Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. A flurry of snowflakes drifts past the window as if they were being chased. A large amount of snow-ice mixture slides off the roof. So that’s what they were being chased by. My fingers are still stiff with chill because my high school seemingly does not provide heat.
Cream together one cup of butter, one cup of white sugar, and 2 ½ teaspoons of finely ground tea. I do not own a tea grinder. I will just have to put the dried tea leaves in as they are. This is probably a really terrible idea, I think, even though I proceed to dump a total of 7 bags of green tea atop butter and sugar in a sunny yellow bowl. I wonder when my brother will be home. I am not playing music, how out of character.
Beat in one teaspoon of vanilla extract, and two eggs. In English today we discussed the poem “Where The Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein. When I was little I used to think that the place where the sidewalk meets the fantasy land was hell. I was correct in a way, but now it’s more metaphorical and I understand what he meant now. Poetry is one of my favorite things. When I was young, my favorite poem was “A Light In The Attic,” which is incidentally also by Mr. Silverstein. My favorite line was, “Put something silly in the world/ That ain’t been there before.” Ten years later, my favorite poem is “My Fairy” by Lewis Carroll.
Sift together two cups of flour, two thirds cups of cocoa powder, and two teaspoons of baking powder. Lewis Carroll is one of my favorite writers. “My Fairy” stands out to me in particular because it embodies a feeling that I think many teenagers have. “‘What may I do?’ at length I cried/ Tired of the painful task./ The fairy quietly replied/ And said ‘You must not ask.’” It’s a lost thought on me, but it seems as though it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. I learned that from my father.
Drop cookies by rounded tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheet. I’ve always felt closer to my father than mother. I guess it’s triangulation and that I don’t really have very much of a memory of him until around third grade because he worked really weird hours. I have one very specific memory of going into his work when I was three. He worked as some sort of electrical engineer who fixed medical equipment. Or maybe he tested it. I don’t really know but he tells me the story of setting the dog food on fire on a couch soaked in kerosene a lot. That’s besides the point. I remember walking around his work and having everything towering over me. This memory is unusual because I usually adjust my memories according to my height now, (roughly 5’6”) but for these purposes I was likely around 2’9” and there was a tall lady who probably isn’t that tall with black heels, a pencil skirt, and bright red lipstick. She leaned down to me and called me “Miss Bridget,” which is a name no one called me other than my uncle Mike. She then asked my dad if I could eat hard candy and he said yes. This is the first memory I have of candy, as well. Come to think of it, it’s probably my first memory period.
Bake for eight minutes, cool before eating. Years later my father took me ice skating at Shebako lake. I was probably somewhere between 6 and 8, but it was before we moved, and my brother was still too little to go with us. We slid around the lake, me fumbling around on awkward seemingly homemade ice skates specifically made for my little feet. My dad was wearing his big brown skates that he likely got sometime between when he graduated high school and when he got married to my mother. He glided across the ice like some sort of gawky swan, and I stood there in amazement, slowly sliding forward, digging the blades into the thick ice, afraid of tipping over and bruising the gloved palms of my hands. I’m sure I fell many times that day, but I don’t remember. On the car ride home, he gave me one of those candies that old people always had in their house, but no one really knows where they came from. This one was orange creme and I’m fairly sure he took it from my grandmothers house. I placed it on my tongue as I had thousands of times before, and climbed into my booster seat in the back of my dads black Volvo. We lingered along the rural road, and I gasped at the sight of a deer. This lead me to inhale the orange creme candy, and I was afraid to eat hard candy for at least 2 years after.
The moral of this post is that there are whole tea leaves in my cookies, and you should definitely follow directions to the Q or else something will be badly screwed up.
On another note I am planning on going ice skating again with friends next week. I am always more graceful on skates than I am on land, likely due to the fact that I have two large pieces of metal attached to my feet and if I fall I’ll probably just hurt myself badly.
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