Alizarine

Monster Cookies

These are perfect for those times when you want a chocolate chip cookie, a peanut butter cookie, and an oatmeal cookie all at once, with a healthy dose of M&Ms thrown in, because who could possibly object to M&Ms?

Well, Jeff kind of objected, saying something like "they got lost" in these cookies. I disagree. If you look at the cookies pictured above, what do you notice? I see two things:

1. golden brown cookie goodness

2. the colorful, lighthearted whimsy of M&Ms sprinkled throughout.

They need to be there if only to visually warn the eater that this is no ordinary oatmeal/chocolate chip cookie. More stuff is going on, all of it awesome, and what the heck, I can find and tell the difference between an M&M and a chocolate chip, can't you?

This recipe is from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, a.k.a. the first Baked book. It's by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, and I got it for Christmas, a year after I received its sequel as a gift. The sequel is a blockbuster, and several of its recipes have become true favorites and have received accolades such as "this is the best thing you make." So I was eager to tackle more recipes by these guys, but the ones in B:NFIB didn't scream MAKE ME NOW OMG. I'd eat any of them in a heartbeat, sure, but they're labor-intensive, and the amounts of butter required for most is daunting. Baked recipes are nice to think about, but putting three or four sticks of butter into cake that two people will eat in a few days is downright irresponsible.

But this recipe is a little different. Let's do some math.

It calls for a stick and a half of butter and makes 36 cookies. I followed the directions exactly and managed to squeeze 46 regulation-sized balls of cookie dough out of the recipe. I baked 6 and froze the rest. SO. Each cookie contains .26 tablespoons of butter per cookie. So if you cut a tablespoon of butter into 4 tiny cubes, one of those is in each cookie. Manageable!

Sure, the recipe asks for two cups of peanut butter, and chocolate probably contains dairy products, too, but I feel less guilty about those. The psychological damage and heartache I experience when I put two or more sticks of butter in anything is much, much worse.

But let's talk about how they taste.

OH THEY TASTE GREAT

You've got to freeze the vast majority of them. Having a copious stash at the ready is so comforting. They're kind of big, and I can only fit six on a sheet. Unless you've got a bake sale coming up or a bunch of kids eating you out of house and home, there's no way you would need this many cookies all at once. It's also a great way to pace yourself.

Note: the frozen dough is delicious, except for the hard, cold chocolate chips, which might as well be pink pencil erasers (totally correct eraser comparison by Julie Klausner on her podcast today--she was referring to c.chips in frozen yogurt). So eating the dough right out of the freezer is a waste of time and resources.

I made the monster cookies in my stand mixer--hope you like scraping sides down!--right up until the M&Ms went in. They're super easy, but do follow the instructions exactly.

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 5 3/4 cups old-fashioned rolled oats <--tons!!
• 1 1/2 sticks cold butter, cut into cubes <--the "cold" here seemed odd to me, but I do what I'm told
• 1 1/2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 5 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1/4 teaspoon light corn syrup <-- The recipe said, "don't leave out the corn syrup--it's integral for the cookie," and I laffed and laffed in disbelief but put it in anyway.
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups creamy peanut butter
• 1 cup chocolate chips <--semi-sweet
• 1 cup M&Ms

DIRECTIONS

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda and salt together. Add oats and stir until combined.

Place cubes of butter into the bowl of a stand mixer and beat until pale and smooth. This takes some time and periodic side-scraping. Add the sugars and mix on low speed until incorporated. Avoid overmixing. They don't say why.

Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl and add eggs, one at a time, beating each for about 20 seconds and scraping down the bowl after each. Mix in corn syrup and vanilla extract.

Scrape the bowl again and add peanut butter. Mix until smooth and add oat mixture in 3 intervals. Mix on low speed until incorporated.

Remove bowl from the stand mixer and lightly stir in the chocolate chips and M&M's with a rubber spatula. Cover the bowl tightly and refrigerate dough for 5 hours.

Five hours of hellish waiting!

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 375 degrees and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Eh, just do 1 sheet. Scoop out dough using a large ice cream scoop (about 2 tablespoon-size balls), placing them about 2 inches apart. 

I did this using a measuring spoon--2 T per cookie. The tablespoons were non-heaping but it was too messy to be super accurate here. I rolled them into balls and froze most.

Bake for 12-15 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through the baking time. My single pan of possibly-smaller-than-normal(?) cookies took 10-11 minutes. They'll take11 minutes if the dough is frozen--I squashed them gently before popping them into the oven.

The cookies are done when they begin to brown. Cool the cookies on the cookie sheets for about 10 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack to cool completely. Or eat immediately.

The cookies can be stored in an airtight container, at room temperature, for 3 days. They get softer (but are still chewy) after about a day.

 

La Harpe Elementary School

This is where I went to elementary school and junior high between 1974-1983. My classmates and I were bused to a middle-ish school in a neighboring town during fourth and fifth grade, but I spent the bulk of my childhood here at La Harpe Elementary. My parents and siblings went to school here, too, as did most of my aunts, uncles, and cousins, and possibly even grandparents. My dad taught P.E., coached, and and was principal here for decades.

And it's going to be demolished soon.

My cousin Tyler took the photo above, and as I write this he is attempting to receive permission to show his photos of its now-damaged interior. [Edit: he got permission! I'll share more of his work as the photos arrive; two are below.] The idea that this building will not be around anymore triggered a wave of nostaglia that woke me up this morning. As I mentally walked from classroom to classroom, dozens of memories and "firsts" piled up, and I think I'm going to drive myself crazy unless I write some of them down in a series of disjointed paragraphs. I apologize if you've read any of these anecdotes before. I just wanted to see them all in one place.

Kindergarten

We had to fill out worksheets according to instructions played on a tape recorder. These were called "Listening Lessons." One of the items was a pig that we were told to color pink. Knowing that pigs were more of a peach color, I colored it peach and was deducted points. I have been a realist since the day I was born, damn it!

Across the hall was a girls' bathroom with four or five stalls. A rumor circulated among the girls: if the seat was up, that meant a boy had used it, and we should avoid it because, yuck, boys. Much later I realized that the seat was up because it had been recently cleaned by the janitors.

(I'm in the back row, far right, next to teacher aide Mrs. Yetter, blinded by the sun)

The class made a cookbook where each of us described how to make our favorite meal and were quoted verbatim in a dittoed booklet. My recipe was for spaghetti with meat sauce. I remember being interviewed for this like it was yesterday.

Kelly: Brown the hamburger...

Mrs. Y.: How much?

Kelly: The whole thing.

And so on.

First grade

I learned how to read! Our teacher Mrs. Strand must have taught us by osmosis, as I don't remember much about the process, but I do know that a whole lot of flashcards were involved. A small group of us were seated around her, and the intimidatingly big word "something" came up. None of the other kids knew what it was...but I did, and I thought to myself, I really know how to read now.

I was shy and always waited for other kids to ask me to play, except kids don't do that. They just start playing and do not issue engraved invitations. Lonely and frustrated one day, I sat on the bleachers and cried. A sweet girl named Sara (front row, green dress) sat beside me and said she would be my friend.

Teenagers fascinated many of us, and we were able to observe the high school kids during lunch in the cafeteria. We idolized the ones we recognized from swing choir, who were every bit as good as the people on the radio and were basically superstars already, and the cheerleaders when they wore their purple and gold uniforms to school. We went bananas for Judy Bradley, this blonde, sunny creature with feathered hair and a great big smile.

Second grade

I read a story called "Great Day In Ghana" and came to understand that the world was larger than I could ever imagine, and people lived in places that were vastly different from all-white, small town Illinois.

One time Mrs. Eckhardt used my name in a sentence during a spelling test. "Blue. Kelly is wearing a blue turtleneck." It has stayed with me forever and will most likely be my dying thought.

Jimmy Blue (back row, orange shirt) wrote a poem about spring that was better than mine. Then he moved away, tragically, and I decided to focus on writing poems.

Reva (front row, aqua shirt) and I decided that if we had to get married someday, we would marry each other, because yuck, boys.

Third grade

We were the favorite class of teachers. One time I overheard an exhausted-sounding Mrs. Eckhardt talking to our third grade teachers about us. "Enjoy them!" she concluded.

Mrs. Wernecke forced us to listen to tape recordings of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson every day after lunch. During this time I drew microscopic comics on folded-over, 2"x1" pieces of paper for the amusement of Sara and Michele (back row, red dress, standing by me).

Mrs. Wernecke was a tough customer who also forced us to say, "May I go to the lavatory?" None of us had ever heard of a lavatory before, and many simply called it "the laboratory."

My poetry had improved to the point that Mrs. Wernecke created handmade blank books for me. I wrote my poems inside and illustrated them, and that was terrific. But then she wanted me to read them aloud to my class and the other third grade section, and any hope I may have had of being popular flew right out the window (second floor, west side).

During an open house my art teacher, the mysterious and very old Mr. Soule, told my parents that "this one is special."

By the time my class entered fourth grade, our teacher Mrs. Smith (at our building in Terre Haute, which is pronounced, appallingly, as "terry hut") was amazed at the amount of math catch-up she had to do with us. And that was kind of understandable, what with all the nonstop poetry going on in the lower grades.

Two years later we returned to the elementary building in La Harpe for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade.

Sixth grade

Study hall, late September, Mr. Doyle's room (social studies): I was reading/devouring a Judy Blume book and paused to look out the open third floor windows. Golden afternoon light bathed the trees across the way, and out on Main Street a car drove by, blasting Late in the Evening by Paul Simon. And I felt so content, sitting there, reading my book, loving that song and feeling somehow older.

 

Dad was my P.E. teacher and coach, and he spent a lot of extra time at school after hours. Sometimes I sat at his office desk drawing cartoons, or my brother and I goofed around in the gym. I distinctly remember trying to figure out how to serve a volleyball on the day after John Lennon died, sadly thinking about his then-current song (Just Like) Starting Over.

 

It was a bad year for assassinations, and later that spring attempts were made on the lives of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul. We watched TV coverage of both in our school's big study hall, and to help us cope with the violence we were instructed to write a poem (of course) called Assassination. We had to take the letters of assassination and make each one begin a new line. This was an excercise in futility because (1) the word contains a ridiculous number of repeated letters, and (2) the word contains a ridiculous number of repeated ass-es.

Seventh grade

Dad is basically synonymous with La Harpe Elementary. The number of times he carried televisions up and down those stairs and the number of times he put Vom-Sorb on messes when janitors could not be found would boggle the mind. To be in the school with Dad as he closed the place down at night after a late ball game was always discombobulating. The cavernous black hallways creaked with scary "building settling" noises that I relive in nightmares to this day. And yet I always felt fortunate to be there at night, like I was seeing a secret side to the school that most kids never saw.

Mrs. Logan, our reading teacher for sixth and seventh grade, seemed like--heck, was and is--a perfect human being. She was kind, thoughtful, interesting, and generous. Her easy smile lit up the room, and she selected books for us that were exactly the right books. Mrs. Jones was like a dear aunt who taught us grammar via a series of handwritten dittos that I adored. She encouraged me as a writer and praised my "dry" sense of humor. She died nearly twenty years ago, and I still think about her all the time. Her room is on the left side of the hallway (photo by Tyler).

Eighth grade

I won the school spelling bee in the study hall, memorized the countries in the Middle East, was intimidated by algebra, touched a computer for the first time (a Radio Shack TRS-80)...

...read dozens of books from our library (including an account of the Salem witch trials that freaked me out for days), and was misinformed about the pronunciation of the word "duodenum" (it's this not doo-oh-DEN-um). My science teacher said it a lot, along with "uhhh." I used to keep a running tally and doodled spectacularly to stay alert. I experienced my first migraine headache and accompanying wave of nausea while taking an English test--luckily no Vom-Sorb was involved.

Our particular arrangement of teachers and sports-related activities created a pressure-cooker. I was obsessed with learning new things, even the dull stuff, and did at least two hours of homework each night. With a handful of exceptions, my relationships with my peers had become a bit shallow or competitive. Most students were friendly in a "hey how's it going" kind of way. But during my years at the top floor of this building, I could feel myself separating from the rest of the group, who most likely didn't care about the pronunciation of "duodenum" and probably weren't even listening in the first place. My differences didn't matter as much to me as they used to, and the twenty-one girls and seven boys who were born in 1969 along with me started to seem more like a group of random kids rather than the most important people in the world. I still longed for the kinds of friends I would eventually find later in life, but in the meantime I wasn't going to sit on the bleachers and cry about it. My thirst for knowledge was that voracious and overriding, and this evolution began at La Harpe Elementary.

---

To augment his teacher's salary, Dad spent many of his summers painting the walls, ceilings, and sometimes floors of our school, and he let me help him. He did the roller work, and I took care of the edges. We listened to the radio and worked happily in the old, hot building. Not content to simply paint a room beige, Dad figured out how to create snappy racing stripes in a variety of bright colors and patterns, making each room unique. Our work is buried under thirty years' worth of additional paint [Edit: no it is not! We painted those stripes up there!], but that summer job made me feel intimately connected with my school, and I'm sure Dad feels the same way.

La Harpe Elementary is a structure much like hundreds of other Illinois schools built during that period in a style that did not set the architectural world on fire. Vandalism and decay have set in after its doors closed for good three years ago. But like thousands of other former students who spent their sometimes-happy, sometimes-sad formative years there, I can't help but shed a tear knowing that part of my childhood will soon vanish.

Juvies!

Jeff and I enjoy walking around our little town at sunset, when temperatures are slightly less insane and my sworn enemy, the sun, won't burn me. Doused in bug spray (me) or nothing because he is impervious to insects bites (Jeff), we walk down one of several routes.

1. The terrifying subdivision walk. The northeast side of town boasts many newly-built neighborhoods with small, identical houses that are way too close together, with some stick-like trees anchored with bits of string, and lots of I-74 noise. Advantages of this walk include a nearby Dairy Queen and the remote possibility of seeing the big, fat corgis at play on Balsam Drive.

2. The awful teenagers walk. If the day has been brutally hot and we're only walking out of a sense of obligation, we'll grab something to drink at the store and head southwest where it's shadier. This walk includes a park with playground equipment (odd word combo, I've always thought, because equipment?) and several ranch house-lined back streets. One of those houses contains awful teenage boys who heckled me once, disparaging my dress and calling me a slut/bitch/etc from behind a darkened window. I flipped the window off and just kept walking with my oblivious husband, who became angry once I told him what was going on a few blocks later. We avoid that street now.

3. The "Worms" walk. If we're feeling ambitious, we head up to the elementary school on the southeast end of town. A house along the way sells worms, and if he sees us, the man who lives there can be counted on to point out that Jeff and I are indeed still holding hands. A nearby Victorian house, landscaped within an inch of its life with hostas, lilies, and many other well-tended plants, is a highlight of the walk, and a few years ago I noticed that its fence had a sign that read "Certified Wildlife Habitat." But our yard is five times the wildlife habitat this is, I thought, and I eventually jumped through the hoops necessary to get our own sign, see above.

So obviously area animals have been reading that sign and have taken it as their invitation to settle in. Over the years we've seen woodchucks, foxes, squirrels, chipmunks, frogs, toads, turtles, butterflies, coyotes, birds of all kinds including vultures, and so on, and their juvies, too. (I just like saying juvies.)

And most recently...a fawn!

A couple of weeks ago, Jeff and I enjoyed a leisurely lunch on our back deck. About ready to go back inside, we stood and gave each other a kiss, and that's when I noticed the fawn sitting underneath one of our trees. He (let's call it a he) had stretched his long neck up from the ground cover and was looking right at us. "Oh my god Jeff, a fawn!" I whispered excitedly. Jeff went in to get his camera while I slowly sat down, eyes locked on the fawn. He was so beautful. The fawn's back was dotted with white spots, and he slowly rose to his feet like a wobbly, newborn colt. Jeff came out and took this photo as the fawn began to walk away.

We were amazed that the fawn was right in front of us during our entire lunch, silent and perfectly camouflaged, and we hoped that our juvie deer friend would find his mother. Jeff returned to his (home) office, and I got back to work on my painting.

An hour later, the fawn was back in the same spot. Yay, supercute fawn! Concerned that his mother had abandoned him or something, we googled "baby fawn all alone" or words to that effect. We were relieved to learn that this was perfectly normal. Apparently the mother deer had hidden the fawn in our backyard--this is something they do to keep predators at bay. Fawns have no scent and are content to stay in their hiding places. The doe drops by for a feeding a couple of times during the day. Our darling fawn waited patiently for hours and hours, getting up to stretch a couple of times and grooming himself like a cat. The fawn was still there ten hours later when we went to bed that night--no sign of the mother, but we hadn't been watching nonstop. The sun rises before 5:30 this time of year, so I woke up early thinking, "Good morning, young prince!" and raced to the window, but the fawn was gone. We figured that mama had found a better hiding place for him overnight.

A couple of days ago our neighbor Betty reported that she had seen the fawn playing with its twin (!!) in her yard, and she had also seen the mother.

I love living on the edge of town!

In other juvie animal news, last Sunday I noticed a baby crow trapped in our koi pond. It was sitting on a lily pad, still alive but not moving much. I think it must have flown into our window and was temporarily knocked out. Jeff put on a glove, went outside, and placed the little crow on our deck. It didn't fly away and seemed to be in shock. We soaked some bread in water, and Jeff attempted to feed it to the crow using chopsticks, but it wouldn't eat and fluttered a few feet away. Jeff placed several bits of the bread on a nearby rock. It sat there for a while before pecking at the bread, and eventually it flew back to our window, landing safely on the ledge this time. Bun was unnerved and batted at it in frustration. The above photo shows her between bouts of rage, and here she is while raging.

Concerned that the bird would fall back into the pond, Jeff went out to rescue it again, but the juvie crow took off and flew to a tree on the other side of our yard as we cheered. I think it'll be okay.

And finally, it's only about three feet tall, but our juvie rose-of-sharon is blooming! We bought the plant because Rose-of-Sharon is an oddly-named character in The Grapes of Wrath, a favorite book I mentioned in my Match.com profile way back when. Jeff took note of that item before we met, and he even went to a book discussion of The Grapes of Wrath at a local bookstore hoping that I might be there (I wasn't). As you can see from the video below, TGOW was the Fifty Shades of Grey of its time. <-- SARCASM OMG.

 

Anyway, the blue color is unusual for this area, I think, and I hope it will continue to thrive in our pretty garden.

Our Summertime Project

As you may remember from this post, Jeff and I are attempting to improve our ex-deck area on the east side of the house. We have a table and fire pit near our koi pond, which is close to the house, and beyond that we're doing a rock garden / bird bath / cauldron-fulla-plants thing. It's coming together slowly because this is our process: after we figure out one component, we spend days deciding what to do next. If that involves buying something, we tend to wait until the weekend to do so. Here's what we've accomplished so far.

We now have black mulch, a mixture of pea gravel and river rock creating a mini dry riverbed, and extra plants (including hollyhocks and some grasses we still need to plant). A very Bunlike toad moved in under the big rock almost immediately, and birds now know that we have a bathing facility for them. The other day I watched a father robin show his juvie sidekick how to do it. Here's a blurry picture of the juvie wandering around the tub.

The big rock (holey limestone, 230 pounds!) has all kinds of tiny caves just begging to be filled with succulents, and yesterday I planted some stonecrop plants. Jeff thinks they look like fish skeletons.

Also in the above photo: two "hen and chicks" succulents that Jeff planted in the pea gravel.

And this is another view of the bird bath. When I was single and renting apartments, I always envied people who could buy plants, especially hollyhocks for some reason. Now I finally have some. Fancy ones, too!

Here's the other one! I went hollyhock crazy. Planting these was not easy because this area is going through a dry spell. The other day I overheard this conversation between two elderly women.

    Elderly woman 1: Awful dry! Could use some rain.

    Elderly woman 2: Beans 're sufferin'.

So the ground is rock hard, and if you want to dig any kind of hole, you really have to put your back into it, which will make you think about this song as you dig and dig and worry about those sufferin' beans.

 

We had fun filling this cauldron, which is indeed a cauldron used by Jeff's late wife Nicole back when she was a witch (no comment). We splurged on a corn-like plant called "striped giant reed" that we saw and fell in love with at the University of Illinois' Idea Garden a few days ago. Also in there is some Russian sage, gorgeous blue flowers whose name escapes me (anybody know?), moss roses, and dianthus, those white and magenta flowers that look like little parasols. Jeff decided that the middle of the cauldron needed something, so he popped in a little terracotta figure that had been languishing by the koi pond. I'm assuming that's a Nicole artifact as well. I love the way it looks in there!

It was so hot outside that we planted everything just before darkness fell last night, and that brought this R.E.M. chestnut to mind.

 

Some pretty heavy-duty weeding revealed a grapevine growing in our lilies! Jeff's mom gave us a sort of trellis last month on the off-chance that we could use it, so we installed that and wrapped the little vine through it, and that is how the mighty Carroll Winery was born.

Next to the vineyard: a couple of buckets we bought at a horse fair in Jeff's tiny home town. What to do with them? Should I paint them? I can do a pretty darned convincing distressed copper when I want to. We're still trying to decide what to plant in those, but obviously the real story here is the bowling ball. Not content to add just any old gazing ball to our garden, last week we hit Goodwill to see if they had any bowling balls available, and they most certainly did! We scored a turquoise one and a rusty one for a fraction of the price of store-boughten gazing balls, as people around here might call them.

I can't tell you how satisfying these bowling balls are to me. Do not tell anyone about this, please. People in our town tend to latch onto a decorating idea, and it spreads like wildfire until suddenly everyone has a giant metal star somewhere on their houses, for example. (What is up with those giant metal house stars? A rebel house on the east end of town is currently sporting a decorative flying eagle where a star would normally go, so I'm predicting that this will be the next big thing.)

I also put in a wee herb garden using rocks and containers we had around the house, including an old roasting pan that Jeff's mom didn't want anymore.

We're going to plant these beauties somewhere in the shade near our rock garden. I can't get over their pinks and greens.

The lily pads in our koi pond are out of control.

A judgemental, lip-smackin' Bun observes our gardening foolishness.

And behold Jeff's gardening outfit! His parents gave him those Homer Simpson comfy pants as an earnest Christmas present a few years ago. Unable to abide them, he gave them to me, but something about the tapered legs and truly insane print made me feel more than a little bit clownish. This spring when Jeff started wearing holes in his ancient, beloved, and subdued comfy pants, I gave the Homer pants back to him, and suddenly he didn't mind them as much and is in fact wearing them all the time now.

But it hasn't been all hollyhocks, witches' cauldrons, and bowling balls around here. We (mostly I) have paid dearly for our gardening adventures. Exhibit A: my perfect, irreplaceable sunglasses, the only sunglasses I have ever loved, broke in half earlier today and are currently lying in state on a doodle I made of an alien.

Exhibit B: I have been poisoned! By ivy! Oh, dear reader, this has been one awful week of exquisite, itchy torture for yours truly. What you see above is me kind of on the mend. My right wrist (gateway to my precious right hand!) seems to be where first contact was made, and other hateful spots appeared on my pasty white midsection and neck.

I have never dealt with poison ivy before, so I had no idea what it even was until it was way too late to do much about it. "Bite the bullet and ride it out, or else go to the doctor and get expensive shots and steriods," said the Internet (I'm paraphrasing). I decided to ride it out. A poison ivy-prone friend recommended a pricey scrub called Zanfel. Desperate, I tried it, and it provided some relief, but I think it would have worked better had I used it the nanosecond that I knew I had poison ivy. Otherwise I spent Saturday through Tuesday slathering myself with this anti-itch gel from Band-Aid. Apparently the gel isn't available anymore, but Jeff found a basically new tube of it in our medicine cabinet, once again a Nicole purchase from way back. Thank you, Nicole! It expired five years ago, but I used it anyway. This (and night-time doses of Benadryl) kept me from scratching myself raw last week. I'm still kind of itchy, but I'm pretty sure the worst is over, and I have learned a thing or two.

The internet is loaded with general poison ivy advice, but here are my tips for women with poison ivy that I haven't read anywhere else:

• Wear loose cotton dresses at all times, the hippie-er the better. Do not reveal the hideousness of your midsection (if you are me) to your husband because believe me, nobody needs to see this stuff, and it's nice to maintain an air of feminine mystery.
• Do not wear underwear, especially if it rubs against itchy places. Other than this, please know that absolutely nothing about poison ivy is sexy and the human touch will lose 100 percent of its appeal for at least a week.
• To ensure that your companion continues to love you, or to at least feel borderline attractive to yourself, do what you can to look cute otherwise. Example: this week I spent a little extra time on my eye makeup, so that when I looked at Jeff my eyes seemed extra sad and puppy dog-ish, and this may have been the reason why he thought nothing of running up to the store and buying me Benadryl and snacks. Also wear fun earrings.
• Here's how you'll know when the poison ivy is on its way out: it will begin to look like the surface of a lukewarm Papa John's cheese pizza. I swear, I put my wrist next to a P.J.'s cheese pizza on Thursday and the two were identical.

I can't end this with poison ivy advice. Here are our gorgeous girls:

Bun, and...

...Baby Pache.

Popular Searches 2

How many people out there have blogs? One, two, three...okay, ten. Well, let me ask you this: do your search stats scare you? Because every week I receive an email from Ligit, the company responsible for my search box on the right, and it tells me how people find my blog and what they look for once they're here. Most of the time I can't bring myself to read it because, let's face it, weirdos live on the Internet. While I enjoy writing and having a blog, the idea that weirdos (and non-weirdos) are finding it and searching it...man, I'd kind of rather not know about that.

One Ligit feature I'm not nuts about is the word cloud, or whatever you call it, that evolves when people do a search. Whenever you type in something like ice cream or murderer, those words pop up in the cloud. Other readers come along later and look at the cloud, see something juicy like murderer, and they click on it. Everytime they click it, it gets bigger. Every once in a while, I'll check that sidebar and be somewhat alarmed to find

MURDERER

a few inches below my photo.

(No one has searched for murderer. Yet.)

So in an attempt to help out people who are searching for information related to this blog, I'm presenting my second list of popular searches, along with explanations and/or advice. I did the first one, which you can read to find out about tampons, cookies, and my personal favorite, infertility, about a year ago.

Ugh, maybe this will have to become an annual thing...?

1. How Jeff and I met.

I've covered this several times already, but in case you're new to the blog and don't want to sift through the old stuff, we met on Match.com about four and a half years ago, fell in love quickly, and were married about six months later. Online dating: it works!

2. Sugar cookies.

The recipe you're looking for is here. I make them for Christmas, various birthdays, Bun's vets, and a couple of little girls. They are daughters of friends and have come to expect them when we stop by. They're a lot of work, make no mistake, but sometimes I'm in the mood for a project like this. Yeah, it's not a recipe. It's a project.

3. Poof/Emily.

Lots of my readers are fans of my sister Emily, whom I've called Poof for over 20 years. She has an incredibly popular YouTube channel where she reviews makeup and demonstrates how to use it. Whenever she mentions me, I get a spike in readers. Yay for the Poof Bump! I write about her all the time, and I hope her viewers find what they're looking for when they search for her here.

4. Louis C.K.

Over the past 24 hours, somebody has been searching multiple times for comedian Louis C.K. here, typing his name as many ways as he or she can, and coming up empty-handed. I'm sure I have mentioned him on at least a few occasions, but Ligit can't seem to find anything. Strange. Well, person who is looking for Louis C.K., I would just like to say that I think Louie is the funniest comedian in the business, and I am in awe of him. I love his show on FX and am on his mailing list. I gleefully purchase everything he puts out there. One day after I had a breast cancer biopsy, I watched his comedy specials, and he turned my existential terror appointment* frown upside-down. Maybe that's why I'm such a big fan.

* "Existential terror appointment" is an expression coined by my pal Melinda. She, like Louie, has red hair and is one of the funniest people walking the planet.

5. Weight diet.

Do you want to know my weight? Sorry, that ain't nobody's business but my own. The dress I'm wearing today is a size M, which suggests that I am a medium-sized woman, in case that helps.

6. Buttermilk.

Sure! I like buttermilk and get excited when it's an ingredient in a recipe. I don't really understand buttermilk, so it makes that recipe seem experimental. Everything I've put buttermilk in has turned out great, for what it's worth.

7. Altessa.

I have no idea what this is and have never written about it. Here is a picture I found while searching for Altessa on Google. It is a neighborhood in Las Vegas with tiny trees. 'Sup, Altessa?

8. Alissa Joie.

I'm clueless regarding this search as well, but here is a kinda-close image search result. Are you searching for Angelina Jolie, reader? If so, your spelling is atrocious. Angelina Jolie is a glamorous movie star with many children. I hope this helps.

9. True Blood.

Sorry, but I don't watch this show. I have no reason for this, other than the fact that I don't have HBO, am not into 21st Century vampires, and watch too many other shows already.

10. Various misspelled food items.

Hungry people who can't spell, please click on your misspelled item of choice below. It will take you to the recipe/item I think you want.

Mokey bread, chicken tetrazinne, siracha, lil smokird, fritatta.

(I've never made a frittata. I don't like the texture around the edges.)

And finally, here's the reason I decided to do another Popular Searches entry.

11. Pregnant.

As with Infertile, my readers clicked on this so many times that it became uncomfortably huge, forcing me to add it to the list of searches I don't want visible in the word cloud. I'm not pregnant, and I don't like the thought of people seeing that giant word next to my face and jumping to conclusions. It also reminds me of something I can't be and have been sad about in the past. I think I did a good job of explaining this here and here and would like to posit the idea that maybe a woman can be valued for things beyond those that come out of her uterus. I kind of like the things that come out of my hand.

Oh wait, there's one more.

12. Ugly ginger boy with blonde highlights.

My painting of little Owen turned up on someone's general Internet image search for the above. It was a number of pages down. I'm guessing that in the blog I wrote about the painting, I used the words highlights, blonde, boy, and possibly ginger somewhere, and that was good enough for Google. I will have you know that Owen is one of the most adorable little boys in the world. I met him a couple of months ago at my opening in Jacksonville. A cousin of Mabel, he's a little bigger now but still in that darling tot phase, and he tackled me with a giant hug. His hair is mesmerizingly red now. He's the kind of beautiful child people openly gape at and way cuter than the mean weirdo searching the Internet for ugly ginger boys.