Merry Christmas!

to you, from a house full of shortbread and wrapping paper.

I bought myself a thriftshop cookie press ($4, missing only one of the nozzles, including all of the random discs) so I can try making spritz cookies, which I've never done. It has a camel disc. Does anyone make camel cookies? What flavour would be most appropriate?
The disc for the heart cookie of the bridge set (hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs) does not look like a heart. I suppose it must produce a heart, just as the squiggly cross must produce a diamond, but I'm taking it on faith so far.
It looks ... okay, it looks like a poppy-head.

Poppy-head is what that same shape is called when found carved on the pew-ends in an English church. Here, I'll show you a poppy-head bench-end from Fressingfield, church of St Peter & St Paul. See the resemblance?
Yes, medieval English churches are well-stocked with these, but Fressingfield must have the most blatant examples. I feel I must quote Simon (stolen from the link above) on Suffolk Churches:

"No, what makes Fressingfield's benches wonderful is the sheer quality of the whole piece; nowhere else in East Anglia is the 15th century so substantial, so full of confidence. Often quoted is Cox in Bench Ends in English Churches (but he is talking about the furnishings as a whole, not just their ends): Fressingfield church, he says, is better fitted throughout with excellent fifteenth-century benches than any other church in the kingdom."

And a happy NSFW Yule to all my pagan friends and readers!

the bag, it is mixed

The bad: I failed at Nanowrimo. Better than last year, not as good as the year before, only just beat 20k. I had much fun with what I did write, but getting myself sitting at the keyboard and typing was like shoveling mud. Why, I do not know.
I don't want to let the story go, because I still love the concept (unpublishable though it is) and the character names, and writing in that ornate, wordy, 18th c. voice. So I may be a Nano Rebel next year, and pick the story up where I left it.

The good: Christmas cards are signed & mailed. Christmas letters (personalised & newsletter) are sent. Donations are sent (Oxfam, Operation Eyesight, Amnesty International, Red Cross, Unicef, Save the Children, SOS Children's Villages, Covenant House, etc.). Most presents are bought, and mailed as required. Approx 1/3 of home-based presents are wrapped. Freezer is stuffed full of pastry, butter tart mix, cheese pastry, roll cookie dough, shortbread dough, choc shortbread dough, cheese shortbread dough, checker cookie dough, sugar cookie dough, honey cookie dough, coffee spice cookie dough, icing, choc icing, caramel icing, gingerbread dough, half-dozen pies (berry & apple).
New curtains on two of the kitchen windows (I did not make these. One I sewed a lining to, and the other pair I hemmed up). So there will be less heat loss this winter. Finally found an arbour to hold up the garage roses (there's a story to go with that, but maybe later) and stained it. Haven't put it up yet.
It's kind of impressive how much I can get done by not doing something else. I need to keep some particularly difficult task in reserve at all times, to goad me into getting everything else done.

A particular mixed bag, for those who haven't heard elsewise--agent comments on revision arrived, and more revision is required, which I did expect, but she very much likes the changes and expansions made to the latter half of the book, with words like 'perfect' and 'loved'. The first half needs condensing and tightening still, but I can add some scenes from Midame's pov, which I'd rather wanted to do earlier but was afraid of losing focus. And consider making Nomency a duchy, which is another thing I'd considered before and held off as something I could change at any point. It would move closer to the reality of the Small States and away from the fairytale-standard-kingdom, which wouldn't harm the story.

Good writey stuff: I wrote a flashfic!! I honestly didn't think I could do this, but I turned out an 88-word story. I may have to look into flash markets. So that is something positive coming from the local group, which seems to be developing into a real writing group.
Willow Knot has been hacked up again on Scrivener, and spaces cut into it for scenes with Midame, the four chapters that need to be cut by half (faint screams of manuscript heard off stage) have been isolated and prepped for surgery (More ether, nurse!), and notes made throughout for what needs to be enhanced our emphasised or cut.
My chimps story will be going up on Beneath Ceaseless Skies #33 on December 31, with the airship cover art still up (yay!). December 31 is apparently a blue moon, which amuses me mightily.
December 2 is a blue moon as well--two in one month! and ferociously bright it has been the last couple of nights.

Why does this cat insist on resting its head on the crook of my arm?

Christmas baking

This is what I baked for Christmas:
a pan of cake gingerbread (hot water recipe)
a pan of domino cookies (choc. shortbread with white chocolate chips, cut into 1x2 bars)
three rounds of pressed shortbread (the kind that makes 'petticoat tails')
two rounds of oatmeal shortbread (first time)
one round of spicy cornmeal shortbread (also first time)
one batch of cheese shortbread (sliced roll)
'checker cookies' (a roll of butterscotch and a roll of chocolate fridge cookies, cut into quarter-strips and reassembled - my own invention!)
three batches of butter pecan cookies
gingerbread cookies decorated with a snowflake pattern from white (flour & butter) decorating icing, which I've wanted to try for ages
two batches of chocolate shortbread
two batches of rolled shortbread cut in rounds
sugared walnuts, about 4 cups
6 dozen butter tarts
2 dozen sausage rolls
lots of cheese straws to use up the sausage roll pastry
cornstarch shortbread dipped in coloured sugar (the recipe on the cornstarch box)
12 dozen rolled cookies with icing
2 dozen roll cookies painted with egg yolk & food colouring, for people wishing to avoid the sugar hit
a butter cake with caramel icing, decorated with the remaining red & green icing, as a pseudo-birthday cake for me (Mark had already bought me a birthday cake, but it was carrot cake & I wanted something less virtuous) which I'll post a picture of when he uploads his pics next. (Done!)

Insert partridge and pear tree joke here.

Yes, I do like baking. People sometimes boggle at me for doing this, but mostly I find it relaxing, because, like ironing, I choose when and how much to do, and I can see the results of my work. I get a bit fussed over finding space to store the iced cookies while the icing hardens, before I can put them into the big tin, but that's not a terrible problem.
You should come over and have some cookies. There are plenty left.

comparative recipes

I like to bake cookies and squares. I'm not terribly adventurous or elegant, favouring the old standards like oatmeal cookies, peanut butter cookies, shortbread, and rolled cookies for Christmas. I have a small collection of cookie cookbooks, and occasionally add something from them to the repertoire.
Many years ago (thirty?) while in search of a recipe for butter tarts...

Pause to provide butter tart recipe:
-Melt 1/3 cup butter, remove from heat
-stir in 1/2 cup brown sugar,
1/2 tsp vanilla
pinch salt
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/2 cup or more raisins
-fill tart shells about half full, bake at 400 until brown and bubbling.

I found a little book called Chocolate Cake and Onions (Horizon House 1976). Also in this book was a recipe for
Economy Oatmeal Squares:
-Melt 1/2 cup margarine
-stir in 1 cup brown sugar,
2 cups oatmeal
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- press into ungreased pan to about 1/4 inch thickness, bake until brown. It will harden as it cools.

Despite the vague baking directions, which I eventually worked out to 350 for 20 to 25 minutes, this became a favourite. (I'll point out that when something consists largely of brown sugar, 'until brown' is not a useful marker.)
The thing that puzzled me, over time, was the purpose of the 1/2 tsp baking powder. There's no flour, so what is it leavening? Also, while I'm no kitchen chemist, didn't baking powder require moisture to work? Most cookie recipes used baking soda, except for oatmeal cookies, which had a tablespoon of milk in the recipe as well as baking powder. I wondered whether Marilynne Foster had left out part of the recipe, or copied it incorrectly.

My mum's cookbooks were among the things (like Christmas decorations) that weren't kept in the move, and which I regretted mightily. When I was able to buy a copy of The Canadian Cook Book (Ryerson 1953) I was quite excited, even though it naturally wouldn't have all the pasted-in soup-tin recipes and so on that my mum's copy had.
I got all nostalgic over the photographs, and 'oh, there's the cake recipe that always turned out kind of chewy because I dawdled over the mixing' 'there's the crepes recipe, mmm'. Then I found
Oatmeal Butter Squares:
-Mix 3 cups rolled oats,
1 cup brown sugar,
1 teaspoon baking powder,
dash of salt.
-pour over 7/8 cup melted butter, mix thoroughly
-pat into ungreased 8x12-inch cake pan
-bake at 275-300 until golden brown, cut into squares while hot.

There it is, recognisably the same in kind, in a for-real published by a major company cookbook, and still with the baking powder and no flour and no milk. Oh, and again the vague baking instructions, though this time with a temperature.
Well, maybe it was a Canadian regional treat, like butter tarts and Nanaimo bars. Maybe Marilynne (or her mother) got her recipe from The Canadian Cook Book and altered the quantities.

But there's the undeniably American Better Homes and Gardens Homemade Cookies Cook Book (Meredith 1976), and its recipe for
Scotch Teas:
-Melt together 1 cup packed brown sugar,
1/2 cup butter or margarine
-stir in 2 cups quick-cooking rolled oats,
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/1 teaspoon salt
-turn into 8x8x2 inch greased baking pan
-bake at 350 for 20 to 25 minutes, cookies will harden upon cooling. Cut into bars.

I will mention that my dad's family was Scots, and I'd never heard of 'Scotch Teas' (insert joke about drinking tea with Scotch here). Anyway, here it was again, in another for-real, major-publishing book, with baking powder and no flour.

Another Scotch Teas recipe, slightly different proportions but same ingredients, was reportedly a prize winning recipe at the 1976 Texas State Fair. Googling brings up another from the C&H Sugar Kitchen, requiring you to use C&H Brown Sugar, and of course, baking powder (brand left to your discretion). Doubtless there are more, perhaps under different names. But all that I've found have no flour and no moisture (unless melted fat counts as moisture?) but do have the baking powder of no apparent function.
Is it totemic? Apotropaic? The remnants of a long-forgotten ritual to hold back chaos?
If I leave it out, the next time I bake ... what will become of us all?

I never wanted to be a barometer

I'm no good at reading barometers as it is (cue someone popping in to explain how simple it is and refer me to a useful website on reading barometers) and I never aspired to be one of those weather-witch sorts whose left knee will tell you whether it's going to snow or rain. When M-- asked me whether my joints hurt according to the weather (much of M--'s worldview was formed by reading Lucy Maud Montgomery), I was quick to deny it. No, I said, it's entirely random. Entirely. No weather involved. Certainly not.
So how has December been, arthritis-wise? Cold, wet, windy, December? The month that last year convinced me there was something going on beyond a supposed rotator-cuff injury?
Um. Shoulders, one knee and then the other, left hand and then right hand, right hand inclusive of elbow and shoulder, all taking their turn. None of them too bad, but enough to return me to the two-Naproxen-a-day rate, when I'd been allowed since September to drop to one a day, and had even experimented with one every other day without ill effects. Christmas Eve was the real flare. My right hand went from being vaguely crampy to active pins-and-needles, so that I kept pinching my fingertips to wake them up. Then my right shoulder started to hurt, and eventually the hand cramps spread down to the elbow.
I'd been proud of getting all the Christmas prep done in time and not having to stay up past midnight wrapping presents or stuffing stockings, so I'd be well rested Christmas morning. Instead I had the entertaining mental challenge of remembering which of tylenol, ibuprophen, generic acetaminophen and acetylsalicylic acid, was an anti-inflammatory and which was just a painkiller. Because if you're taking an anti-inflammatory, you can't take another kind of anti-inflammatory or you will deflate entirely. At 2 am this isn't always easy to remember. It isn't much easier at midnight, 3, or 5 am, when the only clue you can remember is that the easy-open non-childsafe cap is ironic somehow. The guilt over keeping one's husband awake with the turning over and whimpering part doesn't help the mental processes.
But that's done, and I feel fine today, can close both hands completely with only a little effort, and slept well. So the weather has nothing to do with it. Nothing. Especially not the clear sunny skies Victoria has just now.
Anyone who wants to tell me how changes in air pressure affect joints is going to be met by a la-la-la sound and finger-plugged ears.

Accomplished: US Christmas cards mailed on the first weekend of December. UK and Canadian cards mailed on or before the third weekend, including cards with letters. Most gifts bought by the 3d weekend, all charitable donations (Operation Eyesight, Oxfam Canada, Amnesty International, Covenant House Canada, SOS Children's Villages, Unicef) sent. Gifts wrapped and stockings sorted by mid-week beforehand. Tree decorated Christmas Eve (tradition in my family).
Baked:
Scotch shortbread, three batches rolled and cut, four batches (same recipe) as petticoat-tails by the method described in Cooks Illustrated.
roll cookies, three batches, iced with two batches of butter icing
chocolate shortbread, two batches
cheese shortbread, two batches (one in reserve in freezer)
pecan shortbread, one batch as drop cookies, two batches as freezer cookies (one in reserve in freezer)
glazed shortbread, one batch
domino cookies, one batch - a chocolate cookie cut into 2x1 bars and decorated with white chocolate chips to look like dominos
butter tarts, 3 1/2 dozen, filled with triple batch of filling, a capful of rum added to mix and raisins soaked in rum beforehand, which turned out nicely
sugared walnuts, about five cups (really simple recipe)
maple-pecan tarts, one dozen, using up some maple fudge that didn't set
lemon tarts, one dozen, which don't really count - store-bought tart shells and lemon curd passed on to me from a fridge-clearing
sausage rolls, one batch (26 rolls)
cheese straws from pastry left over from sausage rolls
butter cake with caramel frosting for my birthday cake.

You can probably guess which part of Christmas prep I really enjoy. Oh, and I can post recipes if anyone wants.
Butter tarts, for my American readers (all three of you) are a Canadian treat, like tiny pecan pies without the pecans. Instead there are raisins, or currants, or raisins and walnuts. The filling recipe varies madly. Here's a link with a nice picture, but the recipe is not the one I use. The recipe book that the McPherson library put together had, I think, five different recipes for butter tarts, which hints at the variety available.
Mine, found in a tiny privately-printed cookbook from the late '70s, uses 1/3 cup melted butter, an egg, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup corn syrup, 1 tsp vanilla and a dash of salt. But I usually make it up in triple batches and put it in the freezer

Other people baked. Chris baked the apple pie from Cooks Illustrated. He made a lovely pie with hardly any space between top crust and filling, all brown and sugary on the top. He says he's never doing it again. I'd say something wise and parental about starting before 9 pm next time, if I hadn't done the same for at least 3 nights. If I'd stayed up with him, I don't know whether my usefulness in knowing where the pastry-brush is kept would have outweighed the annoyance of having his mother in the room while he was working. Probably not.
Mark, besides being the cook generally, made a proper steamed plum pudding, consisting of raisins and currants held together by suet. We took it over to Paul's for Christmas dinner and set it on fire with rum - yay! pretty blue flames! - and played snapdragon with brandy-soaked raisins between helpings.

While we're on the subject of recipes, I have, by circuitous routes, received a tablet recipe, named 'Aunt Tot's tablet recipe'. It came with a fudge recipe and the observation that the fudge recipe (which uses condensed milk) is much nicer I haven't tried either yet, so can't comment, but here it is.

Tablet
1/4 lb butter
1 lb sugar (granulated)
small tin evaporated milk (runny)
few drops of vanilla essence if desired

Method
Melt all ingreds slowly
When sugar dissolved boil for 10 mins
Cool slightly
Beat till thick but not too thick to turn into a buttered tray
Mark out squares
Leave to cool

ills that flesh is heir to, a non-writing post

I now have an appointment with a rheumatologist. Not until next week, and I don't know whether I'll come out of it with anything more definite than I presently have, which is that it looks a lot like rheumatoid arthritis, but it's difficult to diagnose RA until it's done real damage.
The Naproxen (can I say a drug name on here without attracting med-spam? I guess I'll find out) is working well so far. The stiffness in my hands and wrists is fairly constant, but I can work it off mostly, and I haven't had anything like the mid-January hand-cramps that kept me from doing anything.
There's what I might call a veiled threat in my hands, a hint that without medication they would be quite painful. Which is interesting in itself, because usually I'm in the position of thinking 'well, I don't know how much good these painkillers are doing, and I just have to take it on faith that I'd hurt worse without them'. The last time I recall being aware of a barrier between me and actual pain was when I was doped up after my first miscarriage, and that was emotional pain kept at a remove. This is physical pain kept at a remove. It's an odd sensation.

In an unexpected way, the possible diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis is helpful. When I thought the pain was somehow connected with the rotator cuff injury back in April, it confined me. I believed that my body was warning me, that the pain was a way of telling me 'don't do that'--if only I could guess what 'that' was. I ended up with a frozen shoulder because I was trying not to cause the pain by the wrong kind of movement, afraid of muscles and tendons fraying apart, under my skin where I couldn't see.
But if it's RA, pain is my body's way of blowing a raspberry at me, or showing me who's boss. It's gloating, not warning, and so I don't have to obey. I need to be aware of my new limitations, and not overwork myself, but the pain isn't necessarily related to harm. It's random.
And it is random. It buzzes about my body like the reverse of Gold Bell Armour, the mythical martial arts technique. Instead of having one vulnerable point that I can move about my body at will, my body has many vulnerable points, that it moves around against my will. One day my right thumb swells up and I can't write my name, another day my right forefinger and left little finger balloon, and the next week my wrists turn red and swell.
Again, the Naproxen is keeping this in check. I am appreciative. So far none of it has interfered with my typing, for which I am deeply appreciative. I am more easily tired, I think, and have somewhat less energy, but it's too soon to know if that's continuing or temporary. It may just be winter blahs, and I'll perk up when the sun starts coming up earlier.

Sunday I had a burst of enthusiasm, and not only brought The Willow Knot up to 60k, but chalked out the design for the last bit of painted wall in the new tent, a 4x8' Saint Barbara on an old tablecloth, to fill in the bit of wall that SS. Crispin and Crispinian, Dunstan and Eligius don't quite cover. Then I made cookies (butterscotch chip) to test whether I can do the things that I enjoy, still. Apparently I can, though my wrist is sore today, and that may be payback.

But this is a writing blog, not a moaning-about-the-flesh blog, so I'll stop. Next time I'll catch up with my writing news, honest.