For me, the Season began before Thanksgiving and continued through the week after Christmas. Exiled as I am in south-central Texas, but hoping to return to the Great White North very soon, I decided that the husband-person and I should stay here and celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year in the house we’ve owned for 11 plus years. We have spent the last 11 Christmases in Harlingen, Texas, (that’s Deep South, near the Rio Grande) with my Winter-Texas parents. The last seven of those years the celebration was with my mother only. As Whoever knew, I needed a break.

So, we stayed home. Thanksgiving was quiet and passed in a sort of turkey fog. We cooked a large turkey breast in the slow-cooker. The cooker wasn’t as slow as we’d expected. Therefore, we ate at an unusual hour for us. 2:13PM. We survived. The white turkey meat didn’t.

Some time following the success of our private, individual Thanksgiving fête a worm of an idea began wriggling its way into my cranium. I ignored it for as long as I was able, but one day on our daily walkabout through our neighborhood, we met one of our favorite neighbors and stopped to talk a bit. At the end of the conversation, I opened my mouth and the idea, which had wormed its way completely into the center of my brain, fell out of my mouth.

“I’m thinking of having a party after Christmas,” said I. Neighbor and husband responded simultaneously. “You are?!” The neighbor was positively delighted. The husband sounded shocked. Of course, he knows the kind and amount of work throwing a party means in our household. It can be both expensive and painful. For him, it is often painfully expensive.

Here’s a little aside. The husband and I are not particularly compatible. Haven’t been for over 51 years and five children. That neither of us has committed mayhem on the other is attributable to the fact that he seldom listens to me and I don’t understand him at all. This way, things we’ve said that might have caused a gory, first degree murder get past each of us without actually landing. It helps that he’s mostly deaf now and I can’t hear well in my right ear.

The delightful newspaper cartoon, The Better Half, written I soundly believe, to expose the veracities of the majority of marriages, hit the nail all over its head this past Sunday (1-3-2010). Cartoon couple, Harriet and Stanley Parker, stand together, nose to nose, in their living room. They hold each other’s hands and peer into each other’s eyes. Harriet is poised near the TV set. Stanley parks next to his comfy chair which has already been commandeered by the cat. Stan’s usual huge bowl of chips awaits him upon the coffee table in front of his chair.

Knowing these two characters as well as I do, I expect an exchange filled with vitriol, rants and raves, despite the rather tender depiction of them as a couple. I lower my gaze to the caption. Harriet speaks: “Our marriage is like a beautiful Shakespeare love story . . .” You can imagine my confusion. An ellipsis is the positively last thing I’d expect from the Parkers. They are definitely non-ellipsic people. But, Harriet goes on with the comparison to Shakespeare. “… too long, too boring and I don’t understand most of what you’re saying.”

When I completed the caption and its message sank in, I laughed, loudly. It’s a rare event when the husband-person spares a second of attention to ask me what’s so funny, Honey?” He did this time, the one and only moment when I would rather not have told him what made me chortle. “Oh, it’s just The Better Half comic strip. It’s particularly funny today. I won’t bother you with it. You usually don’t read Glasbergen’s cartoon, right?” “You read it to me,” he replied and it sounded a lot like an order.

So I read it aloud and could not refrain from adding, “This is just like our marriage.”

Today is already January 5th and he’s still pouting. Yet, I want to thank Glasbergen for the healthy guffaw he provided me. Back to work now.

Before Christmas was upon us, I began baking cookies. I can never bake a single recipe when the Cookie Monster strikes. Doubled recipes and sometimes quadrupled recipes are the only way I can go. Another cookie-baking idiosyncrasy that saddles me is my undying love of peanut butter. If a recipe doesn’t call for the ambrosia of legumes, I add a cupful anyway. That is, if the recipe also calls for even a small amount of brown sugar. In cookies, peanut butter is incomplete without brown sugar.

Furthermore, if you can believe it, I bake cookies only with Bisquick. Since I no longer feel obliged to make cookies at least once a week, as I did when my children were all in grade school, I do not stock baking soda or baking powder in my cupboards any longer. Both of these rather expensive powders go “bad” or “flat” after time. I dislike this habit of these baking helpers. So I use Bisquick, which comes with everything but shortening included. You gotta love Bisquick!

Day after day I stood at my kitchen countertop and stirred together recipe after recipe of “easy-to-make” Bisquick cookies. Enough for an army, as my mother used to say. But, once you learn to bake for a small army of children, you can never look back. At least, I can’t. Although I wasn’t trying to, I managed to find a recipe that became the Husband’s new favorite. They are a crumbly concoction that required a pastry blade or cutter.

The cutting, which for me was more of a mashing, mixed Bisquick with brown sugar and a hunk of butter. (No, I didn’t add a cup of peanut butter into this recipe. I held myself back.) Part of this mash was tucked tightly into the greased bottom of an 8X8 pan. That was layered with your choice of preserves. (I chose blackberry, strawberry and blueberry for the three recipes I made.) The glossy fruit is covered with the remaining crumbs. The pan is inserted into the 375˚ oven and allowed 30 minutes of baking time. This is one of the messiest but tastiest cookies I’ve ever made.

The peanut butter cookies I did bake I also iced with chocolate frosting which I sprinkled with tiny colored spheres. They turned out magnificent looking. Only one trouble occurred at the party. One guest really wanted to try a chocolate-frosted peanut butter cookie. However, he’s allergic to food coloring and didn’t have the courage to chance his health for a dumb house party colored-candy-sprinkled cookie. His loss.

The upshot of this rambling narrative is that my back trouble kicked in with a vengeance the day after the party and I have been hobbling through life ever since. The most comfort I’ve enjoyed since that insidious party was the time I spent in a theater seat through an entire showing of Avatar.

I’m so glad the holidays are over.

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About the author Cate Lane: Born in Minnesota and raised a temperate progressive, I was carried off to Texas 10 years ago by the tsunami that was my husband's retirement. Texas is not Minnesota, not by a long shot. However, I hear that Minnesota isn't Minnesota anymore either.

Writing was always my first choice in life. I began writing at the age of 8, small books about pioneers heading west. Little did I know then that I would be living in the most "western" of all the states, Texas. No one told the Texans that they are simply Southerners who, like Bugs Bunny, took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and wound up here.

I am sneaking up on 70 years of age and now own a vast store of useless knowledge. Happy to share any or all of it with you all.

Email: CthlnLn@aol.com

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