I stayed in last night, watched Wag the Dog with my son, got some knitting done. I put away the autumn decorations and got a start on the Christmas decorations. I brought out our collection of Christmas CDs — we have a couple of dozen, so I guess I had better start playing them.

In fact, I usually have begun my annual Christmas music Advent Calendar here by now. Advent usually begins on the first Sunday after Thanksgiving, but this year it doesn’t start till Sunday.

Still, before we begin thinking of Advent carols, we could get a couple of completely secular songs in. For today, I offer you “‘Tis the Time of Yuletide Glee.” If you click on that link you can scroll down to hear a midi of the entire piece, plus files of all the separate parts.  And here are the words. This means that you can forward it to your friends and have everyone learn different parts. There is plenty of time to polish that up before the Christmas party. Then you can sing a madrigal around the tree.

This will seriously impress passersby. In fact, I think you should do it for your office party. You might get some press out of that, or at least a reputation for having a frightening level of coordination. The competition will be scared.

The song was written by Thomas Morley, a madrigal pop star. It is very lovely when sung right. Our choir is currently singing it pretty badly. I’m reminded of an evening with the Master Chorale when we were butchering a section in the new Rutter piece we did for our autumn concert, when the director kindly told us, “I’ve heard recordings of this piece, and this section is really supposed to be quite pleasant-sounding.”

It was news to us.

Ah, yes, the knitting. I am getting the lace made for Ivy, the body of which I completed about a month ago. I like this lace, and am looking forward to wearing Ivy. However, it seems to me that the collar is much narrower than it should be. If you are able to see the picture of the sweater in the book in the very dark photo at the top of the page, you can see that the collar goes nearly to the shoulder. On mine, as you can see clearly in the second photo, where I brought it into the light, the collar is much smaller. I may remove the binding off row and knit a bit more on the collar before I sew on the lace. Of course, that means that I won’t know exactly how long to make the lace, and it can’t be cut to fit, so I will have to quit working on the lace until I’ve done the collar.

I’m reading The Fattening of America, by Eric Finkelstein, sent to me by the nice people at Amazon Vine. I’ve completed the first section, which argues a) that Americans are fatter than we used to be, and b) that this is the result of economics. That is, the cost (both the monetary and the opportunity cost) of eating and especially of eating unhealthful foods has fallen and that of exercising has risen, so it is much harder to be thin that it used to be. Some of this is not so much news — agricultural subsidies and new food production technologies have made processed foods more readily available than real foods, women aren’t home cooking for their families any more so fast food is a large part of the American food equation, laborsaving devices and the change in our occupations have cut down severely on the amount of physical effort our lives require — but some details were surprising to me.

For example, 1000 calories of potato chips can be had for 80 cents, while 1000 calories of carrots costs $4.00. The actual food used for fast food is so cheap that increasing the portions for the same price costs the company practically nothing, so size of portions is now a primary marketing device. The fitness craze has resulted in an average increase in planned physical movement of just about 3 minutes a day, compared to the days when we washed our clothes by hand and walked to the neighboring department instead of emailing them. Thus, while the average American spends 3 more minutes a day in vigorous play, he hardly spends any time in vigorous work, while eating a few hundred calories more every day. We could say, “Do the math,” but Finkelstein has done it for us.

Finkelstein does look at other explanations of the rise in national avoirdupois (have you heard the one about the chicken virus?), but he concludes that there really isn’t any need to look for further explanation. Those of us who are genetically predisposed to gain weight have been put into an environment where it is much easier, economically speaking, to be fat than to be thin. Those who do not have such a genetic predisposition are the ones who are still thin.

The next section of the book considers the question: so what?

Throughout the book the author has been talking about his Uncle Al, a fat lawyer who I hope is fictional, or at least has agreed to be discussed in this book. Uncle Al, he says, might have been faced with the choice when he was a young man: be careful about what you eat all your life, work less and be less successful at your profession, sleep more, devote more time to exercise rather than to your family and friends, and live to be 75 instead of 70. As far as utility value goes, Finkelstein says, Uncle Al might well have made the choice to die at 70.

As a medical economist, Finkelstein writes with confidence about the medical consequences of overweight. If you are less than 30 pounds over your ideal weight, he says, there aren’t many.If you are 100 pounds over your ideal weight, there are lots. In general, a really obese person can expect to live a few years less than a fit person.

However, Finkelstein is concerned about a couple of other consequences. He points out the high level of discrimination against overweight people, and the high degree of belief that their weight is evidence of weak characters and gluttony. And he also points out that the next generation of children may not be looking at developing Type II diabetes at 65 and living to 70, but at developing type II diabetes at 14 and living to 30. The changes that have led to the fattening of America began in the 1980s, so we haven’t yet seen the effects on people who actually grew up in the new circumstances.

This is an engagingly written book. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

At Book Club yesterday, I asked the ladies for their sage advice on #1 son’s teen angst/ school troubles, and they were very helpful. They were speaking as musicians, which helped.

At bell choir rehearsal, the director told us to “whomp ‘em,” and assured us that he had never heard of a bell cracking while being rung, as opposed to while being flung across the room. We are doing a medley of holiday tunes, and I actually got through the rehearsal without having sat down and circled all my notes first, which was encouraging. I can believe that it might, someday, begin to feel like music.

The pastor caught me in the choir room to ask if I would like to head a ministry team on music, and the early service pianist asked if I’d sing “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” at 8:30 on Sunday. Another member of the choir asked if I’d help her input all the music into a spreadsheet.

Our music for the 16th, which is the day for big music at the church, sounds horrible at the moment, but we have hopes. We have two rehearsals left. If people will practice outside of rehearsal, we’ll be able to do it. The music for this Sunday still sounds pretty sketchy, actually. I’ve brought it home to learn the tenor part, which is rather high for our guys. The alto part is rather high for me, spending a lot of time as it does in the E and F neighborhood, so I’m going to sing with the men — actually, they’re also in the E and F neighborhood, but an octave lower, where I am more at ease. I can’t read the bass clef, so I think I’ll have to write in the notes and then pick it out on the piano. One of the tenors said that he types it into the computer and listens to it being played back, so I will see whether I can find an application that does that. Let me know if you know of one.

I met my business goals for the month as of yesterday, so I’m pretty chuffed about that. I may have said before that I met my goals, but I always have two sets of goals: a minimal one, and then the real one, which I don’t hope for till I’ve met the minimal one. Orders are also increasing at the website for the store where I have my fulltime job, so I guess I’m succeeding with the SEO, though I am not meeting my writing goals for that job. For some reason, I am really having trouble with the second grade unit. I am tempted to skip ahead to the third grade, on the theory that I just have some problems with the current topics, and will be back to my usual self, with ideas springing forth readily, if I have a different topic to deal with.

This may not be true. I may actually be tired. Or the fact that I have eaten nothing this week but scrambled eggs, turkey sandwiches, and apples (my family is doing better than that — I just haven’t been home for meals this week) may be affecting my brain. The sheer randomness of this post may give a hint of what’s going wrong with my writing. It may be that I need to just do the more repetitive and tedious parts of the job today, and leave the exciting creative bits for some time when I have more attention available.

We have a tree in our living room. The boys helped put it up. We have not, however, decorated it, and the autumn decorations are still on the mantel. Tonight’s rehearsal is optional. I may stay in and decorate instead. Maybe that would help with the old brain trouble.

We rehearsed with the orchestra last night. We are behind the orchestra (from the audience’s point of view), so it looked different from the one I heard this weekend, and it sounded different as well, because it is the University Symphony Orchestra. They did a good job, though.

Adding the orchestra changes rehearsals. For one thing, you have to change the rehearsal order so you can do all the bits with brass and then send them home.

It doesn’t seem as though it could be a general principle, but I think that all the rehearsals with orchestra that I’ve ever attended involved doing the brass bits first so the players could leave. I had thought that it was a financial thing — like maybe the brass costs more than the rest of the sections or something — but these were students, and we still did it.

And then there are the communication issues.

Actually, our conductor is good with instruments and with voices. Sometimes you get a conductor who is good with instruments but doesn’t think about the physical requirements of human instruments. I worked with one who clearly thought of us as organ stops, which was an interesting and different experience. He used to have detailed technical conversations with the organist, while last night’s conductor just looked over at the harpsichord at one point and said, “Have you got anything else on that thing? A lute, maybe?”

There were the sotto voce conversations with the concertmaster, who happened to be the prof of the student symphony. Lines like, “Let’s hear tutti from the beginning this time, and then senza” are not heard in choral rehearsals. But that is not the communication issue I have in mind.

No. The big difference in adding the orchestra is finding your place in the music.

In a solo, you can say, “Let’s start at the A flat.” This will not work for things like Messiah, as there are way too many notes. In a choral piece, we often use the words, as in, “Begin at ‘He shall reign.’” This doesn’t actually work that well for Messiah. You may not be familiar with the piece, but you have probably heard of “The Hallelujah Chorus.” Click on that link for a YouTube where you can see the score as you hear the music, and you will notice that there is a whole lot of repetition. You would have to say things like, “Let’s begin at the 14th ‘Hallelujah’ in the bass line.” All the choruses are like that, so we don’t use the words as a reference point for Messiah. We do, however, use the titles of the choruses, as in “He shall purify” rather than “Number 17,” which is what the instruments use. (I don’t know whether number 17 is “He shall purify” or not, by the way.)

We generally use page numbers, and then measure numbers. (If you looked at that YouTube, you saw the music on the screen, and might have noticed that there are vertical lines dividing it up into little pieces. Each piece is a measure, and sometimes there are little numbers at the edges of the page so you don’t have to count from the beginning.) But the instrumentalists have different page numbers, or no page numbers. Sometimes they actually have more pages than we do, and our music has, as the conductor put it, “A big ol’ rest” for a while as they are strutting their stuff.

Indeed, the different instruments may have different page and measure numbers, for all I know.

The solution to this is the system of “rehearsal letters.” There will be, on all the different pieces of music, an “A” at the same point. That way, instead of saying, “measure 135,” you can just say, “10 measures after H” or whatever the case may be.

Then we all count over from the rehearsal letter.

Our conductor is a very courteous man. He could see the singers frowning over “Chorus number 17″ and getting slightly panicky at the counting over. Not me, of course, because I am a calm person unless I am on a freeway, but there was a certain stress level involved. Some of the choruses are so dashed fast that there is a certain stress level involved just in trying to get all the notes in. Here is a YouTube of “He shall purify” which may give you some sense of this.

So, anyway, the conductor was switching back and forth for us. He’d say “I want a warmer vowel at measure 98″ and then “Will you pull both the eighth notes with the bow at 6 measures before C.” At one point, he said, “Let’s go ahead to letter 2.” We all looked at him in consternation. From that point on, he said, “Letter K, as in 2″ whenever we came to that part.

He is really a very nice man.

Today I have computer work, some customer service stuff to deal with, the gym, book club, class, bells, and choir. I have cinnamon rolls started in the bread machine, so my kids might not notice how scratched-together their dinners have been lately.

That’s the plan, at least.

This is two skeins of Knitpicks Wool of the Andes, in Iron Ore, on their way to becoming a sweater for #2 son. A stockinette rectangle, and therefore not interesting.

Sorry.

We had a good rehearsal last night. We’re doing Handel’s Messiah, a wonderful oratorio full of lovely melodies, even for the altos, who are often given a theme consisting of an E with the occasional G to look forward to.

We’ll have 100 singers and 50 instruments, and on stage that will be more than just having beautiful music wash over you. It will vibrate right through us, presumably leaving our pancreases and spleens and whatnot in a state of vibrant wellbeing.

But I am also rather looking forward to having the concerts in the past. I’m in the chorus, which is obviously less work than singing the arias, so it isn’t that big a thing. However, I have felt as though I’ve been going at a breakneck pace lately. I have rehearsals every night this week (have I already mentioned that eleventy-five times?) and then two performances, and there is the big music at church, and I also have four more shows between now and Christmas, plus several for which I still have to finish up paperwork and follow-up calls and all that.

Oh, and Christmas preparations, for which I am responsible at my house. And work. And life, you know.

The important thing is to enjoy it all.

We had a great weekend in The Big City, my daughters and I. First of course we had to get there. I did not have to do any of the driving, so it wasn’t that bad, but it was bad enough that I thought, during the weekend, about avoiding the return trip by a) staying in The Big City and getting a job there, perhaps living in #2 daughter’s sewing room, or b) riding home in the trunk.

I’m reading Terry Pratchett’s Bromeliad Trilogy. The protagonists are “nomes” who have lived under floorboards all their lives and are very freaked out about the size of “The Outside,” and especially with the sky. One character, keeping his eyes shut because he is in a field, says, “There’s nothing higher than us for miles! If I open my eyes, I’ll fall into the sky!” I don’t have trouble with the sky, if it is overhead, but I have a lot of trouble with horizons, and especially with visual edges, which are like horizons but closer. I feel just like that nome did. Oddly enough, I am not bothered at all by horizons with water. I know that a horizon with land is probably a safer place for a human being most of the time than a horizon with water, but the part of my brain that is in charge of the phobia doesn’t believe that. Apparently, water isn’t a flat surface, and land is. Yes, well, we got there and back and I survived.

We moved #2 daughter into her new apartment, which is not in the big city, but in a charming little town right outside the big city. Then, armed with a list of things she needed for her apartment, we went out to do shopping.

Let us admit right off that we didn’t get anything on her list. In addition to the things on her list, you see, we also needed to get breakfast and visit the Franklin Covey store and visit a bassoonist and throw a party.

So, since both breakfast and the Franklin Covey store could be had in the shopping center, that was where we began.

#1 daughter was bothered by the crowds, but I figure it is Thanksgiving weekend in a big city, we’re in a shopping center, there are going to be some people there.

We got our organizer pages and some things for the boys’ stockings that aren’t available where we live, and enjoyed roaming around being tourists, and had breakfast while listening to these musicians. They were playing songs I associate with Fred Astaire and Frank Sinatra. I thought it would have been wonderful if some of the couples around us had gotten up and danced, but none did.

There was a harpist on another floor, too, and a raggedy-sounding children’s choir. It was fun.

We left, talking about the museums we would visit if we had time. We did not.

However, we did visit the bassoonist, who gave us tea and excellent conversation and tickets to the symphony.

We had such a good time at the bassoonist’s place, in fact, that we only just barely made it back to the apartment in time for the party.

The party was fun, too. One of the guests was a fellow who is famous in our family for his role in a really funny YouTube video about trying to trap a bat. He and #1 daughter have been online friends for some time, and had their first physical-world meeting there at a cooking show party.

We teased him mercilessly, but he was a good sport.

The cooking show in question was the candy-making one, so we headed off for the symphony having eaten crackers and cheese and candy for dinner.

Some people don’t see the point of going to watch an orchestra, and would just as soon stay home in comfort and listen to a recording, but I like going to the symphony. The conductor in his tailcoat looking like a somber beetle, the twirl as all the violins come up from their resting positions, the flash of light on the brasses, the darting bows — I like the look of it.

We do not have any tall buildings where I live. When I first came here, I used to take pictures of the snow, just because it was new and foreign and exciting simply for being snow. Now, if I go to a city, I take pictures of tall buildings just because their whole tall building nature is foreign and exciting.

#2 daughter is not embarrassed by this behavior on my part.

We heard Mendelssohn and Brahms and what the bassonist called “a new piece,” and sure enough I can’t remember the name of the composer either, although he spoke to the audience before the performance and I liked him a lot, and liked his piece as well. He did some wonderful things with percussion. The conductor had some oddities. At the time, I kept thinking that it only seemed odd to me because I am not that knowledgeable about conducting, but the others persuaded me that it was in fact the conductor and not me. The bassoonist texted #2 daughter during the performance, a new experience for me. A high-tech, grownup version of the little wave to your friend in the audience, I guess, though he did that, too.

Then next day, we sang in the church where #2 daughter is the music minister, and here it is. It is a nice old building.

It is a nice church, too, and the sermon was quite good. It was Christ the King Sunday, so we sang “The King of Love My Shepherd Is,” as well as “”Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” I had fallen in love with the arrangement of “Come Thou Fount” that we sang in our fall concert, but it couldn’t be readily adapted from SATB with brass, organ, and timpani to a duet for a couple of altos, so we sang it out of the hymnal. Not as lovely, but it was okay. Next came fellowship time, where the people I met kept looking astonished. After a surprisingly long time, it occurred to me that they were surprised that I was white, since #2 daughter is not. To their credit, none of them asked whether she was adopted.

I think that all the other people we met were not astonished because they already knew our family virtually, if not physically, or because they were young enough not to find an ethnically diverse family astonishing.

We packed the cars, drove back into The Big City, had lunch at a very chic salad bar, and headed home.

We had a good time, and it was a good break from the routine. I will be getting back to work today, and I have rehearsals every evening this week and performances this weekend. So I am pretty much hitting the ground running.

I like to have my Christmas preparations (shopping, decorating, etc.) well in hand before Advent, so that I can observe Advent properly, but we still have our house dressed for Thanksgiving. I may take some time today to change that. Maybe not.

In any case, it was good to be in The Big City for the weekend, and it is good to home.

We’re back.

And I have things to write.

But first I have to clean up and rest up and do some paperwork.

So I decided that today’s post could just be a cryptic collection of mysterious photo images.

I have seen this on other xangas from time to time, and it seems effective.

  Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. There was a lot of feasting and a lot of conversation.

 You can see that there was plenty to feast upon.

I did not bake any cucumbers, even though I was dared to. We found that our folding table was missing, so there was a limit to how many dishes we could put out on the table. We tried to leave mental room for the turkey and ham and dressing that my parents were bringing, but we certainly cut it fine.

My parents brought their very cute little dog with them, so we had lots of dog antics to amuse us.

Dogs are not, for me, the equivalent of children, but they can sort of take that place in the conversation.

#1 daughter told us how they would be rebuking their clients at the weight loss clinic where she works.

I think that a single feast day is okay, from the point of view of healthy eating. The problem is when we begin feasting on Thanksgiving day and keep it up till Mardi Gras.

Many of us in Hamburger-a-go-go-land treat every day as a feast day anyway, but that’s another topic altogether.

The holidays can be a serious obstacle to healthy eating, but I feel okay about having one feast day for Thanksgiving, as long as it stops there.

This picture includes the detritus from unpacking the delicious things my parents brought with them

It also shows the French apple pie and the Chocolate Mint Silk Torte and the pecan pie (my glamorous aunt assured us that pecan pie contains more calories than any other holiday treat) and the Jell-O (which Sighkey calls “Spanish Cream,” again demonstrating that they have cooler food names in Kiwi-a-go-go-land).

The key to keeping your lipids profile as you like it is to eat these things on the feast day, but not to get up the next day and have some more.

Leave that for people who don’t yet have lipids profiles. Feed the leftover pie to the children.

Or you can eat these utterly wholesome appetizers. Brush wonton skins with a little oil, push them into the cups of a mini muffin tin, and bake them till they’re crisp.

Then combine chicken, lime, vegetables, spices, herbs, and a bit of poppy seed dressing to make a salad. Chop it all up very finely with your food chopper so that you can scoop tablespoonsful into the little wonton cups.

I did some with a combination of feta cheese, cream cheese, garlic, and spices, too.

You can even fill them with fruit and yogurt for a very benign dessert.

Speaking of dessert, as we were, our glamorous aunt also brought us truffles from Andre’s, an addition to the feast which made our supper of leftovers very lavish indeed.

Son-in-law came by in the evening to take #1 daughter to the movies, but otherwise we were couch potatoes.  We watched Arrested Development and I got some of the lace for Ivy done.

I don’t know whether this is the right or the wrong side of the lace. Maybe after it’s blocked I’ll be able to tell.

Today I will be at the store, after I do the essential computer work, and then the female half of the family is heading up to #2 daughter’s place. We will help her move, hold a Pampered Chef party, visit the Franklin Covey store and whatever other places #2 daughter has in mind for us to see, and then come back on Sunday night so that #1 daughter can be at work at 8:00 a.m. on Monday.

It is Buy Nothing Day today, but I hope that we have shoppers at the store, if only so that The Princess and I can maintain a festive holiday feeling.

We don’t have Black Friday sales at our store, so we usually have a very light shopping day on the day after Thanksgiving. When the rest of our families have the day off, it is easy for us to feel disgruntled about being at the store, if we spend most of the day dusting shelves and doing computer work.

Whether you celebrate Buy Nothing Day or go out in the madding crowds to wrestle other shoppers for the latest must-have electronic item, I hope that you enjoy it. I may not have computer access for the next few days, so don’t worry if you don’t see me here tomorrow.

I don’t know why this turkey appears to be a mammal, but it is not real enough to put you off your feast.

My boys helped with preparations yesterday, and I was able to loll around some, so we are well set for today.

Some things are ready to go in the oven. Here is a nice loaf of cranberry-studded bread which has already been in the oven, and is now sitting, sliced, on the table.

 I got the dough for the rolls going this morning while waiting for the kettle to boil.

That also gave me enough time to shave chocolate over the torte and unmold the Jell-O. Among the nice things about Jell-O which I did not mention yesterday si the suspenseful moment when you unmold the thing.

It adds a touch of excitement to the day, doesn’t it? If it falls apart, you have to chop it up a bit and put it in a bowl and oh well never mind.

Today’s came out nicely. I held its bottom in a pan of hat water for a couple of seconds before turnign out. That’s the secret. Some people wring a kitchen towel out in the hot water and wrap it up a bit, but I never have a spare kitchen towel that I feel I can use in that way.

There will be fruit in the middle of it. 

The Empress is coming over with a new cranberry relish.

For some years, That Man and I have taken turns making the NPR cranberry relish with horseradish, and this year it is his turn. However, he and The Empress have instead made one with apples and walnuts which sounds wonderful, so I am not feeling deprived.

Once I finish my tea, I will get going on the pies and things.

#2 daughter made it here safely last night, after a couple of little glitches. I am not a superstitious person, but I like to think, when something has gone awry, that that was the thing was going to go awry. That is, something always goes wrong. “The best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley,” as Robert Burns put it, and of course we are all now thinking of Eddie Izzard.

Think of Murphy’s Law instead. Something always does go wrong when you have a big undertaking going on. So, once something goes wrong, I figure that there are no more gangings agley ahead of me. I’m through with them. From here on, all will go swimmingly.

I hope that your Thanksgiving goes swimmingly as well.

I was going to talk about Chinese toys, today, or last night’s experience of trying not to distract people from leprosy and demons while going through an entire packet of Kleenex, but I had to get up at 4:30 again this morning, so I have gotten distracted from those topics by Jell-O.

Jell-O is part of the holidays. Real foods rarely color-coordinate as well with your table as Jell-O. So I make some for every feast day, and throw it away the next day.

Here is what the American Chemical Society has to say about Jell-O. Here is its star turn in the Gallery of Regrettable Foods. Here is a science experiment from the Exploratorium, which requires a laser as well as a box of Jell-O, so I will have to pass on it.

Actually, I have already stirred up a box of cranberry Jell-O. I encountered it in my pantry while still mostly asleep, forgot that I had decided to make it into Sangria Jell-O Salad, and mixed it up in the normal way, figuring that by the time I woke up sufficiently to remember what I had intended to put into it, it would be ready. (In case you do not make Jell-O yourself, you should know that the stuff has to cool a bit before it will hold ingredients suspended prettily in its depths.) I have now put water into it, where I was supposed to have put in juices and wine.

I had also thought of making Ambrosia Jell-O Salad, though, and the mold I plan on using is too large for just one package of Jell-O. This is why the scary thought has entered my head: stripes. I can put cranberries and orange peel into the cranberry Jell-O, then add a stripe of Ambrosia Jell-O, and then finish it off with a stripe of Sangria Jell-O. I am making it in a ring, and have fruit to put into the middle. This will be all autumnal-looking, and will startle anyone who actually eats it with its daring combination of flavors. I will agree that striped food seems wrong on the face of it, but Jell-O is an exception.

Startling food may not really be what we want, though.

I have been dared to make baked cucumbers. That may be startling enough.

Today is for getting ready. I try to make as many things ahead as possible, and my children try to keep me from doing so, on the grounds that it will all be more fresh if I do it all tomorrow morning. I think it is okay to get the breads ready on Wednesday and bake them on Thursday. I think you can bake pies the night before,  leaving cake and vegetables for Thursday. My kids think that everything should come out of the oven just moments before we eat it.

Jell-O is once again an exception.

Here is the big tip for Thanksgiving, though. Set your table today, including serving dishes, and put a little note in each one saying what it is for. If you do this, you will not be looking for the gravy boat as your guests get ready to sit down, nor will you have a panful of hot succotash  and no dish to put it in.

I am hoping that I will be able to persuade my family to help me a little with preparations today and tomorrow. #2 daughter will arrive this evening, and she has already said that she will do the potatoes. She admitted last year that she always chose that as her job because it took a long time, and she could get out of all kinds of other work by doing that one thing. The result, though, is that her mashed potatoes are very good.

However, it is the case that there are many things I think should be done which no one else in the family cares about. I think the dogs should be bathed, and the coat closet tidied, and the gardens cleaned up, in addition to the cooking and normal cleaning. I put a list of all the tasks on the refrigerator, and chivvy anyone who appears to be resting into choosing one of them. From their point of view, I am going into holiday preparation frenzy, and spoiling their enjoyment of their day off. From my point of view, there is a lot to be done, and if everyone would pitch in and help, I could enjoy my day off, too. I think that they sort of feel that I should not plan more preparations than I personally am willing to do.

I will try to respect that point of view, without actually bathing the dogs myself. If you are coming to my house, you may have to encounter smelly dogs.

And startling Jell-O.

I’m not feeling very well today. Whether it is continued allergies or incipient virus I cannot tell, so I stayed home from rehearsal last night and went to bed early. Since I can’t swallow or breathe normally, I didn’t sleep well, and I had to be up at 4:30 a.m., so that all by itself could explain why I’m not feeling my best. The allergy medicine arrived in the mail yesterday, so I’ve now had two doses of it. If it’s allergies, I’ll be fine by Thanksgiving.

Yesterday I took Fiona, our big dog, for a walk. It is possible that this improves the exercise value of the walk, because of all the upper-body strength involved in avoiding being simply dragged through the streets by the dog. However, it gets in the way of the thinking part of walking. We scuffled through great falls of leaves, and sometimes a wind would come up and we would be surrounded by flights of leaves, and it was quite lovely.

I finished the Native Americans subunit for the 2nd grade book, and will be moving on to the rocks and minerals one, but probably not till next week. Today I will be up at the store, tomorrow will be a bit on the computer and then lots of preparation, then comes Thanksgiving, and then I will be back up at the store on Friday and leaving from there for #2 daughter’s place for the weekend.

I’m still thinking about vegetables in a desultory way. Janalisa sent me a recipe for baked cucumbers. I’ve never even thought of baking a cucumber, so I can’t say how it would taste, but I think it would be pretty. She also sent me a recipe for stuffed mushrooms made with tortilla chips and taco seasoning. I think she might have been joking with these recipes, but I am not sure. Here is her recipe for baked cucumbers:

Baked Cucumbers

4 cucumbers, peeled and quartered, lengthwise
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon crushed dill seed
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1 teaspoon salt

Place a layer of cucumbers in the bottom of an 8″ x 8″ x 2″ baking dish; dot with half of the butter. Mix together the dill, pepper and salt; sprinkle half over the layer of cucumbers. Add a second layer of cucumbers, dot with butter, and sprinkle with remaining seasonings. Bake uncovered at 400º F for 1 hour or until done. Stir cucumbers lightly once, pushing the top layers to the bottom and lifting the bottom
cucumbers to the top. Recipe best when served hot.

It sounds easy. Julia Child has a similar one, but with more herbs, and I do have a lot of herbs in the garden. Julia says to use “48 inches” of cucumber, which adds a bit of whimsy to the recipe. There is an old recipe book referenced online which says that this dish finds favor with gentlemen, so I am really thinking about it.

Janalisa reminded me of the classic green bean casserole with canned soup and fried onion topping. I have never tasted that, and don’t want to. It could be that my guests all love it, though, and wonder why we don’t have it at my house on Thanksgiving.

Janalisa also reminded me that if I preheat the stoneware baking dish, it will keep my plain steamed green beans hot for a long time, which is a huge plus. I had forgotten that.  

My plan right now is to make some 7-grain cereal, get the essential computer work done, and go back to bed till time to leave for the store.