There's a legendary story that gets retold on occasion at my family's gatherings, about my great-grandmother and g-grandfather. My great-grandmother was an amazing woman. She was still cooking and hosting and playing piano and writing music and painting well into the 1990's. There was a show of her art and a write-up in a Nashville newspaper about it when she was 90-something (?) years old. One of my treasured possessions is a little print of one of her paintings, in an original handpainted frame she made herself--all the great-grandkids (and there are lots of us) got a different print for Christmas one year. I have a book of her original hymns. There was, however, one thing this amazing woman apparently couldn't do.

As the story goes, one morning my great-grandmother decided to get up early and cook a special breakfast instead of just a normal breakfast. Eggs, bacon, biscuits--the whole Southern breakfast deal. Instead of the usual canned biscuits, because this was a special thing, she made biscuits from scratch: mixed them up, rolled them out, used a biscuit cutter. My great-grandfather ate his breakfast and his special homemade biscuits without comment, until the end of the meal, when my frustrated great-grandmother prompted him with the question, 'what did you think about the biscuits?' to which the reply came, 'I b'lieve I like t'other brand better.'

Biscuit FAIL. But apparently she did successfully resist clobbering him with her skillet. She was, as I've said, an amazing woman.

But truthfully, who has ever made homemade biscuits that are as yummy and fluffy as the canned ones? No one can replicate with regular old butter and flour and baking powder what those mysterious chemicals and preservatives do for canned biscuits.

Until NOW.

Over Christmas my mom made us a batch of biscuits using a Cook's Illustrated recipe for Southern biscuits, and if I hadn't watched her do it, I would have sworn it was impossible that they were from-scratch. Tall and fluffy and buttery and WOW. Of course, they're a helluva lot more trouble than opening a can, but they are totally worth it. The ingredients are pretty basic except for an increase in the liquid to dry ratio, but the real secret is in the handling of the dough and the shaping of the biscuits. From now on in my house they will be called "Nana Biscuits" and no one in my family will ever have to say, I b'lieve I like t'other brand better.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 T baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 T sugar

4 T cold butter, cut into little cubes

1 1/2 cups cold buttermilk

1 cup extra flour for handling
2 T melted butter to brush the tops

Mix the dry ingredients together by buzzing a few times in food processor, then add butter cubes and cut in by processing a few times more until the cornmeal-like consistency is achieved. (Personally, I have trouble getting this step to really work and end up cutting in the butter chunks with my pastry cutter, so I may eliminate the food processor altogether and see what happens.) Add buttermilk and mix until just incorporated. Using a 1/4 cup measuring cup, scoop the biscuit dough and place the mounds on a cookie sheet dusted with the extra cup of flour (the dough will be very wet and goopy). Consistent 1/4 cup scoops will yield 12 mounds of biscuit dough. Sprinkle some flour on the tops, then pick up each mound and toss in your hands until it forms a rough ball shape, and place in a well-greased round cake pan (9 biscuits on the outside, 3 in the middle). Brush melted butter on the tops (currently without a pastry brush, I just drizzle the butter over the tops and this seems to work too). Bake for 5 minutes in a pre-heated 500 degree oven, then lower heat to 450 and bake about 15 more minutes until well-browned on top. Let cool in pan 2 minutes, then turn out onto plate.

the tattoo

The passage of time gets written on our physical bodies. Not just in extra pounds and wrinkles and sad deflated-balloon post-breastfeeding boobs, but in scars and aches and pains. Most of these signs are marks of past accidents and sometimes even traumas.

We don't often have a choice about how our bodies become marked in this way. It is the result of our human vulnerability and the arbitrary circumstances that add up to those childhood accidents and falls, the adult wrong-place-wrong-times. But taken all together, they can narrate, in some sense, our personal history in a way that we often overlook.

Michel Foucault knew this.

Brent has resigned himself to my tattoo, but he still doesn't get the why. It goes beyond the actual symbol itself, although I love my tattoo and am ever grateful that Casey would be willing to share it with me. (She is a generous person in so many ways, tangible and intangible.) I wasn't really able to explain it, not having analytically considered it thoroughly myself, until the Thweatt fam reunion a couple weeks ago.

Where I saw my cousin Kevin again for the first time in probably ten years. Still proud of my fresh tattoo, only a few weeks old, I was hyper-alert to everyone else's...and a surprising number of my relatives do have them. Kevin has a large, beautifully rendered tattoo on his arm, a portrait of his older brother, my cousin James. James Bruce, named after my own dad. James was a little older than me, Kevin a little younger; our ages stairstepped down to my sister Ally, just a year and a half younger than me. They were fun. All Thweatt cousins are fun, it's part of the genetics, but we seemed to see James and Kevin a little more often than others and they were always favorites.

James died young, when I was still in college. It was a shock; I can remember the day and the circumstances when I found out. News like that knocks the wind out of you, you can't process it immediately, just wait until that sick, awful feeling of not being able to breathe passes, and then try to keep breathing in and out. Eventually breathing becomes normal again.

Kevin's tattoo is beautiful; it took three sittings, Kevin told me, by the best artist in town. And it is a physical sign of how certain things mark us profoundly, even when the scars don't show. I like the idea of tattoos, of choosing to mark our bodies deliberately with symbols that speak these profound things; there's a transparency, an honesty, a physicality to this kind of narration that seems to suit the vulnerability of such naked truth-telling.

of mice and men

Brent made my 32nd birthday awesome. My fam is real low-key about birthdays, to the point that when I get a belated e-card from a sister or parent I feel all warm and fuzzy inside because they didn't forget. That's just how we are. And since we're all like that, no one gets fussed. (Actually, my dad is an exception to this. Knowing that he would be out of the country on my bday he called the night before he left to join Mom and Jarrod & Al in Honduras to say happy birthday, 9 days early.) But Brent is a real ritual-type person (go figure, right?) and birthdays and holidays are a big deal, not to passed over lightly or in silence. So not only was I showered with gifts, things that he either knew that I would like to have although I hadn't thought of wanting them yet (like gardening tools now that I have dirt to scratch around in), or things that I've wanted for a long time, like a bike seat for Clare and a frame for the hammock I bought years ago in Honduras when I visited Al and the kids there...but he also found a babysitter and a great local Italian place that was just right--great food and a nice but not stuffy atmosphere. I think it's been at least a year since we went out for dinner like that. It was so nice to just sit and relax and talk over some wine and good food. I totally splurged and got one of the specials--and lo and behold, it came to the table with half a lobster on top, had no idea what I was getting myself into. I even had one of those cute little seafood forks to eat it with. Special implements! Wow!

But Sunday night apparently the commander-in-chief of our mouse population ordered a surge. We found more droppings in cabinets formerly cleaned and sanitized, a real psychological blow. We're thinking of negotiating terms of surrender; but they'll have to be something we can live with long-term. I'll gladly give them the basement if they'll just stay out of the kitchen.

back in NJ!

SIGH!

Now that we're gone from the city, it's time to think about Joe's post from a while back. I said to Brent last night that really, this past year we experienced a lot of the things that make city living difficult without experiencing hardly any of the really great things that make city living worth it. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but it's no exaggeration to say that in the time we lived in NYC, we saw two movies and one show. That's it. So I think, well--maybe everyone needs to live in the city once, but the time to do it is when you're single and you've got a little money to spend and the flexibility to be spontaneous. What I know of the city is limited to the immediate neighborhood and consists of grocery store locations and nearby parks. And I will never haul a stroller up and down subway stairs again. Hallelujah!...And yet, there's still a part of me that's sad to go. I have the suspicion that with another year, I might have learned enough about how to navigate the logistics of the city to have enjoyed it a great deal more. It's a big comfort to know that it is, after all, just a 45 minute train ride away.

That sadness is also greatly diminished by the excitement of exploring our new home. Summit is a beautiful town and we live right in the heart of it, three blocks away from downtown. Playground at the school across the street for Clare, plus a beautiful backyard of our own that rivals the Close for relaxation and beauty. Farmer's market on Saturdays across the street. And the house itself...well, Brent had taken pics for me when he toured it earlier but it was still completely overwhelming to walk in and see it for myself. I hope that I managed to be appropriate and gracious in my responses to people but I was just totally overwhelmed by how preposterous it is that we are moving in to this beautiful old house. It makes me want to giggle because it is so absurd. Really? We're living here? Pardon while I rearrange my worldview to accommodate this...um, sorry, it didn't work. I'll keep trying though. In the meantime, I will just attempt to suppress my maniacal urge to giggle at the madness.

Other random bits:

Brent really can put things together without directions. Amazing!

No church bells, but we hear the organ music from the church next door. Clare's reaction: "Music! Jesus!"

Clare thinks riding in the car is a novelty. Hope that lasts for our roadtrip to NC. :)

excuses and miscellany

• Lately I've been working hard on the article my friend & favorite feminist theologian invited me to co-write. It's been a marvelous experience: the first really fun academic writing I've done in ages, an absolute joy to really dialogue with someone about ideas I'm passionate about without competitiveness or rancor (even in disagreement!), an opportunity to really delve deep into one of the most important scholars for my dissertation work and understand her better, and to develop my own "feminist voice," for this essay (unlike my academic writing to date) has a personal dimension and a poetic flourish. I've learned a lot...and not least that it really is possible to produce good academic work in a process free from the petty competition that characterizes so much academic exchange.
• I'm really loving the classic Sesame Street clips and TMBG ABC's and 123's videos...(thanks for the tip, Rick!) Really, youtube just keeps getting better and better! Clare has now graduated from the familiar shapes of circle, square, oval, triangle, diamond to "octagon" thanks in part at least to the awesome song "Nonagon." (Everyone should also check out "High Five.") Plus, there's a whole bunch of Obama babies' videos out there--apparently all toddlers are wise enough to know a good thing when they see it...(Clare's is the best though!!! a totally impartial judgment).
• I'm resolving to be in bed by 10:00pm every night from now on. I've had enough of waking up feeling like total crap in the morning. I've also had enough of waking up and finding Clare totally covered in crap, but that's a different problem, not so easily resolved.
• I'm also resolving to lose this last bit of baby weight by the time I have to get back into a swimsuit for the Thweatt fam reunion at the beach in NC in June. Ten years ago at the last one I wore a 2-piece. I still have it--it's the only swimsuit I own. So I guess I need to be able to fit into it, and it would be nice to feel good in it too.
• It's my turn to pick up teaching the toddler class at CCfB again. Despite feeling compelled to adjust some of the suspect theology in their lessons, and really enjoying getting to participate in worship and hearing sermons live, I've missed it. Dots! I can't wait to give Ira and Clare their 3 dots for being such good little kiddies!
• I'm really glad a friend here at GTS has taken the initiative to start a weekly mom's group. It's casual, Clare loves playing her friend A, and it's so nice to talk parenting with other people going through the same things you are. And, it gets me out of the isolation that I slide into when left to my own devices. (My own devices=computer.)
• I'm really awkward making casual conversation with people I don't know. I talk a lot, so that maybe people won't notice how awkward I feel, and then I do something like somehow inadvertently give a conservative Baptist the impression I'm an unwed mom. No, no...I'm just not wearing my ring because I deboned a chicken Thursday night. Honest, I swear. Really. Then again, I don't really feel like being mistaken for an unwed mother is the end of the world anyway, so &*@# it.
• Oregon Trail and Text Twirl were short-lived Facebook fads for me...but Scrabulous endures. (MOM, I'm winning this game BTW.) My theory that multiple player games are always won by the player who starts them (and goes first) may have been disproven but I think it's just an instance of the exception proving the rule.
• I've been loving Marti Stanley's very bright green blog lately. After this post, I scrubbed my whole bathroom with baking soda and vinegar. I won't be trying my hand at composting for awhile yet though...that takes, you know, a yard.
• I think about my sister Ally a lot more than I ever talk to her. I had a great plan for calling her every Wednesday afternoon, since that's when she was in the Choluteca office near a phone. Nowadays though she's not in the office much anymore, since she's working hard over at the Children's Home (where hopefully CCfB's cow named Brooklyn is living the good life and making lots o'milk!). I was bragging on her and Jarrod today at lunch. Love you, Al.
• Tomorrow Clare goes to "school" again even though it's Wednesday and Brent and I will hop on a train and go down to Madison and he will brilliantly defend his dissertation. Also, tomorrow at roughly the same time Ira is scheduled for the follow-up surgery.

Almost time for my new and improved bedtime now and I'm all out of randomness. I may, or may not, take up the suggestion to bloggily muse upon Obama sometime soon. I'd like to explain what I meant in an earlier post about him being the "cyborg candidate." That will take some actual thinking, unlike this post, which is all just fluffernuttery nonsense.

on his way

A few weeks back, Brent's final requirement for the practical liturgy class he was taking was a "practice Mass." It's not a real Mass, because he's not ordained yet. He won't be able to celebrate a Mass until after he is ordained a priest, which will be at least six months after his ordination as transitional deacon, which is scheduled for early June. So it's in a third floor classroom instead of chapel (so no one gets confused and thinks it's real); hence the strange whiteboard background behind the altar. The point of course is to give everyone a little practice from the inside out--after all, no matter how familiar you are with the liturgy as a worshipper, it's different when you're leading it. It's a fairly big deal, since celebrating a Mass--even a not-really-real practice one--is a big deal. And it's a sort of rite of passage around here. Some classmates participate, some attend to support and encourage, some attend to try to trip you up by stealing the host or grabbing the chalice or otherwise acting crazy. (Watch Part 4 and see if you can figure out why everyone's snickering at they walk to their seats, and when the host gets put in someone's pocket.)

Of course, sharing this video with the world is entirely my idea and Brent loves me enough to let me have my way. He would never post this on his blog. Of course, he never posts anything on his blog.



(Part 1: Procession, Opening Collect, scripture readings, Gospel, first bit of homily)





(Part 2: rest of homily, Nicene Creed, Prayers of the People)





(Part 3 begins at about 1:20: rest of Prayers of the People, General Confession, Absolution, the Peace, the Offering, the Great Thanksgiving)

(Part 4: administration of communion, Postcommunion Prayer, Blessing, Recession)

And special thanks to my techno-savvy friend who made posting this video possible! Baked symbols of appreciation headed your way!

routine

After being bad parents and missing Clare's 15 month appointment, we finally scheduled her 18 month appt with a doc here in the city. This was just a routine, well-baby visit. But of course a first visit to a new doc means a lot of paperwork and a lot of questions.

Unfortunately, after getting Clare undressed down to her diaper, I realized that she was stinky. Bad stinky. Sick stinky even. And, bad mom that I am, I had left the house with an underprepared diaper bag: one diaper and only 2 wipes. I've watched my sister Ally make a single wipe last a whole diaper change by ingeniously folding it like an origami piece of practical poop art, but not me. Those two wipes barely even made a dent. All the while I'm trying to change this nasty diaper, clean an uncooperative Clare with no supplies, I'm answering questions about this and that. I was totally flustered, felt like an absolute incompetent, and then got an earful from the doc about my inadequate cleaning job ("there's poop in her vagina!" "yes, I see that," I said, "like I mentioned before, I'm out of wipes. Any ideas?"--which finally resulted in a little help. Wet cottonballs work great.)

Routine questions. I'm bad at them, and I was flustered. I did manage to get my own age right, but ethnicity? "Um...generic Anglo-mongrel?" That didn't communicate well. She wrote down "british." And Brent's? "white, I guess," I said. Wrong! "White is race, I asked about ethnicity," said the doc, staring at me like I'd grown another head. "Oh," I said, chastened. "Okay. Texan."

But nothing beats this exchange:

doc: "And Clare is your only child?"
me: "yes."
doc: "And she is her father's only child?"
me: "yes."
doc: "are you sure?"
me: "uh, yes."
doc: "father's occupation?"
me: (taking a semantic shortcut) "he's a priest."
doc: "Catholic?"
me: "um--no--Episcopalian."

Christmas, knitting, and Wii

My determination to knit all my Christmas gifts wasn't enough for me to actually complete them all exactly on time. I owe Elliott another fingerless mitt (unless he has some dreadful accident requiring amputation of an arm in the next few weeks) and my dad his fuzzy slippers. But on the whole it was a lot of fun to knit gifts for everyone and I'm very pleased with the slippers. Here's a pic of how they turned out (credit to Malda for being my foot model).

Here are a few more gratuitous pics from our Christmas, and a priceless video of my Mom and Dad playing tennis on Em and Elliott's Wii (note how my mother shamelessly gloats at the end).

me, Brent, Leroy, Malda and Clare at Rockefeller Center

Brandon's hat & mitts, knit by yours truly

Clare hugs her baby doll

Clare loves her baby doll!

Mom's gift to herself (photo by Em)

stockings were hung by the chimney with care...see Clare's stocking on the left? and mine so heavy the loop broke and it's on the hearth behind Dad...

Emily. Loves. Butterscotch.

only decent pic of me all season. Nifty hat & scarf, right? I'm not the only Christmas knitter around...Thanks Ma!

christmas tree

I'm not one of those people who thinks the day after Thanksgiving is the mandatory time for pulling out the Christmas decor, or who hums carols to herself all day long, or whatever. I have been watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer more or less constantly since last Christmas, but that's Clare's fault. I was totally horrified one night, nearly a full week before Halloween, to see that the local Duane Reade already had a Christmas display up in one of its shop windows.

But I do love Christmas trees.

Our tree is a pathetic $16 Wal-Mart fake we bought the first year we were married, nothing to get real happy about. I hope next year we will finally be settled enough and have space enough (wherever we are) to upgrade to some kind of decent Christmas tree. I am totally envious of people who can buy one of the gorgeous, sweet-smelling real trees they're selling just outside the seminary. (I am going to console myself by purchasing a $10 wreath.)

But I love our Christmas tree anyway, even though it is a dreadful fake that sheds plastic bits, has a broken stand, is consequently precariously wobbly, and was purchased long ago from The Evil Empire. Because our Christmas tree, like the very best Christmas trees anywhere, is totally ours.

We have three "first Christmas together" ornaments (this is what happens when you get married a week before Christmas). These are always the first things on the tree. Our basic glass ornament sets--in gold and white--are from the tree we decorated for our wedding reception, and these are the next things on the tree. Then the antique ornaments from Brent's mom, Malda, from her own treasured store of beautiful things gathered from estate sales over the years: Brent's favorite, a little elf that sits in a nook (or a cranny, depending on my mood), an antique glass ornament, a little rocking horse, assorted Santas, and my favorites, a pair of pink glass clip-on birds that perch jauntily on the ends of branches. A picture frame ornament, from my Aunt Nancy, with Clare's Christmas picture from last year in it. A set of Charlie Brown Christmas ornaments I bought last year while shopping with Ally. Some dainty woven ornaments that Sarah & Andrew gave away as party favors at last year's Christmas bash. A set of little Chinese dolls from keyrings that I don't remember acquiring in China that make much better tree ornaments than keyrings...

Underneath our tree this year is a quite respectable collection of Christmas storybooks (especially considering Clare doesn't read yet), all gifts from people who love her. And a beautiful white plush teddy bear in red scarf and stocking cap, her "Mimi bear." But no presents. And there won't be many, this year. But--except for the fact that my eye is of course trained to behold Christmas trees without presents underneath as "naked"--that's not the point of Christmas trees. It's all about the history--what each little item says about who we are, and where we've been, and who we love and who loves us.

I love that on my parents' Christmas tree there are still, every year, things from our childhood. The ceramic mouse ornament that I cast and painted in the 6th grade. The drummer boy drum Ally made in 4th grade (that has Denessa's name on it too from when she tried to steal it). The preschool picture of Emily glowering at the camera like she wanted to shoot the photographer in the butt with a BB gun. I can't wait till Clare gets old enough to start making hideous additions to our Christmas tree history every year. I want the construction paper, the scribbles, the glitter, the smeary glue, the sullen I-won't-smile-for-you-right-now pics, all of it. And I especially want an elf head with a scary crooked grin and a paper clip hook stuck in him sideways, made out of dried playdough.

there were never such devoted sisters...

My sister Ally has a couple of very interesting theological posts over on her blog, demasiada. If you've been suffering from withdrawal from lack of the substantive theological discourse that you've become addicted to since reading this blog, since I am always so theological and substantive, go see what my sibling has to say.