Guest Post from Erika: On Being in Control

Here's one that Pawlene could teach me a lot about. Pawlene has very little control over her life. She chooses where she sleeps, and that's about it. She depends on us (me) to feed her, give her water, protect her from danger (Peter), and clean out her litter box (We tried to get her to "go" outside and the poor thing actually held it until we let her back in, at which point she RAN to her cat box to relieve herself. Sigh.) So she has no control over anything, and yet she seems perfectly content. Ok, we take pretty good care of her, but STILL.

I, on the other hand, wrestle daily with the issue of being in control of anything, most of all my happiness, which should be under my control, RIGHT??? Here is an example: I read an article about "creating happiness" that suggested that small things make a big difference. For instance, making your bed will give you a little burst of seratonin or whatever those happy-making chemicals are in our brains. You make the bed and then each time you walk by your neatly made bed, you sigh with happiness. All is right in the world. I figured I would give it a try. I made our bed. I made Peter's bed. I smiled and felt content. Less than 10 minutes later, Peter had pulled all the covers off of his bed. The author of that article clearly does not have a two and a half year old.

The holidays are a particularly trying time for control freaks like me. I actually felt like I had everything under control with our holiday preparations until Peter was hit by a double ear infection (no pre-school for him!) and I was flattened by a strange flu-like illness, despite the fact that I got my flu shot early in the season in order to be in control of my health come flu season. Sigh.

My low point might have been today, as I prepared to cross "Make holiday peanut brittle" off my list. First, I put my favorite Christmas CDs on the stereo to create the appropriate festive atmosphere. I quickly discovered that one of our speakers (which had mysteriously "fixed itself" while Martin was home) has blown out again. Not to worry! I figured out how to make all of the sound come out of the remaining functional speaker and cranked it. Didn't sound half bad.

Back in the kitchen, I gazed out of our picture window at the new squirrel feeder that I installed this afternoon in an effort to distract the squirrels from our BIRD feeder. Yes, I know. I was always one of those people who scoffed at feeding squirrels, but the birds have all but abandoned their feeder and I have grown attached to the furry little rodents (see previous post), so just preventing them from eating the bird food was not an option.

The squirrels are ignoring their new feeder. Instead, the new juvenile squirrel I've been watching was hanging upside down, just like mama taught him, and scarfing the bird seed out of the bird feeder, right next to the darned squirrel feeder. Ok, well I can't control squirrels. I turned to the task at hand: peanut brittle.

For my 40th birthday celebration, I made the peanut brittle recipe from the Tartine cookbook and it turned out beautifully. Froze perfectly as well (I just found some leftover in the freezer and it was still tasty!). It was also easy to make, as I remembered.

The trouble started when the sugar didn't seem to be dissolving on schedule. Impatient, I assumed that the concoction's cloudy appearance had to do with the dark corn syrup and not the un-melted sugar. Wrong. Step two is to heat the stuff up to 264 degrees. It started smoking by 220. By the time it got to 240 I had to throw the kitchen alarm in the mud room and turn the stove top fan up to high. I'm not sure the temperature ever got to 264, because I literally could not see the thermometer through the smoke.

Picture all of this happening with Bing Cosby crooning in the background and squirrels thumbing their noses at me through the picture window.

At any rate, I'm throwing out this batch of brittle as soon as it gets cool enough to handle (I tasted it, and even Julia Child would have trouble selling this as "blackened brittle").

At least I checked off (most) of the rest of my list today. Checked off or otherwise eliminated. "Make wreath" was downgraded to "Buy wreath" and then I had to move that one to another day because I was overwhelmed by the selection at the craft store. I know, I know. The holidays are not about how beautiful your house looks (thank goodness!) or how delicious your treats are. I just want to make a nice space for my family and friends to gather, and I want to feed them special treats. It's how I show love and appreciation. So my peanut brittle may not be perfect. Tomorrow I'm going to try toffee instead. And let the squirrels eat whatever they want.