by Kathy Brasby | Dec 30, 2019 | Christmas, Family, Humor, Stories
The Gift of A Ski Trip
Many years ago, when most of the kids were still at home, we put together a Christmas plan one year: you won’t get much for Christmas gifts, but we’ll go skiing for two days after Christmas, condo and all.
The kids bought into this with great gusto because they loved skiing. All went well until Christmas when it was time to leave for the trip: their father felt a little guilty at the lack of gifts under the tree.
So he suggested a special outing on the way to the condo in the Colorado mountains. We pulled away from our house on the afternoon of Christmas, heading for some major snow.
How About A Christmas Steak?
“Let’s stop at that nice steak house on the interstate,” he said. He loves that eating spot to this day, even though it’s now closed. We’ve eaten at the new restaurant out of nostalgia for the old place, I think.
But back to my story. We pulled in at the steak house after savoring prime rib and mashed potatoes in our imagination for an hour. They were closed. It was, after all, Christmas day.
Hmmm. We hadn’t thought of that, so we continued to the next town and pulled in, hoping the Chinese restaurant there might work well.
Closed.
Christmas Closures
We were starting to get a clue, finally. But we had five kids in the car, and the Christmas cookies were wearing off. They were restless.
“Let’s try a fast-food place.” My husband had set his heart on a special mealtime family gathering, but his stomach was growling, too.
Closed.
Grocery stores were closed. Walmart was closed.
We started to take stock of any energy bars that might have been left in coat pockets. Any half-eaten cookies? I wondered about the crumbs under the toddler’s car seat. Starving kids makes one delirious sometimes.
Oh, Thank Heaven…
Just then, my husband spotted a 7-Eleven convenience store. It was open.
We turned the kids loose. “Find something to eat.”
Because there’s virtually nothing healthy in a snack place like that, the kids were not bound to a balanced meal. They grabbed chips and popcorn and gallons of fountain drinks.
Their parents have felt guilty for years for not having enough foresight to avoid such a disappointment. We wanted to give them a nice steak dinner. Their special dinner included candy bars, rubbery hard-boiled eggs and who knows how many Twinkies.
But I have been assured by our older son not to worry.
“I got a fistful of dill pickles,” he said. “Best Christmas dinner ever!”
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by Kathy Brasby | Dec 16, 2019 | Cats, Country life, Family, Humor, Stories
Navigating what a child says is sometimes like wandering through a corn maze after dark. It’s a little spooky and easy to mistake a corner for a dead end. Or vice versa.
Here are a few examples. This is strictly a no-name and sometimes changed-gender report for protection (mine, so I don’t get hammered by an adult child. They don’t always think these memories are as noteworthy as I do.)
I was showing a two-year-old boy around our barn. We had some black-and-white kittens tumbling around bales of hay.
“What do you call those?” I said, pointing at the kittens. I wanted to teach the difference between cat and kitten.
He stared. “Penguins?”
Another time, I was fixing dinner for the family when one of our kids wandered into the kitchen.
“What’s that?” he asked, studying the pan on the stove.
“Hamburger patties.”
He tilted his head. “Can I call it sook?”
Yep, he ate sook for supper.
On a similar note, the same kid helped me bake muffins one day. I used a whisk to mix the ingredients, and soon the batter stiffened. He lifted the whisk with the flour and sugar and oil clumped onto it.
“Look, I have a lunk!”
He ate quite a few lunks after they baked.
Another day I took a little one shopping at the local drugstore. She carried five pennies into the store and laid them on a shelf for some unknown reason. After we left the store, she discovered her loss. Of course, we had to backtrack in search of her loot. We searched up and down aisles, especially shelves at five-year-old height, but could only find four pennies.
I finally laid the law down. “We need to go.”
Her shoulders slumped as she shuffled toward the door. “I’m going to miss that penny.”
There was the child who came to her mother with her head hanging low. Kids never take disappointment lightly. She wore her sadness like a wet raincoat. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
Uh-oh. Wouldn’t you imagine broken lamps or flour scattered across the kitchen? Maybe the dog lost in a sea of bubbles in the bathtub?
“I’m sorry, Mom, but I can’t fly.”
How did she figure that out? It’s better not to ask.
Then there was this discussion over scrambled eggs at the breakfast table. Fork in one hand, my son asked, “Do you know what a Gurgler is?”
I like to encourage investigation, but I had to admit my ignorance.
“They’re a machine that sucks down people and things,” said the young one.
“Yuck,” I said.
“I hate to tell you this, but if you meet one, you’ll die.”
“Oh, no!”
“But it’s OK because they live on the other side of the world.”
“Good.”
“Mom,” he said. “They’re on the movies.” He rolled his eyes while I wondered what movies he’d been watching.
Then came the day when the same kid rushed into the kitchen, his arms flailing and his face red and hot. “Mom! Betsy says I’ll get wigworms if I drink my potty!”
Um, I can’t even unpack that statement. What would you say? I said, “Then don’t.”
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by Kathy Brasby | Dec 9, 2019 | Christmas, Family, Humor, Stories
A Cookie Cutter Set
Long before Pinterest could puncture my creative bubble, there was the nativity Christmas cookie cutter set.
I sometimes call Pinterest the dream site: I can only do those projects in my dreams.
Not my nativity set, obviously, but these might be better.
Christmas baking has always been a special time of sharing holiday love in our family. I keep telling myself that, anyway. Over and over.
When I had seen the cookie cutter set on display, it seemed to fit that goal. The box seduced me with photos of beautiful cookies in the shape of Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus in a manger. A little piping of frosting, a few sparkles in the right place, and we would have a unique nativity set.
And the best part was that we could do this project as a family with everyone helping.
A Special Family Project
I bought the set.
Yes, I knew we wouldn’t get the cookies quite as perfect as the photos. We had a two-year-old at the time. I knew he would produce a cute but goofy little cookie.
It was OK. I could overlook the children’s immature attempts. They were children, after all, and still developing their fine motor skills.
I forgot to factor in their mother.
I Knew We Were in Trouble
The family had gathered around our dining room table, frosting and decorations at the ready, waiting as I pulled the cookie sheet out of the oven.
Baby Jesus in the manger resembled a toasted marshmallow.
The sheep – and I’d made lots of them – all were blimps. Some had short fat legs but, since you couldn’t tell where the head was, the legs could have been prickles, too.
Great. Christmas porcupines. Or cantaloupe.
The camels’ longer legs had grown together while baking.
“Is this a tree?” asked the six-year-old, pointing to a former camel cookie.
The shepherds had morphed into tall planks of fencing. Or maybe a Volkswagen bug. It was hard to say.
Kneeling Joseph was now a giant S.
This Didn’t Slow Them Down
The kids were game. They slathered on frosting that was so thin that the blues and oranges for the wise men’s gowns flowed together, making a muddy brown.
Well, I think those were the wise men because of the lumps at the top, which I identified as crowns. Maybe they were cows, in which case the muddy brown frosting made more sense.
There was a stable printed on the back of the box that could be assembled as the backdrop. I tossed that idea after our older son frosted an angel as though it were a donkey. I couldn’t see displaying these peculiar little figures.
When we were done, with sticky frosting on our fingers and sparkles drifting to the floor, I studied the blobs of icing and cookie.
“Well, this didn’t work out quite as I had hoped,” I told the family.
My husband surveyed the table, surrounded by sets of eager young eyes, and picked up a cookie. “Then we’d better destroy the evidence.”
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by Kathy Brasby | Dec 2, 2019 | Country life, Humor, Stories
Colorado winters can range from warm to blizzard – and this is in a single week. In our rural area, residents debate over when to overcome the storm and when to give up and stay in. Some people don’t give up easily.
For example, I had just moved to a small farm town a few months before a smothering blizzard struck. The wind was throwing fistfuls of snow into the air outside my cozy office, and I could make out ghost-like fronts of stores hidden by the storm.
It was an excellent day to stay inside. Which, obviously, was what all the farmers in the area thought because the street was packed with their pickups. They’d come to town to swap stories and drink coffee during the storm. Inside, of course.
I have another story about persevering in a winter storm.
I was a teenager celebrating the snowstorm that had swept through our farm the night before. School was canceled – the reason for my celebration – and our family was sipping hot chocolate.
Today was calm. We gathered around our heater and celebrated the notion of a leisurely day without the mad rush to catch the school bus.
Then Mom noticed a milk truck lumber to a stop at the top of the next hill.
Our house sat at the top of a hill. The dirt road that skirted our property continued down a draw before rising again to the top of the next hill a mile away.
At the top of that next hill sat a shiny milk truck, rocking with indecision. The large semi-trailer contemplated its regular route.
Blocking its way was the heavy snow that had been driven into the draw. Whiteness had blotted out the road in the valley, and none of us had any idea how deep the drifts were.
The truck gathered itself like a sprinter in the blocks, rocking forward and back.
We didn’t have time to pop the popcorn, but we all gathered around windows to watch the show.
“Don’t do it,” Mom said.
“Go for it!” said one brother.
The other brother countered: “He won’t go.”
The truck rocked forward and back with indecision and then took recoiled before barreling down the hill.
The valley suddenly exploded in white as the truck entered the drift.
“He won’t make it,” Mom said. The snow flurry continued, though. The truck was making progress, we thought.
But then, as the flakes filtered back down to the ground, we could see the truck. The snow had draped itself victoriously over the hood and gripped the doors. The truck hadn’t gotten a quarter of the way through the valley’s snowpack.
Dad trekked down in his tractor. Unlike over-confident milk trucks, tractors can go about anywhere. Some neighbors came, too, and together they managed to tow the truck back to its starting blocks.
Dad reported that the snow was packed like concrete around the engine.
In Colorado winters, sometimes it’s fun to slog to town to drink coffee and swap stories with the other travelers. And sometimes it’s wiser to park that milk truck and wait for another day.
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by Kathy Brasby | Nov 25, 2019 | House rehab, Humor, Stories
I haven’t told a story about our property rehab projects in a while. My sister Ann and I have done almost 25 different rehab projects in the last 5 years, and the tales go on and on.
This is one of those stories.
Patricia Valerio at Unsplash
The backyard in this account looked like the county dump except the dump is better organized. The best way to handle this, short of tipping the earth and letting the garbage slide into the alley, is to get to work with trash bags and rakes.
We always don safety glasses and gloves just in case. It’s amazing what you can find in a heap.
The backyard of this project had some promise. It was small and could be charming except for the bags of debris along the back fence. Well, and the litter all over the grass. Well, assuming there was any grass left under the junk. But you get the idea.
We started clipping hedges and trimming evergreen limbs that swept the ground.
And there we found a trash can, completely hidden behind the canopy of branches.
The trash can was overflowing, of course.
I grabbed a handle, but the trash can was too heavy for me to move alone. “I need help,” I said.
So Ann gripped a handle, and we lifted. We pretended to lift, I mean. This trash can must have been full of concrete.
We drug the can to the alley, leaving nice trench marks behind.
“Huh, it’s full of water,” Ann said. So, not concrete, as it turned out. All the rubbish was marinating in rainwater.
We decided to tip the container onto its side to let the liquid flow out. If this had once been rainwater, it had been transformed into swamp sludge. We hoped nothing had died under the junk, but it sure smelled like it.
An hour later, our nostrils had cleared out enough to return to the project.
Seizing both handles, we started our dragging strategy again. The trash can was lighter, and we were able to get it to the dumpster in the alley.
This trash dumpster was a metal monster with a wide-open mouth hungry for garbage. We hoped it didn’t gag when we added our treasure to the feast.
The fact that the front jaw of the dumpster was about four feet tall presented a new problem. We couldn’t lift this trash can that high.
But Ann had an idea. There were brackets on the front of the dumpster where the truck could grab and pour the contents. “Let’s lift the cab up and set it on that bracket,” she said.
We were confident we could hoist the container halfway up, to the bracket, reposition our grip and tip it over into the dumpster.
Maybe the trash can fumes had done something to our brains because this idea seemed totally doable.
And so we bent down and lifted.
Somewhere between the ground and the bracket, somebody’s hands slipped, and the trash can fell to the ground.
I was now convinced there was concrete as ballast because the trash can landed square on the ground, sending a geyser of bog sludge over both of us.
There we stood, baptized in marshland mud.
But all was not lost: we should be inoculated against every germ known to mankind.
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by Kathy Brasby | Nov 11, 2019 | Family, Humor, Stories
I’m all for trying new things, and so, when my daughter gave me a bottle of vanilla extract that she had made, I figured I’d check into the recipe.
I’m not cheap: I’m curious. I keep telling myself that, so hush.
I’m suspicious of the recipe blogs which promise, “It’s effortless,” but they were right this time. It was easy!
I had to locate some vanilla beans (probably the hardest part of the project) and then put a few vanilla beans in a bottle and cover the beans with cheap vodka. Let sit for a few months, and you have the best smelling vanilla extract around.
But this isn’t a recipe blog. You can Google the recipe if you want.
I made a batch a few months ago and pulled out the first bottle to use on my famous chocolate chip cookie recipe. You know, my everybody-snitches-the-dough chocolate chip cookie recipe. Google the recipe.
I mixed up the ingredients, and the snitchers wandered by. Each one took a sample and said, “Weird. This has an odd aftertaste.”
So I tasted, too. And it did. Blech.
I had already put the first batch in the oven, and I’m averse to throwing away a batch of cookie dough. I mean, it has butter and eggs in there. That’s like liquid gold. So I waited out the baking process.
When the cookies came out of the oven, and I tasted one, they were fine. No aftertaste. Pretty much like normal.
What in the world? Where had the aftertaste gone? Curious minds like mine need to know.
Some who have a scientific mind would formulate experiments. They’d try the recipe in different ways until they uncovered the cause. They’d waste a lot of time, in other words.
Not me. It was faster to do some thinking. What was different? New?
Aha, the new batch of vanilla.
I unscrewed the lid and took a sniff.
This was not a lovely vanilla scent. This smelled of pure alcohol. I had not added the vanilla beans four months ago.
No vanilla beans giving up their sweet aroma. No vanilla beans adding flavor to the cookies.
The odd aftertaste was the vodka, which burned off when I baked the cookies.
My daughter, one of the snitchers, put it best: “You served us vodka cookies?”
Well, only to the snitchers, I guess. Glad my grandsons weren’t around that day.
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