Friday, Dec. 25, 2015
11:30PM
Oh, my! Gingerbread cheesecake? Was it in the shape of a Gingerbread Man?
We offered only one pie today, a Louis Albertini Pie, for which Celeste can take most of the credit; I served as her assistant. We used four egg whites for the meringue instead of three, and Celeste squeezed the lemons so thoroughly that we didn’t need any bottled juice. Clarissa called it “The best lemon pie I ever tasted”; I told her I would say the same thing.
After sending Dad and Clare home with a regular-sized slice each, and one more with Clare for Ethan (who celebrated Christmas Dinner elsewhere), we had a quarter of the pie remaining, which I cut into three pieces. I phoned one of my most eloquent pie reviewers, Sally Hohlstein (I once framed a thank-you note she sent, and hung it on the wall next to my picture of Jesus), and asked if she and Don wanted the last two bites of the best lemon pie my cousin ever tasted. Sal said she and Don were exhausted and she was already in her pajamas (at 6:15PM), but yes, come on over (to Roosevelt Street).
I promised Celeste we would stay no more than ten minutes, and when we got to Hohlsteins’ I started the stopwatch on my phone and began telling Sally, “Eat, eat, hurry up, eat!” but eventually she and Celeste started talking arthritis, and we stayed for twenty minutes. Meanwhile, Don and I looked at a binder of printouts from microfiches of 1961 Fjord Journals in which Don had noticed a 1951 mention of Uncle Bob Fischer (in the “Ten Years Ago” feature), but we couldn’t locate what Don had seen. We did, however, find several references to 1951 births of classmates of my brother Rick.
Sally groaned appreciatively while eating the pie, and I thought I heard her say it was “out of this world,” but I’m not positive. It’s so important to get things in writing. When we returned home, Celeste found a fresh e-mail from Sally, but there was no mention of the pie. Sal only wanted to know how Celeste makes peanut blossom cookies, because (Sal said) Celeste’s are better than Sal’s.
I think that’s all the Christmas news fit to report from my part of Fjord, Wisconsin.
Sleep well, and Merry Christmas.
Love, Dave
I’ll send a cc to Celeste so she can fact-check my journalism.
Sat, Dec 26, 2015
9:20AM
Good morning. Nice tree in the Capitol, Deb! Did you take the picture? I took a picture there in 1987. From above. I can’t see that the tree has grown much in the intervening years. I love this capitol!
Reached the Florida aunties today (after several attempts earlier in the week), both fine. Aunt Betty is 90, still mowing her own lawn with self-propelled walk-behind mower. Aunt Glo, recovered from strokes, does the weedwacking and edging, and, she says, she stands by to call an ambulance if Betty conks out. They were not doing yard work during our brief phone conversation. If I implied otherwise, I apologize.
I’m thawing day-old prime rib for breakfast. I’ll eat it with peanut blossom cookies. I’ll look up on the Internet what vegetable I should have. Oh, wait. I just remembered, peanut is a vegetable; I’m good.
Just now, Celeste, in the living room, looking at the e-mail I sent you last night, calls out, “We did not.” David asks, “Did not what?” Celeste says, “Talk arthritis.” David says, “Oh. Sorry. I heard you talk methotrexate.” Celeste says, “Only briefly.” David chuckles silently. Then David says, “Don’t worry. I’ll publish it as fiction.”
Have a great Boxing Day. Watch out for the left jab.
Love, Dave
