Skip to main content

A Brownie Tale

A Brownie Tale


This event is recorded precisely as it happened.The names have not been changed to protect the guilty.
Mom cut the brownies.


No, they need to cool.




x

Mom, please cut the brownies.
No.
Mom, cut the brownies like Mary cuts the cheese--quickly and in front of everyone.
They really need to cool and if you don't drop it, they will need to cool until morning.
Until morning, are you kidding me?
No, I'm not.  Turn on "Doctor Who" and be quiet about the brownies.  I guarantee the quickest way to get me to cut the brownies is to drop it and hush about me cutting the brownies.
Mom, please cut the brownies!  Oh my gosh!  This is ridiculous!
Yes, it is.  Start "Doctor Who".  I promise I will cut them before the episode is over.
Are you kidding me? How about before the opening credits are over?
Maaaaahhhhhhmmmm!
Pleeeeease!
Okay, I promise I will cut them before thirty minutes in.
5 minutes.
No way. 20 minutes.
10 minutes?
No. 20. That's my final offer.
15 minutes.  Come on that's reasonable. 15 minutes. Maaaaaahhhhhm!
Hush.  You're not helping your own cause. At all.
No, Mom come on.  Cut the browniiiiieeeeeessssss!  Puuuulllllleeeeeeaaaasssseeee!
A few minutes later, after one brownie each:
Ooooohhhhhh, I feel like I'm going to throw up.  Why did I eat that? Mom, what did you do to us?
Victory is always mine because I'm the mommy.  The recipe that fueled this frantic begging?
One box of Ghirardelli Double Chocolate brownie mix.
Double the eggs.
Use leftover coffee instead of water.
Use melted butter instead of oil.
Add a teaspoon of vanilla extract.
Cool completely before cutting..
Or, if you are a parent, cut whenever they wear you down because they won't be able to eat more than one and will fall asleep shortly from the sugar crash.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sylvia Plath

You had never heard of Sylvia Plath until you read about her in a hard-covered, non-fiction book you bought at the airport in Arizona.  The slight mispronunciation of her last name,  the mild interest in how this strange, suicidal poet was woven into a book about miscommunication with strangers. This seemed oddly delightful to me.  You never experienced Plath’s poems, read much too young grief, confusion, raw, open-mouthed pain all there in tiny, neat font on the page, an abstract fear that your happy childhood, your seemingly effortless life could not understand. Sylvia Plath poems HBO movies late at night Those magazines under Mr. Babcock’s bed that you found while babysitting his sweet son only a few years younger than you. I curl my toes around yours, under our warm covers and rest next to you, quiet pages turning, as you peer through your reading glasses at the life of Sylvia Plath neatly placed in context. 
Post a Comment
Read more

In a California Courtroom

The bailiff enters, and I can actually tell he has aged since 2013.  His mustache has more grey, the hairline receding. Before he did not wear glasses. Now he has dark-rimmed square frames. I can gauge the season because his skin is darker here in June, pale in winter hearings.  Always the tan sheriff uniform, radio pinned under his chin, badge glistening gold. He does not smile. He offers Kleenex. Constant through the last six years. Every hearing He watched me       nervous      angry      questioning      confused      crying. Four different judges, but just the bailiff and me. I wonder if he remembers me or others. Does he remember my five year restraining order?      the death threats      the talk of suicide to my two year and five year     old children? Does he recall each woman who has asked the court to sever parental rights from abusive or absent fa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rapture of the Things of Man

You know that evangelical belief some hold where the righteous shall be suddenly taken up? My Catholic heart doesn’t buy it.  Eucharist spontaneously transforming into human flesh and the mother of God appearing to children in Portugal or Yugoslavia or ushering in the rose covered tilma of Juan Diego? All this is true. But righteous humans saved from all suffering as a reward for not having sex before wedlock while loudly and quietly judging the rest of us for who we love or our use of expletives or alcohol? I don’t think so.  What will be ushered in one glorious morning, will be a rapture of the things of man.  All of our egotistical creations will be gone in an instant.  These trees, lined up in our neighborhood can stay.  Dirt paths lined by maples all the same age and height will be a lovely echo of our past attempts to think we can assert order Or that we should.  Not sure if the lawns stay or go, But the truck with the wooden trailer on my street with...
Post a Comment
Read more