Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Here and there

I've been getting a little mired in nostalgia lately. Did I tell you I was getting nostalgic for a particular midwestern bar? even though I have never once in my life been happy to be in any bar ever? Unreasonable. This trend is getting worse as we get deeper into the Holiday Season. I'm listening to Christmas carols, mooning over Christmas cookies, and obsessively wanting to make a gingerbread house. As far as I know, it's been at least ten years since any of those things even crossed my mind without being accompanied by due cynicism.

But here I am, here are the Christmas lights strung alongside the palm trees, and here I set out to make my American Christmas cookies: Translating ingredients, finding them in the store, converting cups to grams; in my damp, dark, slug-frequented kitchen, rolling out the dough with an empty wine bottle, baking the cookies six at a time in the toaster oven, and in the meantime nibbling bits of raw-egg infested cookie dough, something that never so much as tempted me as a child.

Next Christmas, when I'm in Mom's cozy kitchen with rolling pins and pandora.com and tins of flour, I'll be nostalgic for department-store tinsel and make-shift batches of cookies, won't I.

3 comments:

  1. explanation of the bar remark so as not to slight my ol' drinking buddies. i always preferred hanging out with you when i could actually project my voice over the ambient noise and have a conversation with you! i miss my girls!

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  2. Yeah, I think this season is brutal for us far-from-home types. But at least you can bring your American Christmas to your friends there!

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  3. You know my thoughts on the whole holiday thing. This year I have even more to back up my stand against the whole thing.

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