However, I have discovered a dark evil that will forever be associated with this glorious holiday. It is called ... baking.
I'll be honest. This started when Ellie's teacher assigns "snack day" once a month to each of her kids. Well, kid's parents really. So I would buy a nice large thing of fruit or crackers or whatever. I didn't really care. Then one of the mum's came out with a muffin pan. I'm like, what is that about? I must have said it out loud because Ellie answered me by explaining, that what is becoming clearly in my head as COOL MOM, made muffins together with nameless child that I have no memory of. This irked me. How dare she demonstrate more love and bonding than me? Unfortunately, I have since discovered, through Elle's tactful assistance, than I'm probably the UNCOOLEST mom because it would seem that we are required to go to centers, eat lunch with our kids at the school (seriously?), assist with little kid functions, etc. For anybody who knows me, I'm completely unqualified for these functions.
While I had a good excuse for nearly all the items (traveling, meetings, etc.), I was not-so-secretly relieved. However, the original muffin incident still was under my skin. So, I proposed to Ellie that we finally put to use those amazing 3D Halloween cookie cutters bought oh-so-many years ago at Williams Sonoma. The fact that she expressed concern about the fact that "mommy, I've never seen you make cookies before" and "mommy, you can just buy them, it's ok," merely motivated me to win this non-existent war for COOL MOM.
So! Off to an excellent start. The little Halloween apron in place, the tools in place, everything ready! A few problems occurred. The stupid recipe left out the value of flour when rolling out the dough. Easy enough to fix, but when I cut them out, the stupid recipe also left out the value of flour on BOTH SIDES. Whatever. In a valiant effort to ignore Ellie's head shaking back and forth in amazement at my ignorance, I plunge forward.
Then comes that sugary crap. Keep in mind I've just come from the Dominican Republic, which is apparently capable of only serving very sugary drinks, so I'm totally sugared out for like a decade. Even looking at that much sugar made me feel sick. Vowing to not touch the product of our labours, we add the food colouring, which I might note, was the ONLY very enjoyable part of this process.
Here's where I proudly pull out the Swiss decorating set that I bought in Boulder so long ago in a rare moment of domestic dreams, and subsequently Ellie and I battled who had the best decorated cookie.
In the end, we had seven excellent specimens, out of MANY MORE that did not make it. The hours taken with this project based on my hourly consulting wage would have funded a European trip.
I told Ellie the following.
"Enjoy them sweetie. Revel in them. Because this will never, ever happen again."
She agreed.
BTW, the Halloween set of cookie cutters, the beautiful Swiss decorating set, and the Spring butterfly, frog, and bird cookie cutters are in the "get rid of" room.
