We honored the pants

Molly and I have always loved yoga…pants.  As flexible as frosty panes of glass ourselves, we've never even considered actually participating in the sport that inspired them. We've cheerfully pranced around in yoga pants for years and the only sun salutation we ever executed has been a squint.
If for no other reason than to honor a style of trouser that consistently offered us both the extra length and the drawstring waist we so appreciate, we wandered into an actual yoga studio yesterday. We figured it was the least we could do.
We inhaled as we unrolled our borrowed mats. Molly and I normally work out in stinky gyms or musty basements. This studio smelled of potpourri. And the people spoke gently. And wore no shoes.
We assumed the child pose and felt at one with our fellow yogis. Downward dog. Check. Upward dog. Double check.Warrior One. Cool.
And then the movements became a little more challenging.
"Now take your left leg and raise it in the air. Raise your left arm and look toward the ceiling. Now flip over. Don't even think about it."
Somehow, the others gracefully segued into perfectly arched backbends. Meanwhile, our downward dogs became mutts and they were barking.
Our instructor walked over and gently suggested we move our mats.
"A lot of our beginners prefer the back of the classroom," she said as she kindly helped me drag my mat into a corner.
The class continued and Molly and I both worked hard, gamely holding positions I can't even describe.
Chaturanga became a position of refuge for us.
We wrapped up the hour-long class as the sun set through the studio windows. I can't say either one of us experienced an epiphany as we breathed through our noses and opened our spines to new experiences. But our muscles felt nice and loose and our minds felt warm and free.
We're taking our yoga pants back to the studio next week.

Molly wouldn't let me take pictures of our little
yoga adventure. She actually was quite
 firm about it. So, I'm including a few of my
favorite shots from the archives. Here she is with
her brothers on a family vacation in 2005.

Awww. Molly and her big sister Katherine in 2007.

And here they all are last year at Katherine's graduation
from the University of Wisconsin. Go Badgers!!

And then sometimes your tannen baums

I spontaneously bought a Christmas tree yesterday, a bold move for any single member of Christmas crazed family. For someone with my track record, though, it was especially so.
I had stopped at a local market for a simple bag of frozen fruit when a small sign buried behind the boughs caught my eye. "Frasier Firs. $29.99"”
Quite a deal, no?
I bought the fruit and the tree.
Two kind store employees helped me hoist the thing onto my tiny car and left me to twine it. As I drove home, tree trunk precariously perched above my windshield, tree tip jutted out near the tail pipe and white rope flapping along the sides, I thought about my history with Christmas trees.
As a newlywed, I decorated our first tree with candy canes and homemade cookies. The tree looked beautiful and I planned to photograph it the following morning. As I slept, the cookies slid off their ribbons and landed in a mushy heap on the floor. Martha Stewart, I am not.
In later years we joined my siblings on annual jaunts to my father's farm to cut down wild trees. This charming tradition netted all four of us the ugliest trees in our neighborhoods. One year, my brother even accidentally cut down a cedar bush and tried to pass it off as a Christmas tree. A tree farmer, Dad was not.
Eventually, we all gave up and bought our trees from local lots. The first year my husband overshot and dragged home a tree so big he couldn't fit it through the door. He chopped the top off, shoved it through the door and, that year, our angel hunched humiliated inside our square tree.
For the past several years, Molly has taken charge of our tree selection and we have enjoyed a run of healthy, beautiful trees.
She was not pleased to hear I had bought a tree without her. However, once we had sawed off the bottom with a kitchen bread knife and wrestled the thing into its stand, even Molly approved.
So fleeting is the time we spend with our Christmas trees, whose imperfections make them even more beautiful, and so grateful are we that the stories they inspire last a lifetime.

I love this Christmas tree photo, circa 1968. My mom has
it down, but the rest of us took a few years to work out the
 kinks of the self-timing camera.

Fast forward 24 years and I'm wondering about my own tree.
Why is there just one present under it? And why is the base of
the trunk as tall as the baby?

This year's tree seems to have survived
it's undignified parade through the city
streets intact. We both ignored any un-
Christmas-like gestures directed our way.
Molly and I can't wait to decorate it!

Every neighborhood should have a Cookie Lady

We call her the Cookie Lady because that's the way she signs cards on the tins of goodies she sends through the neighborhood. Our friend Connie, though, is so much more.
Feisty, Irish, sweet, witty, charming, crafty, and just a bit naughty, Connie anchors our little corner of the city. Born a Murphy, Connie approaches life with solid faith and Gaelic glee. Diagnosed with cancer, Connie walked to the hospital each day for her chemo treatments and carried homemade cookies for the staff. She beat that cancer and fought back many challenges in a life that would have felled a lesser colleen.
Today, 85-years young, Connie rises at 4 a.m. and bakes. After many years of subtle requests and then outright pleas, she finally coughed up the recipe for her amazing molasses cookies. Molly and I can make the cookies now, but we have trouble recreating the essence, spiced, as her cookies are, with eight decades of flavor.
Several years ago she began knitting Christmas stockings for friends and family. To date, she has created 650 Christmas stockings. The stockings hang low and allow plenty of room for the generosity of good ole St. Nick, a particular favorite of the Cookie Lady.
I mentioned to her that my sister had become engaged to a man she had been dating for some time.
"Well, it's about time," Connie chuckled and the following week she showed up on my doorstep with Christmas stockings for the happy couple.
I popped in on Connie yesterday and found her jammied up and writing Christmas cards. She sends 150 cards and selects each one individually to match its lucky recipient. True to her stylish nature, Connie wore earrings to match her robe.
We're very grateful in this house to be included among Connie's tremendous circle of family and friends. She has spun herself an admirable yarn and created a legacy of love.

Here she is at work on a Christmas stocking,
a year-round project for her. This picture is
not 100% current, but she suggested I use it
anyway. "Let 'em think I still look like that,"
she said. The truth is, she hasn't aged much
beyond this at all.

This is Connie's house, all spruced up for the holidays. She
decorates full on for every holiday but Christmas is her speciality.

Connie requested that I include a shot of her Madonna. A lifelong
Catholic, Connie walks to 8 a.m. mass each day.

Here is Connie's mantel with the original stockings she created
for her own husband and children.

And here is our mantel with the enormous stockings Connie gave
us. St. Nick has become pretty generous at our house thanks to
Connie's stockings. She sets a high bar.

"Lights please" -- Linus Van Pelt

Annually, the family flees the house when I string the outdoor Christmas lights. I battle the elements and wrestle the lights, cursing the increasingly scraggly bushes on which I hang them, all alone. Even our neighbors cross to the other side of the street when they see me out there making my holiday scene.
 Long ago I chose the old school large white lights for my display and I have regretted that decision every year since. But, illuminated against the green and especially covered by snow, they do look lovely.
This year I felt like the Christmas gods had smiled on me. I stuck my finger out to gauge the wind and found it silent. No wind? How odd. I trudged outside to begin my annual treasure hunt through the clutter and discovered a weirdly organized garage. A box labeled extension cords actually contained them. My tiny fake trees, which I often find jammed against bent backboards and old bicycles, were, this year, placed exactly where I had left them. I looked on the work bench for an adapter…and found one!
So confident, even smug, did I feel that I began to hum Christmas tunes. And when that first string of lights blew, leaving a dark sooty smudge on my wrist, I soldiered on. In fact, I completed the entire display, giant wreath on the balcony, lights on the bushes, spotlight on the wreath, in record time.
A crisp wind blew in a cold front that night as I walked with my husband. "I sure am glad I got those Christmas lights up," I said out loud like a fool.
You already know how this story ends, don't you?
Perhaps you’re my neighbor and you're reading this thinking our house looks especially dark this year.
Just 10 hours after I proudly lit our annual Christmas display, it blew out the outdoor light fixture into which it was plugged and the entire display went dark.
Our electrician shook her head as she removed the offended fixture. "Christmas lights," she said, a little disdainfully if you ask me.
The message here, though, is one of yuletide optimism. Because when our electrician returns to connect our new fixture, I intend to re-light my Christmas display.
I hope December finds you equally sanguine. I hope this time of year inspires peace. And I really hope my Christmas lights don't blow out my new light fixture. Fingers crossed.

At least the lights inside the house still work...for now.

A couple of cast-offs from last year.
They snapped in the ice.

I'm including this picture of last year's cards
not just because the wooden light decorations
are taunting me, but also because you have
until December 9 to get your card to a soldier.
Just mail it to this address (no glitter):

Holiday Mail For Heroes
P.O. Box 5456
Capitol Heights, MD 20791-5456

We chickened out of the bacon grease

My grandmothers were bakers, one a city gal and the other a mountain matriarch. Grandma Fey matched earrings to her stylish pantsuits and took day trips to Pogue's Department Store in downtown Cincinnati. Her specialties were peach pie and chocolate cake. Grandma Jay preferred housecoats, hot tea and front porch gossip. Her specialties were walnut rolls and apricot cookies. They shared a fierce love of family, a tendency toward shyness and a fondness for fried food.
Grandma Fey made good ole southern fried chicken. Grandma Jay fried tender veal cutlets. We channeled both of them yesterday when we made ourselves a crispy batch of fried chicken.
I know they'd be a little disdainful of the adjustments we made. Grandma Fey used bacon grease to fry her chicken and Grandma Jay, I'm sure, had no use for Panko bread crumbs.
For Molly and me, though, whose arteries were still recovering from our buttery Thanksgiving, these ingredients proved to be a happy compromise.
In the coming weeks, we'll share with you some of my grandmothers' wonderful recipes. For today, though, we're posting Molly's soon-to-be-famous fried chicken, which could only have been more delicious with a little bacon grease.

Molly's Fried Chicken

One box Panko bread Crumbs

Two Eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup Flour
Salt
Pepper
4 boneless chicken breasts
Canola Oil

Cut chicken breasts in half, season with salt and pepper and pound with a meat tenderizer hammer.
In one bowl, beat eggs with milk. Pour bread crumbs in a second bowl and flour in a third.
Dip chicken in flour, then eggs, then bread crumbs.
Pou about a half inch of canola oil in frying pan and heat on high. Add breaded chicken. Turn heat to medium high and fry chicken approximately five to 8 minutes on each side. Remove from heat and drain chicken pieces on paper towels.

Here are your ingredients. We only used a half box of bread crumbs.

Our favorite part is pounding the chicken with the meat tenderizer
hammer. Here Molly is using a garlic press because her older sister
borrowed our hammer and we haven't seen it since.

Whisk the milk into the eggs.

Dunk the floured chicken piece into the egg mixture.

Coat the floured, egged breast in the bread crumbs.

There she sits, ready to be fried.

We suggest completing the breading process before you fry.

It's canola oil. If you have bacon grease on hand....

This is what they should look like when you flip them.

Here they are, ready from some baked potatoes,
crisp salad and corn on the cob

Cheers to the bookends

The last task of a busy Thanksgiving weekend fell to our bookends. Charlie, 24-years old and soon to leave for his home in New York, and Molly, 13, faced off across the wishbone.
So similar are these two, with their left handedness, stubborn streaks and complete recall of obscure information, that the standoff could have continued indefinitely. They both understood that the surest way to win the wishbone war is to hold still. The tugger is the loser every time.
And so they stood.
Eventually, impatient and anxious to return to her sixth consecutive episode of Lost, Molly sacrificed her wish and yanked.
Charlie scored the wish.
As I snapped pictures of the annual rite, I thought about these two who had been nothing but kind to each other their whole lives.
Shortly after Molly was born, I asked Charlie if he'd hold her for a little while so I could run on our basement treadmill.
"Sure," he said and settled himself with her in our family room. I ran and then popped upstairs to check on them. She had fallen asleep on his chest.
"Can I take a quick shower?" I asked Charlie.
"Sure, go ahead," he said.
At some point, I completely forgot about them. I showered, dressed and wandered into the kitchen to start dinner. I was at the stove when I heard the faint voice.
"Mom?"
I poked my head in the family room. There sat Charlie, pinned by the sleeping baby.
"Can you take her now because I really have to go to the bathroom?"
It had been more than two hours.
I can't tell you what Charlie wished for yesterday (true wishers never tell), but I can tell you this: as they both make their way out into this old world, their mother is so very pleased that they have each other.

11-year old Charlie works around seven-month old Molly.

The stubborn standoff might have continued indefinitely
but for the lure of Netflix.

The perfect pastoral Thanksgiving starts with pigskin

With a nod to the ancestors who inspired this holiday, we spent Thanksgiving in a cabin this year.
Should you ever be so inclined, we're including these tips. Tuck them into the blaze orange jacket you'll require and keep them handy for next year.
1) Print off all of your recipes because there is no Internet at the cabin and you only cook some of this food once a year. If you're like me, you'll then leave the printed copies on your kitchen counter at home and have to wing the entire meal.
2) Mentally prepare yourself for the pre-Thanksgiving Hearts game, a sweet family tradition passed down from your in-laws. Then, when you have the option to lay the Queen of Spades on your youngest daughter effectively ending the game and making you champion, buck up and do it. You'll be heckled from all corners for this choice but hold your head high (and then gratefully lay it on your pillow. Tomorrow starts early.)
3) Understand what the holiday is all about -- football.
All food prep should be complete, desserts baked, turkey in the oven and stuffing in the crock pot by 11:30, which just happens to be kick-off. If you turn on TV just a few minutes late you will miss the muffing of the national anthem, which will be good news for your appetite.
Relax and enjoy the first half of the Packer game. Then, you have exactly 15 minutes to execute the first half of the family touch football game. This timing is precise and there is no room for error. Just for the record, it is not wrong for you to fire the first pass to your oldest daughter's boyfriend. This is the proper way to vet the suitors.
Return to the cabin to watch your Packers beat Detroit to go 11-0 on the season. Take your turkey out of the oven, shove the biscuits in and then hustle back out to the field for the second half of the family football game.
4) Enjoy your meal and be very grateful that all of your children have made it home to celebrate with you…and that you just trounced three of them on the football field.

What you see here is the winning team.
Molly's got her game face on. She scored the go-ahead touchdown.
Note: Katherine's boyfriend Santiago caught the pass, in traffic, to
launch to opening drive. He can stay.

They're cute but they lost. Katherine has the
best game face though.

And, oh yeah, there was a meal too.

We weren't kidding about the blaze orange.
Here we are on a post-meal walk through the
woods.