No One Else is Awake Yet!

Every year, my entire family goes to Nana's house for Christmas Eve dinner, where she fixes the traditional oyster stew. How anything as upchuck-reflex-inducing as oyster stew got to be a tradition I will never know, but the fact remains that for every Christmas since I was old enough to say "eeew" I've had to put up with slimy, brownish bivalves drifting unappetizingly in, essentially, a bowl of tepid milk. When I was younger, before I had acquired the ability to say "that makes me want to vomit" with tact and finesse, I'd just drink the creamy broth and do my best to ignore the critters accumulating gushily in the bottom of the bowl. Now that I'm older, well, let's say being a vegetarian has its perks. This year, though, when the time came to pass 'round the stew, it came out that hardly anyone else likes oyster stew either, not even Nana. Family traditions are strange.

But that isn't why my grandmother is adorable. Nana is adorable because pecan puffs, little confectioners'-sugar-frosted cookies that she's been making for fifty Christmases at least, are supposed to be about the size of a modestly successful grape. This year, they were so enormous that she was either pelting the obnoxious kid next door or playing golf with the dough balls before she baked them. (Either way, I think we all know who's hanging out in the kitchen with Nana more often). When we pointed their prodigious size out to her, she was flummoxed, and said with her adorable southern accent, "Wee-eell Ah'm sure Ah have no ah-dea how that happened!" as she examined one of the cookies, which was about as big as her face.

Hopefully, I'll be able to convince her that we should just eat giant cookies instead of --

FINALLYPEOPLEAREUPIHEARSOMEONEMOVINGINTHEKITCHENIT'SSANTATIMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

The Past Five Days

I used to think blogs were silly. I still do. However, I've decided to give it a try, since I enjoy writing and am sick in bed with a wretched cold and a brutish cough; and besides, being open-minded to giving things a try only did any harm when some people decided to vote for Bush a second time.

The last time it snowed more than two feet in Virginia was in 1997. In fact, that year we got three feet, and my brother and I tunneled through the back yard and over the garden wall until we may actually have been in danger of turning into moles (that's another story). This past week, snow was predicted. I, as a Virginian, get excited over flurries, so you can imagine my enthusiasm when all sources were saying we could get up to two feet.

As is my wintertime tradition, when it started to snow I assembled a storm-kit involving disney movies, hot chocolate and a Harry Potter book before setting out for my best friend Tera's house to get snowed in. I arrived on her doorstep, rosy-cheeked and peppy, amid the first innocently accumulating inches of snow. Little did I know that I would not leave for five days, held captive by four inches of solid ice on the roads; nor had I any inkling that the next morning a scheming, evil rhinovirus would pounce upon my unsuspecting sinuses.

That first evening, Tera and I walked through the muffled dusk and drifting snowflakes, feeling as if we'd stepped into Ethan Frome (except without a conniving hypochondriac wife who will stop at nothing to ruin your life and all prospects of future happiness, and without forbidden love, and without horses, and without a creepy cat . . . so basically only the landscape. Give me a break, it was gorgeous out.) The comfortable happiness of besties reunited for a long walk in the boonies made me finally feel I'd come home, two full days after returning from school in Ohio.

The next morning, though, the only snow-like substance I could see was a white, fluffily menacing cloud of tissues ("I will chafe your nose until it falls off, BWAHAHA") in which I was irretrievably engulfed for the remainder of my stay at the Morris household. The whole family was remarkably goodnatured about it all, but I was so out of it that, when asked whether I'd prefer coffee or tea for breakfast, I replied "yes . . . please," and promptly went back to sleep.

At any rate, after five days I am back home and ready to make cookies and chocolate truffles, come hell or pneumonia (knock on wood). Just . . . don't anyone else eat them, or get within five feet of me, for that matter.