What a Girl Might Eat in a Day
What a Girl Might Eat in a Day
Monday, December 11, 2006
Aunt Corliss’ 55th birthday – and she was going to be a first-time grandmother in January. Collette was still happy that she wasn’t the one who was going to make Grandpa and Grandma Snicketts, great-grandparents, or the aunts and uncles, great-aunts and great-uncles. That responsibility was falling to Brit and Lilli three months earlier.
On Monday, Pumpkin continued trying to squeeze herself underneath Rose’s little Christmas tree, but was always too fat to do it.
Earlier in the day, Linnea, who had a bad cold still, refused to take her cold medicine. Carrie, who usually had the knack for helping her get it down, finally proposed the ultimatum:
“Linnea, if you drink that, I’ll eat eye shadow.”
And she did.
Then, Carrie took off with Mom and Rose to get three shots for Egypt: meningitis, hepatitis, and tetanus. Upon returning to the house, she added a jar of soft cheese to the chili on the stove to cover the burned taste (everyone was still getting used to how quickly Mom’s new pots and pans heated), only to find that the jar had already been opened days (maybe weeks before) and had been left in the pantry instead of the refrigerator. This was not before she had already eaten several large spoonfuls. She had also started taking children’s chew-able vitamins every day, seeing as she was out of her own. It finally dawned on her that eating twelve of them in one day was a bad idea, despite her brief thought that it wouldn’t do much harm because she was bigger than an average kid and needed a larger dose of vitamins than what might usually be required. There was also the matter of the Central American tea… Seeing as how she had already taken enough toxins to tranquilize a small bear in the space of six hours, Carrie considered the idea of throwing up.
Meanwhile, Collette put together a corn pudding in the afternoon while Rose was off taking her Egyptology final. And, as the freezer was wont to do, it rattled and whooped away while she mixed things – something it had been doing for years, as though a flying saucer were about to lift off.
In the late afternoon, Collette visited the cardiologist and was told that everything looked good to go for the present. On the way out, as the rain began to come down, the western horizon shone in Rumpelstiltskin’s lair – spun gold. And the skies turned dark and heavy with rain as Mom and Rose hurried into Michael’s for ceramic glue. Rose had to fix her final ceramics project – a plate of ceramics, colors, and cracked glass (it almost looked like galaxies and constellations, from the patterns). Someone had dropped it, bringing it out of the kiln, and all of the sides had cracked off. Her final was tomorrow, so she quickly fixed it upon returning back to the house that evening, where Dad and Joe had just returned from work.
She was pleased, however, with her Egyptology final – her professor had handed out giant cookies afterwards, which he had baked himself.
“It was kind of funny seeing these big burly guys come up and get their cookie when they were finished,” she said. “And my teacher says that he makes giant cookies because if our blood pressure goes up and we see the doctor, we can say, ‘All I had to eat was one cookie.’”
Then OLeif arrived to pick up Collette and the corn pudding, and it was off to the Hatch’s for the staff Christmas dinner.
Dinner conversation varied overn spitting camels at Christmas Eve services and Swedish family trees. And there was the usual heckling passed back and forth between tables from the beginning of dinner till the very end, along with the chocolate ganache and strudel.
Afterwards, Rosemary gave each staff member a great glass jar of homemade applesauce. And Judah and Evangeline passed out greeting cards crafted in Tanzania with a carefully woven straw star Christmas ornament attached to each envelope.
Another semi-formal Christmas dinner passed through – it always satisfied Collette a bit to come through such a three-hour setting without having been teased too remorsefully about whatever was going on in her life – this time, about “Mortimer” (in Judah’s opinion), or “JJ” (for the rest of the staff). Being a first-time mother certainly brought attention to one’s self.