Well That Was Fast! - Finding Amy Spear

El mundo es un pañuelo.

I have always preferred the Spanish version for the saying, “It’s a small world.”   It’s so much more poetic.  And this week, I can truly say that el mundo es un pañuelo.  The world is indeed a handkerchief.

Three days ago, I wrote on my blog about things that are lost and things that are found.  I posted a story about a student ID card from 1985 that I found under my dorm room bed in 1996, and still have in my possession today.  And I pleaded with my readers to find the girl named Amy Spear who lived in my Jester dorm room ten years before I did and help me reunite her with her lost ID.  I even promised homemade cookies to the person who found her for me.

I thought it would make a good story.  I thought it might stir up some fun discussions and speculations.  I expected some half-hearted Googling and a few good leads.  At best, I considered that someone might find this woman and contact her, only to be disappointed that she never wrote back.

What I did not expect was to get a Facebook friend request from Amy Spear less than twenty-four hours after posting the story.

My husband often tells me that he should write my blog because he has a different take on the stories I tell.  (I say go ahead, but he’s yet to make good on his threat.)  I can sit here and serenely describe how, at that moment, I felt an undeniable connection with the universe, and how I could not wait to learn the details behind that little notification on my computer screen.  But if Mark were writing this, he would tell you how he heard squealing coming from my office.  “AAA!  Oh my God!  Mark!  Mark!  AMY SPEAR JUST SENT ME A FRIEND REQUEST!  I feel like hiding under my desk.  I feel like she can see me through my computer.  Am I crazy?”

Of course, Mark lies, which is why you should never believe anything he writes about me.

It is true though, that I am now Facebook friends with Amy Spear, who slept in the same little Jester dorm room that I did, ten years before me.  How did it happen?  It was pretty simple, really.  My friend Bruce read my blog, did some Googling, and saw a connection between a woman he thought might be Amy Spear and his friend Missy.  Bruce contacted Missy.  She did not know Amy Spear, but she passed on the information to her friend Julie, who has the reputation of knowing “everybody in Texas”.  And it must be true, because Julie knew Amy Spear, who lives in Houston, just two and a half hours away from me.

It turns out that after eighteen years of carrying around her ID, Amy Spear and I were only four degrees of separation apart.  And this coming Saturday, I’ll be driving to a coffee shop near Houston to meet her and give her back a memento from her college days.

El mundo es un pañuelo.

I can’t wait to talk to Amy, find out what her UT experience was like, hear about her life today, see her reaction when I hand over this little piece of plastic she lost so long ago.  But I’ll have to think about that later.  Right now, I’ve got to finish baking these cookies for Bruce.  I swear, that guy will do anything for food.

[Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion to this story!]

Haiku Wednesday - So I Married a Geek

My husband loves to play computer games—it’s his thing.  But based on the amount of moaning, groaning, and screaming I hear coming from his office most nights, I’m convinced that he’s not very good at them.  Since this Saturday concludes the month of August, this will be my last Haiku Wednesday post.  I hope you enjoyed your 68 syllables of poetry.

He dies a thousand

deaths when we’re apart—damn those

gaming marathons.

                  -- Carie Juettner

“We Want Fireworks!”

When I was a kid, there was a street in Plano where my family and I used to go watch fireworks on the 4th of July.  It was a deserted road next to a big empty field, which is now probably the site of a trendy housing development or maybe a strip mall.  But back then it was empty except for weeds and wildflowers, giving us a perfect view of the stadium a couple hundred yards away where the show took place.  Every year, we caravanned over in two or three cars (Dad’s Checker Cab of course and maybe my aunt’s Toyota), arriving well before the sun went down in order to get a good spot.  The street was somewhat out-of-the-way but was not unknown—others used it as well and by nightfall it was always full of cars, people, and kids running around.

The years were so much the same that they blend together in my mind as one jumbled memory.  We hung around on car bumpers and blankets listening to the radio, fighting off mosquitoes, playing frisbee, and drinking Dr. Peppers in our red, white, and blue garb.  (I remember one particularly gaudy year when I was wearing a red tank top, blue jean shorts, a white belt, red socks, and white Keds.  At the time, I was quite proud of my patriotic fashion statement, but looking back at the pictures makes me cringe.) There was even an ice cream truck whose driver wised up to the idea of serving the crowded little street, so every year he appeared and we enjoyed popsicles and Eskimo bars while staring in the direction of the stadium.

The people inside obviously had some sort of pre-firework entertainment.  Music and cheering could be heard, and one year sky-divers parachuted into the stadium—an unexpected treat for us.  Whatever went on inside that arena always was, and still is, a mystery to me.  I remember wondering what those people were seeing and coming up with my own versions of their entertainment, but never once do I remember feeling envious of them.  The 4th of July in the Kinder family meant parking on the side of a road and enjoying the colorful display from our lawn chairs and tail gates.  This wasn't something you bought a ticket for.

4th of July - 1986

Waiting for the show to begin seemed to take forever.  The sky grew darker and darker, and with every star that came out, we kids grew more and more restless.  My brother Pat, five years older than me, remained a bit more composed than our cousin Kelley, three years my junior, and me.  He sat with the adults and attempted to restrain any anxious tendencies.  Kelley and I, however, were shamelessly impatient, often inventing creative chants such as, "WE WANT FIREWORKS!" which we repeated over and over, much to the annoyance of everyone else. 

There were no cell phones, no Kindles, no portable DVD players, not even a Game Boy to distract us from the snail-like pace of time.  The only way we even knew how slowly it ticked by was from our parents’ watches, and they got tired of us asking.  Sometimes we had sparklers to keep us busy for a few minutes, but for the most part we had to just wait it out, every excruciating second.

And then... just when our impatient cries had reached their whiniest levels, just when the adults were probably ready to throttle us, the first bright explosion lit up the sky.  You could sense the excitement of the moment—people standing up, turning their heads, leaning forward, the collective intake of breath as the first firecracker faded into a smoky outline and drifted off with the wind, carrying the smell of sulfur with it.  From that moment on, there was no bickering, no whining, just a symphony of Oo's and Ah's and interjections of "Wow!  That was cool!" and "That one was huge!"  

The Kinders do not watch fireworks in reverent silence.  We comment.  Do we remember that one from last year?  Was that a new color?  I've never seen one like that.  Ooo, that looked like a flower.  No, it looked like a balloon.  No, I saw a spider.  Did you see that one?  Of course I saw it, I'm right here.  That one was sparkly.  I like the ones you can see on the way up.  I like the ones that make the whistly noise.  I like the purple ones.  I like them all.  Forty minutes of non-stop descriptive chatter about something that we are all watching at the same time.  And afterwards... we rehash it all again in the past tense.  It is our way.

In addition to the color commentary of the explosions, Pat and I also had a game we liked to play.  Several airplanes circled the area repeatedly during the show.  (It was not until later that I realized they were there to watch as well; as a kid, I just thought that was a busy flight path for small planes.)  The game was simple—count how many planes got "killed" by the fireworks.  Although of course they were completely safe and nowhere near the actual explosions, every time it appeared that one was blown up by a pink burst of sparks or a strobe-like flash of light, we cheered uproariously for its death.  All in good fun.

Every firework display ends with, what is known in Texas as, the "grand finale".  This finale consists of setting off dozens and dozens of rockets at the same time so that the eye is blinded by two or three minutes of simultaneous flashes of color, and yes, it is quite grand.  Therefore, toward the end of the show, it is traditional for the Kinder commentary to shift from the general Oo's and Ah's to the impulsive predictions.  Oh my!  I think this is the grand finale!  Ooo, no THIS must be the grand finale!  Wow!  Look at all that!  Do you think it's the grand finale?  This time I'm SURE, it MUST be the grand finale!  Eventually, inevitably, someone was right; it was the grand finale.  We whooped and cheered and said “Happy 4th of July!” We smiled and laughed and stared at the giant smoke cloud slowly drifting away from the stadium, knowing it was over, but secretly hoping for one last blue or green ball of flame to appear.  Once in awhile, we got our wish.

The ride home was always subdued.  We recapped the events of the evening, voted on our favorite parts, and finally drifted into a satisfied quiet.  Sometimes, out the car window, we caught glimpses of other firework shows finishing up in the distance and smiled at this unexpected bonus.  Often I was asleep, or at least pretending to be, by the time we pulled into the gravel driveway of home.

This is still my favorite way to enjoy the 4^th of July.  Tomorrow night, the hubby and I will grab some chairs and a blanket and a cooler of drinks and drive out to some out-of-the-way spot, where I will fidget and whine and chant, “WE WANT FIREWORKS!” until the colorful flashes appear in the sky, or he stops my annoying lips with a kiss.  Which is a whole other kind of fireworks.  :)

From Carie's Kitchen: Coca Cola Cake, Taco Pie, & Fun With Magnets

Carie's Kitchen / Dog Kennel
(Today we focus on the kitchen portion.)

Ever since I quit my job, I have found that I have a lot more time on my hands.  Thankfully, I have put 90% of that newfound time to good use.  I write.  I clean.  I spoil my pets (husband included).  And I have learned how to cook. 

"Learned" doesn't seem like the right word.  It's not like I took a class or anything.  And it's not that I was a bad cook before and now I am a good one.  I just wasn't a cook before.  I was physically and mentally and emotionally incapable of teaching all day, driving an hour to get home, and then making dinner.  My stomach couldn't wait that long to eat, and spending even a few minutes to cook something seemed like a "waste of time" when I had all those papers to grade waiting for me as soon as I scarfed down my food.  But let's not take this blog post in that negative direction.

Suffice to say, I ate a lot of take-out and pasta and cereal for dinner (not at the same time, ew) and we also went out to eat a lot.  (Too much.)  To his credit, Mark sometimes made dinner for us, but he had a full-time job and an hour commute too, so he wasn't too inclined to take on that task either.  Once in a while on a Sunday, I would cook, and it usually turned out ok, and I still baked cookies from scratch now and then (which were often delicious if I do say so myself) but I could not under any circumstances be called a "cook".

Now though... things are different. 

One of my fabulous
greenroom notebooks.

These days, Mark and I rarely go out to dinner more than once a week, sometimes not even that often.  And while those cereal or sandwich nights still exist (sometimes that's just what we want—Mark in particular really enjoys his PB&J with goldfish crackers on the side) I do cook.  At least three nights a week, I make dinner, and 9 times out of 10 it turns out pretty good. 

I enjoy my new hobby and am proud of it, and I would like to start sharing some of my favorite home-cooked meals and desserts.  So… here are a couple of recipes from Carie's Kitchen.  I hope you like them!

Recipe for Coca Cola Double Chocolate Cake:

This one has been going around on Facebook.  That's where I saw it at least.  There are many versions of this, but I am posting the actual recipe I used here.  However, I found that the cake needed to be baked a lot longer than 20 minutes.  I used a Pyrex dish and left it in for 30-35 minutes.  (I think it was actually 33.)

Coca Cola Double Chocolate Cake
(Mark is only fake-smiling because 
he hasn't tried it yet.)

Cake Ingredients:

1 cup Coca Cola (real thing, not diet)

½ cup oil

1 stick butter

3 tablespoons cocoa

2 cups sugar

2 cups flour

½ teaspoon salt

2 eggs

½ cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon vanilla

Frosting Ingredients:

1 stick butter

3 tablespoons cocoa

6 tablespoons cream or milk (I used 2% milk)

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 ¾ cups confectioners sugar

Cake:

In a saucepan, mix Coca Cola, oil, butter, and cocoa and bring to a boil.  In another bowl, combine sugar, flour, and salt.  Pour the boiling Coca Cola mixture over the flour mixture and beat well.  Pour into a greased and floured 13x9 inch baking pan and bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 (or in my case 30-35) minutes.  Remove pan.  Cool for about 10 minutes before frosting.

Frosting:

In a saucepan, combine the butter, cocoa, and milk.  Heat until the butter melts.  Beat in the remaining ingredients and spread on the cake while it is still warm.

Mark was extremely skeptical about this cake for some reason.  The cup of Coke in the ingredients baffled him.  He helped me make it, but was doubtful about the final product the whole time.  In the end?  He LOVED it.  This recipe makes a BIG cake.  We baked it for his mom's visit, and the three of us ate a slice every day for the five days she was in town, but when she went home, there was still a lot of cake left.  I helped Mark with it for a couple of days, but after that he was on his own.  He finished it.  It became sort of an obsession by the end.  He would lie in bed at night thinking about the cake.  And when it was finally gone, he immediately started begging for another one.  His devotion reminded me of this scene with Homer Simpson and his sandwich.

So, I recommend the Coca Cola Double Chocolate Cake.  It is very tasty.  Just know that it takes a while to bake and may cause addiction.

Oh, and Mark wondered aloud yesterday if there is such a thing as a Mountain Dew cake.  All I can say is... dear God, I hope not.

Recipe for Taco Pie:

This has been a favorite in my family for more than twenty-five years.  My mom tore the recipe out of a magazine when I was in elementary school I think.  I still make it, but I replace the ground beef with veggie meat.  

This is my favorite brand.

Ingredients:

1 deep dish pie crust shell

1 pound ground beef (or veggie meat)

1 small chopped onion

1 package Old El Paso Taco Seasoning Mix (or other favorite taco seasoning)

1 can refried beans (16 oz.)

1/3 cup picante sauce

2 cups shredded cheese

Preheat oven and cookie sheet to 400 degrees.  Thaw pie crust 10 minutes.   Prick bottom and sides of crust thoroughly with fork.  Bake pie crust on pre-heated cookie sheet for 10 minutes.  Remove from oven and reduce temperature to 350 degrees.  In skillet, cook onion and ground beef until meat is browned.  Drain excess fat.  Add taco seasoning mix according to directions on package.  In a small bowl, combine refried beans and picante sauce and mix well.  Layer half of bean mixture in bottom of pie crust.  Top with half of meat & onions and half of the cheese.  Then repeat layers.  Bake on cookie sheet 20-25 minutes.  Remove from oven and top with lettuce & tomato (optional.)  Serve with rice and slices of fresh avocado.

It’s all the deliciousness of Tex-Mex in a pie crust.  What’s not to love?

Recipe for Fun:

As I said before, I have put 90% of my new-found time to good use, buut there is still that other 10%.

When Mark and I got married, our family and friends decorated our get-away car.  Almost three years later, those "JUST MARRIED" magnets are still on our refrigerator.  Sometimes, when I am bored or procrastinating on a writing task or waiting for water to bowl, I rearrange them into new messages for Mark to see when he comes home.  It's not really that weird—lots of people have poetry magnets on their fridge.  It's just that ours are huge and limited to only eleven letters, one of which is the annoying "J". 

Here are some of my favorite “Just Married” concoctions:

This one is on our fridge most of the time.  :) 

This one rarely gets used, luckily.

Disturbing.

So there you have it—dinner, dessert, and something to do when you're bored this weekend.  Feel free to post your own favorite “Just Married” anagrams in the comments.  But keep it fairly clean, please.  :)