice-skater
dancing on the pond,
while the rest of you lies slack
your body a still, deep reservoir.

I do not know this god of peace,
but certainly he resides here
in this tingling foot
resting beneath you,
the baby sleeping on your chest,
and the fireworks of cloud and mist
announcing the day's end
beyond our window.

eight

Bus in eight minutes, we'll start this up again tonight.