Beware the wiles of Bitch Kitty ...

This is the little game we play: She waits by the top of the basement stairs for me. I approach her cautiously from the other side of the planet. She growls lowly like a power drill without enough torque. I casually creep closer without making eye contact, as though all of my interest lies with a random sock that fell out of the laundry pile near her. She amps up her growling to sound more like a Kitchen Aid mixer struggling with its dough hook and a particularly hearty bread recipe. I make eye contact. She makes eye contact. I slowly, s l o w l y, begin the process of maybe kind of thinking about someday possibly squatting in her general vicinity to facilitate the hypothetical scratching of her ears. She shifts her growling into third gear, this time sounding like a vacuum with a strip of raffia stuck in its roller during post-Christmas clean-up. I get brutally murdered by a suspiciously nearby surgeon who promptly disarticulates my arms, rendering me profoundly incapable of living, breathing or furry-ear scratching. She shifts into overdrive, sounding almost exactly like the steamroller that all-too-conveniently appears from behind the aforementioned laundry sock to crush my disarticulated remains flatter than the aforementioned bread, which, in my selfish hurry to pet her, I completely forgot to do the part where you fold in the yeast and let the dough rise for three hours. I softly sing "Nothing's gonna harm you. Not while I'm around," which, through the restorative power of show tunes, revives me and rearticulates my arms. She rolls onto her back and does that adorable Fosse thing with her front paws (pictured here), all of which is the international symbol for "I trust you and I unconditionally love you so I'm showing you my vulnerable underbelly in the expectation you'll stop what you're doing and come rub it nonstop until President Pete takes office." I, blithely trusting her yet again, reach out tenderly, gingerly and gratefully to overcome my crippling yet understandable trust issues and finally—FINALLY—rub her soft, furry tummy in servile gratitude. She draws me in with her calculating eyes and her deceitful body language. I, emotionally scarred and spiritually broken by years of this unceasing abuse, finally—FINALLY—make finger-to-tip-of-tummy-furcontact, tears of grateful joy and social acceptance streaming down my face like healing waters spilling forth from the nose of a centuries-old Madonna statue in an Italian grotto. She, once again reaching the triumphant climax of our emotional Grand Guignol, rolls away from me, hisses like a steam brake struggling to stop a runaway train, waddles maybe three feet away, plops her geriatric belly firmly on the carpet, softens her hate-filled eyes to a dewy, inviting semblance of friendship and love, and meows plaintively as though to invite me closer to pet her. I approach her cautiously from the other side of the planet ...

Happy 116th birthday to Grandma Ester!

She could sew a set of matching pajamas for her grandchildren (with cellophane-wrapped quarters in the neatly turned besom pockets), roll out crisp sugar cookies so thin you could read through them, make homemade raspberry-apple jelly sealed under paraffin in individually labeled jars, braid a gorgeous—and perfectly symmetrical—rug out of scrap fabric, grow a garden of snapdragons in a spectrum of fascinating colors, and patiently, politely lose endless games of Clue with her matching-pajama-clad grandchildren—usually all in the same day. We had four wonderful, loving grandparents, but our grandfathers died when my sister and I were very young, Grandma Marie lived in Colorado, and Grandma Ester lived only two hours away—and ended up living with us as she started declining late in her long, remarkable life—so I knew her the best. We’ve finally outgrown our besom-pocket pajamas and spent our last cellophane-wrapped quarters, but we now have a fourth generation of her descendants reverently making paper-thin sugar cookies on her well-loved baking sheets.

When you clean out your spice cupboard and discover you’ve accidentally been running an opium den

Does anyone else think this snow we're covered in is weird and probably haunted by ghosts?

It's light and fluffy, but solid and not-blow-around-y. And when you shovel it, it falls like sand exactly where you put it. THIS IS NOT NORMAL SNOW, PEOPLE. It's like pie-crust dough before you add the last two tablespoons of ice water. It's the clumping cat litter that sifts through the scooper when you dig out the rocks of calcified cat pee. (For the record, I try my best not to get those two things mixed up when I'm baking.) It's white Play-Doh that you accidentally left the lid off of overnight. It's those tiny freeze-dried marshmallows that you find in packets of shitty powered cocoa mix. It's driveway dandruff mixed with street scabs. IT'S FREAKING ME OUT.

krumkake (say it with me: CRUMB caca):

a thin, crispy, bigger-than-your-hand Norwegian waffle cookie rolled into an unwieldy cone shape for two purposes: 1) to fool you into thinking it can hold ice cream or any other delicious treat without crumbling all over everything the second you try to eat or even hold it; 2) to crumble all over everything the second you try to eat or even hold it anyway

The heartbreak of meringue drift

The struggle is real.

krumkake (CRUMB caca):

a thin, crispy Norwegian waffle cookie rolled into an unwieldy cone shape for two purposes: 1) to fool you into thinking it can hold ice cream or any other delicious treat without crumbling all over fucking everything the second you try to eat or even hold it; 2) to crumble all over fucking everything the second you try to eat or even hold it anyway

Croissant Puff:

Delicious Christmas brunch item or Jake’s new elf name?

Wasting leftover cookie frosting is a sin

And “sin” rhymes with “insulin.”

We “got a good do” on the cookies, as my Norwegian forebears used to say