To get this, figure out the name of the piece of music and look up the imperative form of the Polish word for “to roll out dough.”
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Grinding
The Boy always likes helping in the kitchen. He likes helping anywhere, but especially in the kitchen. These days of Advent, that’s always a good thing: K can use all the help she can get in the kitchen.
Tonight: filling for the Christmas Eve dinner dumplings — the uszka (for the barszcz) filled with mushrooms and the pierogi stuffed with a sauerkraut-mushroom mixture. There’s lots of sauteing and grinding. We probably go through two sticks of butter in the process.
“We’re Polish, so that means we use butter for everything,” the Boy exclaims as we cook.
Tonight, we try out our new grinder attachment for the silver Beast, which usually sits on one of the racks in the basement but has spent Advent on the counter top upstairs. We finally have enough counter space to do it, why not?
We have definitely moved past the “It’s so new — don’t touch anything” phase of our new kitchen. It’s like the old one never existed. Certainly makes the pictures look better.
Jasełka 2016
K baked.
The Girl sang.
The Boy wrapped it all up.
10th Party
We've done it ten times now, and there are some constants, as there would be with any birthday parties. What's changed, however? The gifts. Toys are gone; jewelry has arrived.
Ten
K and I woke about the time we arrived at the hospital ten years ago.
We were eating breakfast at the time I was filling out paperwork and K was wearily filling in her midwife on the progress thus far.
By the time the kids were up, K was in the huge tub preparing for a water delivery.
When L was opening her present, she was still almost an hour away from delivery. By the time E was licking the maple syrup off his plate after a birthday breakfast of French toast, L was getting closer but still not there.
By the time my students were partaking in their improvised opłatek celebration, K was holding a clean and fragrant little girl who had already taken over our lives entirely.
By the time our neighbor Santa arrived, Nana and Papa had already arrived and been reveling for some time in their new status as Nana and Papa.
Ten years and everyone around us, except for L, wonders how the time disappeared so quickly. Hasn’t L always been this tall? Hasn’t E always been tagging along behind her?
School Opłatek 2016
Early Christmas
A package for Christmas from the Polish shop.
Plums in chocolate, finger-sized sausages ("You can eat as many of those as you want this summer in Poland," I told E when he fussed about not being able to eat yet another bit), fermented rye flour for soup (L requested it for her birthday meal -- that's my Polish girl!), fat links of sausage, German coffee (the type I always bought in Poland -- Tchibo Exclusive, which you can get from Amazon, but it's not the same, is it?), and other goodies.
When I got home, K excitedly led me to the front door to show me a box sitting by the door. "How wonderful," I thought, not realizing what was in it.
How wonderful, indeed.
The Boy’s Show
Motives
“I’m not putting it up.” The kid has a book bag on his shoulder at the start of fifth period — verboten in our school. “I told all the other teachers, too.”
How did this happen? How did no one come down on you like a ton of bricks for such insubordination? How come your mentor, who works in this building, didn’t say something? How come I’m making assumptions?
“Why?” I asked.
“Because my locker is beside Samuel’s locker, and it stinks, and every day my bookbag stinks, and I’m not going to have it stinking anymore.”
Do you not realize that most teachers are so imminently reasonable that they would find your reluctance reasonable and offer a solution? I explain this to him.
“Now, explain to me your problem just like I showed you.”
He does. I offer to let him lock his bookbag in my closet until we can work out a solution.
“Thank you,” he says on the way out.
That all problems could be so easily solved.