Serve With Coffee (3 A.M. ~ Exercise 2)

Worry not, my dear.  Follow my instructions and everything will turn out just fine.  Start by making sure the oven rack is centered and then set the temperature to 350.  Take out a baking sheet and line it with parchment paper.  Look in that drawer there next to the foil.  Excellent.  Don’t bother measuring.  Eyeball it and tear off a piece.  Put it there on the table while I wipe down the countertops.  You can never be too sure your kitchen is clean before you begin a project.

Retrieve your ingredients and the remaining utensils.  Grab the cup measure and the spoons from the top drawer and the largest bowl from the stack in the cupboard.  Don’t forget the wooden mixing spoon…  Yes, that’s the one.  Pull down the flour and sugar canisters as well as the baking soda, salt, and cinnamon and take out the egg carton from the refrigerator.  Now go into the pantry and bring back the unopened bag of raw almonds on the second shelft.  Don’t confuse them with the roasted and salted almonds.  What a terrible mess that would make.

Now that you have everything together, mix the dry ingredients into the bowl first.  Two cups of flour, one cup of sugar minus a good shake, 2 tablespoons baking powder and a forth teaspoon of salt.  The original recipe calls for one half a teaspoon of cinnamon but be generous here.  Go wild.  You can never have too much cinnamon.  Now add the almonds.  One and a half cups.  Mix it all up.  Now in a smaller bowl…  Here, try this.  Now in a smaller bowl, whisk together three eggs and 2 teaspoons of vanilla.  Don’t let the color turn your stomach.  Make a well in the dry mix and pour this in.  Once it becomes too difficult to stir, use your hands.  Yes, your hands.  Throw that in the sink.  Wash up later.

Now turn it out onto the counter and give it a good knead.  You don’t know how to-  Push on it and fold it over.  Yes, keep doing that until the almonds stop falling out and it all comes together.  Have faith.  Use those muscles.  See.  There you go.  Feel how smooth it is? Allow me to cut it in half and then you can form the logs.  Don’t snicker, my dear.  It’s unbecoming and dough doesn’t take kindly to being insulted.  Take this half and roll it.  Once it’s roughly a foot long, flatten it with the palm of your hand.  Do the same to the other half.  Congratulations.  Now transfer them to the parchment paper and slide them into the oven.  Let them bake for half an hour and then cool completely.  Don’t be overly eager and cut them too early.  Once they’re ready, use a sharp, serrated knife and cut across the width, forming smaller wafers.  Place them all back on the baking sheet and let them cook for another 15 minutes, until they’re golden brown.

Serve them with coffee.  Bon appetit.

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[Author’s Notes:  Kiteley’s Exercise Number Two ~ Imperative.  Write a fragment of a story that is made up entirely of imperative commands… 500 words.

No entirely composed of imperatives but pretty darn close.  Arthur is his usual snarky self and I’m okay with this.  Also, biscotti is in fact best served with coffee.  Yum.]

Defining (3 A.M. ~ Exercise 1)

“Winter Weather Advisory.  Total accumulation of 7 to 13 inches possible.  Snow covered roads with poor visibility.  Use extreme caution while driving.”  It was the first of six emergency management texts displayed on my phone that morning.  The other five were reports of accidents and road closures.  A quick peek out the blinds from the comfort of my bed confirmed the state of affairs.  The dusting received Christmas Eve had grown overnight to at least a foot and the landscape outside was a white wonderland.  The proud evergreens drooped, their limbs heavily burdened.  A single set of tire tracks up the middle of the road bore witness to the escape of an adventurous, or perhaps stupid, neighbor.  Avoiding judgement seemed like the appropriate course of action.  I, too, planned on making that same journey up the snow covered drive as soon as I was showered and dressed.  Calling and canceling was an option but the prospect of spending Christmas Day in an empty house was less than appealing.  At the old Victorian on Atwood, the home fires were likely already burning, ready to receive me.  Ben and Arthur were habitually early risers.

The snowfall picked up just as the truck rolled down the driveway.  As it fishtailed up the street, the first wave of serious doubt overtook me.  If it was bad here, how bad would it be on the hills in town?  Kicking it into four wheel drive helped immensely and ‘Blackberry’ straightened out, gaining traction.  The doubt died down.  The twenty-five minute trip took nearly two hours, accumulation on the roads reducing highway speeds to a crawl, cars in the ditch warning me not to get too cocky.  Better safe and late than stranded.

Detouring around the steep hills added more time to the trip but it got me within a quarter mile of the fort gates.  The rest was walkable.  Thank God for new snow boots and good gear.  My nose was running though by the time the house came into view.  The sight immediately brought a smile to my face.  Father and son were out on the porch, bundled up for the weather, sheltered from the snow but enjoying the view.  Each was nursing something hot, steam wafting up from matching mugs.  Out on the parade field past Officers Row, a dozen people were enjoying the snow in the wide open space.  The old quarters were a popular place for winter vacations and most of the people present were likely tourists or extremely local to the surrounding fort.  Or had family close to the fort.  Jo, Alex, and Sammi were yelling and throwing snowballs at each other in an all out war, a no holds bar of exploding powder.  It was a welcome reprieve from the otherwise silent journey.  Past the nearby cliffs, waves crashed upon the beach and seagulls squawked overhead.  The sounds of home and belonging.

Ben greeted me with a chaste kiss upon the cheek, looking more relaxed than he’d been in months.  “Merry Christmas,” he offered quietly, even contentedly.

Arthur, who’d ducked back into the house to pour me coffee, joined us a moment later, echoing his son’s greeting.  “Merry Christmas, my dear.  Please tell me you didn’t walk the entire way.”

“Just from the top of the hill,” I assured him, accepting the offered mug with one hand.  Blessed coffee, the promise of warmth that starts within and works its way out.  Ben’s fingers surreptitiously slid into my other hand, squeezing gently and staying.  His gaze shifted from me to his three sons and back again.

Warmth and home took on new meaning.

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[Author’s Notes:  Kiteley’s exercise number one.   The Reluctant I.  Write a first-person story in which you use the first-person pronoun (I or me or my) only two times – but keep the I somehow important to the narrative you’re constructing.  … 600 words.

Missed the “me or my” part.  Oops.  Still, think I did pretty well with only three “I”s.  The second “I” could easily come out but… I don’t wanna.  So there.]

 

The Broomstick Christmas Tree

I was terribly set upon as a child.  While my friends and their families were donning mittens and winter jackets to trek out into the wilderness, or at least to the closest corner lot, in search of that perfect tree, my mother was reaching into the depths of her closet.  From it she pulled the monstrosity we assembled and disassembled every year.  The “trunk” was an old broomstick long ago painted green.  Drilled in at angles were tiny holes for the wire “branches”.  Once the trunk was placed in the stand, she’d go about arranging the branches on the floor according to length.  The shortest ones she placed at the top herself.  I was too tiny to reach them at first.  By the time I was ten though, I was tall enough to place those limbs myself and top the whole thing off with the yarn angel.  Mom took up a new tradition of directing from the couch.

The string of lights lasted until I was eleven.  We went without that year and the following year, a neighbor took pity on us.  Once again our tree was lit.  I missed the colored lights but the white ones grew on me.  Mom saved all the mail each year so we always had plenty of paper to work with for decorations.  She’d cut out strips and I’d tape them together into paper chains.  Snowflakes hung on the tree.  No two were the same and we made millions.  There always seemed to be enough paper clips to hold them.  Finally, we’d tape circles together to create snowmen in the windows.

Long after the real trees had died, ours was still standing.  Mom would look at it come the end of January and declare, “Maybe next month.”  Not once did it come down before Valentines Day.  We’d just redecorate with hearts and swap out our snowmen for candy wrappers.

I was set upon as a child.  Or so I thought.

An Obscenity

A shadow fell across me.  People tend to come and go along this stretch of the beach so I didn’t think anything of it.  Until the shadow refused to move.  “You’re blocking the sun,” I muttered without looking up.

A pair of dress shoes moved into my line of sight.  Only one person I know travels through sand in Italian leather.  I couldn’t resist the urge to tease him.  “A little overdressed, aren’t you, Detective?  Do you even own a pair of flip-flops?”

“Flip-flops are an obscenity.”

I rolled over to find Joe Garza smiling down at me.  Sure enough, he was wearing his usual uniform, an effortlessly elegant suit and tie.  He offered me a hand up and I took it without hesitation.  “What brings you out here?”

“I saw your car when I pulled in.”  The vintage Mustang was hard to miss.

“That explains how you knew I was here.  Not why you’re at the beach.”  Joe preferred dry desserts, starry nights, and quiet environments.  The wind and the waves weren’t his thing.

“Let’s take a walk,” he proposed seriously, crooking his elbow, like a gentlemen ready to escort a lady.

I eyed him critically.  “You do know I’m drenched, right?”

He shrugged, seemingly unconcerned.  So I gathered my towel, slung a hand around my board and slipped my other arm around his.  My wetsuit immediately soaked a portion of his jacket sleeve.  He didn’t appear to give it a second thought.  We walked a mile in companionable silence before veering up into the brush, off the established paths.  A small hive of police bees swarmed our eventual destination.  Some were conducting interviews.  Others were working the scene.  A very small crowd of morning joggers lingered at the line.  In the middle of it all lay the victim in Joe’s current case.

“Nothing like a little murder to start your morning,” I commented flippantly.

He held up the tape so I could duck under.  “You’re out here regularly.  I thought maybe you could help me identify her.”

I took one look and nearly lost my cookies.

(Original fiction with my NaNoWriMo characters.  A 1st person exercise.)