When my husband asked me what our Friday night plans were, I replied, “Cookies! I made a batch of those 36 hour cookies today.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “And you plan to eat them tomorrow?”

“Yes, tomorrow night.”

He grunted, poured himself a brandy. He swirled it around, gave me a sideways look out of the corner of his eye. “What time you make em?”

“Well,” I said, sensing bad math news was coming, “I made them around 2:00. So I figure we’ll eat them, like, late Friday night. Like, after dinner.”

He grunted again, took a swig of brandy. “You can’t do math for shit,” he said, shaking his head. “Means those cookies’ll be ready at 2:00 in the morning on Saturday.” He patted me on the arm, pushed the glass into my hand. “Drink up,” he said. “I know how you get when you’re out-mathed.”

Perhaps we can’t say them because they are socially inappropriate. Perhaps we can’t say them because they reveal feelings we aren’t supposed to have. Perhaps we can’t say them because the words, their being uttered, their existence outside of our thoughts would change the relationship into which they were spoken, and that relationship should not, or cannot, be changed.

So we find other ways to express ourselves. We write letters that we don’t send. We write text messages that say what our mouths cannot. We wall the words into dark recesses of ourselves and suffer their torment as they tear toward the surface in dreams, art, inexplicable moments of desperate happiness or sorrow.

We have so many ways of dealing with words we daren’t speak.

And how.

But she espe­cially believed in Hell, and she even more espe­cially believed that my brother and I were headed straight for it because of our lat­est shenani­gans. So she decided to call an inter­ven­tion, and for an inter­ven­tion, she required the assis­tance of her best friend, LaVerne. She dialed her num­ber on the kitchen phone.

“LaVerne? Oh, I’m so glad you’re home. It’s Shirley,” my mother said, phone cord wrapped around her fin­gers. My mother’s name is Shirley. Anybody famil­iar with lat 1970’s TV sit­coms can under­stand why my brother and I found their friend­ship par­tic­u­larly amus­ing. “You’ll never believe what Amber and Carleton were doing. Last night, I found them out­side wor­shiping idols.”

She didn’t bother to men­tion that we were only pre­tend­ing to wor­ship idols. I guess it was all the same to her.

“I’m bring­ing them over to your place,” she said after a few moments. “You said you wanted Hassan to be bap­tized; well I think my kids need it, too. They can all receive the Lord together, praise God. What do you think?”

After exchang­ing quick looks at each other, my brother and I ran to the back of the house to pack up our things as quickly as pos­si­ble. Hassan had a Nintendo.

It was late in the after­noon when we arrived at LaVerne’s house. She was stand­ing on the porch wait­ing for us, her long black hair tied in a dra­matic pony­tail away from her face. She had slen­der cat eyes, and dark skin. I always thought she looked very exotic and not at all like a crazy fun­da­men­tal­ist Christian, which just goes to show that you can never judge a book by its cover. Her lit­tle boy, Hassan, was play­ing with a Tonka trunk at her feet. He was my brother’s age.

The women went inside, and my brother and I knelt down on the porch with Hassan. “What kind of candy did your mom get?” I asked. LaVerne always bought huge bags of candy when my brother and I came over. I think it was a bribe of some sort, though I was never sure what she was get­ting out of the deal.

“Skittles,”he said, throw­ing the Tonka truck into the dirt. “We have to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and sav­ior, and tomor­row we’ll all go get baptized.”

I sighed, stretch­ing my legs out in front of me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and sav­ior; I went to a Lutheran school and I believed in God and every­thing. But if we had to do all this tonight, it meant we wouldn’t have time to play Kid Nicky on the Nintendo, and I was really hop­ing to make it to the next level. “What do we have to do to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and sav­ior?” I asked.

“I accept!” my brother said. He stood up and opened the screen door. Sticking his head inside and tak­ing a deep breath, he shouted, “I ACCEPT JESUS CHRIST AS MY SAVIOR CAN WE PLAY KID NICKY NOW AND EAT THE SKITTLES?”

Two voices boomed back at us simul­ta­ne­ously. “NO!”

My brother let the screen door slam shut, and Hassan pat­ted him on the shoul­der. “I already tried that before you got here,” he said. “Let’s get started on the Skittles.”

LaVerne and Hassan lived alone in a big house in East Los Angeles. His father was a musi­cian of some sort, though he wasn’t around much now that he and LaVerne were divorced. Hassan had a big room with lots of toys and a tele­vi­sion. For some rea­son, he wasn’t allowed to keep the Nintendo in his room; it was hooked up to the TV in his mother’s room, where our moms were cur­rently holed up, plot­ting the sal­va­tion of our eter­nal souls. But we man­aged to get hold of the bag of Skittles.

We poured the candy into a huge plas­tic bowl, and began shov­el­ing the col­or­ful taffy pieces into our mouths. We weren’t sure how much time we had before our indoc­tri­na­tion, so we had to use our time wisely.

Half the bowl of Skittles was gone when LaVerne and Shirley called us into the liv­ing room. We brought the candy with us.

Our moms were seat­ing cross legged on either side of an open King James Bible, wear­ing very solemn but peace­ful expres­sions. Following suit, we sat in a semi­cir­cle around the Bible. My brother and I guarded the bowl of candy between us.

“Hassan,” LaVerne said, “I want to help you accept Jesus as your per­sonal sav­ior. Part of that means learn­ing a spe­cial lan­guage that only you and God know. It’s a lan­guage that you can use in your prayers, a lan­guage that you might not under­stand when you speak it, but which will fill you with a sense of peace and joy when the words come out of your mouth. Are you ready to receive the words of the Lord, Hassan?”

She was talk­ing about speak­ing in tongues. I knew what that was because although my mother’s church didn’t take to such non­sense, my father was known to start speak­ing in tongues invol­un­tar­ily in the car on the way to school some morn­ings. His whole body would break out in goose­bumps, and he’d start prat­tling, “Ombubba shikaya olayama, opurda hicari­namm hosa­iah.” As creepy and com­pletely insane as it was, it was actu­ally very pretty, not unlike poetry. The words were melodic, and my father seemed so enlight­ened when the spirit came over him.

Unfortunately, the spirit came over him one day when a Jewish friend of mine was in the car with us. She never rode in the car with my dad again after that.

Hassan shrugged his shoul­der. “Sure, I love Jesus,” he said, stand­ing up. LaVerne stood up as well, and placed her hands on Hassan’s head.

“Oh, Father,” she said, her body sway­ing, “this your earthly son calls to you, to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. He requests the words of the spirit be given to him, oh Lord. Lord, speak to your child. Give him your words!”

LaVerne looked down at Hassan, and after a moment said, “Did the Lord speak to you, baby?”

Hassan looked up at his mother and nod­ded. “Yes.”

Tears sprang to LaVerne’s eyes. “What did He say, baby? What did He say?”

After a moment’s pause, Hassan answered, “Skittelia.”

“Skittelia?” LaVerne repeated. Hassan nodded.

My brother and I exchanged glances at each other, try­ing very hard not to laugh. The Lord, like Hassan, appar­ently very much liked candy coated taffy bites, and had cho­sen the name of the candy to be his secret lan­guage of the spirit.

Skittelia sounded noth­ing like ombubba shikaya olayama, opurda hicari­namm hosa­iah. Either my dad or Hassan was lying, and some­how, I didn’t think it was my dad.

I fell in love with the book, and knew imme­di­ately that I wanted to cre­ate ancient Egypt for myself, because I would cer­tainly be a very fetch­ing priest­ess for Isis. I looked very good in sparkly gold eyeshadow.

My baby brother and I were deeply imag­i­na­tive. In fact, my brother was so imag­i­na­tive that my mother wasn’t always entirely sure that he was alto­gether sane. He went through a phase of his life where he would gather very small objects of roughly equal size, such as peb­bles or pen­nies, and would con­fine him­self to a cor­ner, cross legged, toss­ing the objects around on the floor, rock­ing back and forth, and mak­ing strange sound effects. If a kid did that kind of thing today, doc­tors would call him autis­tic or some­such non­sense and dope him up with drugs until that silli­ness was knocked right out of him. But in those days, folks just fig­ured it was kids being kids. My mother thought it was strange, and it was, but even­tu­ally my brother grew out of it and that was that.

I say all that to say that the fact my brother and I owned noth­ing at all that even remotely resem­bled idols from ancient Egypt did noth­ing at all to deter us from our stead­fast deter­mi­na­tion to blas­pheme against Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior right there in my mother’s backyard.

“We don’t have any stat­ues of Isis or Anubis,” I pointed out thought­fully, pre­tend­ing I knew what I was talk­ing about. The for­eign names felt good on my tongue, and made me sound intel­li­gent. “But we got those two empty water cooler jugs and some art sup­plies in the garage. We could paint ‘em up and stick some jew­els on them, and then we could just pre­tend they’re ancient gods from Egypt, okay?”

My brother was two and half years younger than I, which made him about five at the time, and he did just about any­thing I told him. He nod­ded his head, hav­ing absolutely no idea what I was say­ing, and helped me lug the over­sized plas­tic con­tain­ers into the backyard.

We must have painted and glued for hours before I was sat­is­fied with how our makeshift gods looked. Painstakingly, we draped our mother’s red, silk Christmas tree skirt over a cou­ple of over­turned card­board boxes for an altar, and set the freshly dec­o­rated five gal­lon jugs on top.

“Those look great!” I exclaimed, step­ping back to admire our hand­i­work. My brother silently agreed, lift­ing up the cro­cheted afghan he held in his left hand.

“Oh, right,” I said, turn­ing him around and drap­ing the blan­ket over his shoul­ders. I took a safety pin from my pocket and secured the blan­ket in a cape-like fash­ion around his neck. I don’t know why we decided that ancient Egyptians wore capes like Superman, but it seemed right at the time. And, really, if you can use a painted water cooler jug for the god­dess Isis, I sup­pose noth­ing is com­pletely out of the question.

We arranged our­selves around the altar, and I raised my hands to the sky, throw­ing my head back melo­dra­mat­i­cally. I sum­moned all the seri­ous I had at my dis­posal, along with the biggest, most impres­sive words in my vocab­u­lary. I had for­got­ten the gold eye glit­ter; fancy words would have to suffice.

“O won­drous and inim­itable lady Isis! We are your hum­ble ser­vants, born to honor and serve thee!” Ancient Egyptians cer­tainly spoke in Elizabethan English. If it was good enough for the Hebrews, it was def­i­nitely good enough for a priest­ess of Isis, even if I didn’t have any idea what “inim­itable” meant.

My lit­tle brother raised his arms, too, and said, “Amen!” I didn’t think it was right to say “amen”to an Egyptian god, but I didn’t know what else to say, so I repeated him. “Amen!”

We got down on our knees and began pros­trat­ing our­selves before these plas­tic water bot­tle idols. We man­aged a few “hal­lelu­jahs” and quite a few “amens” before my mother appeared before us, arms crossed angrily across her chest, face twisted in a fury.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.

Common sense fled me. I knew what I was about to say was the wrong answer, but I couldn’t help myself. A good, believ­able lie escaped me. My only option was the truth.

“We’re wor­ship­ing Isis and Anubis like the ancient Egyptians did,” I said.

My mother breathed in deeply, try­ing to keep her voice level. My mother could be quite a spec­ta­cle when she got angry. “We are Christians,”she hissed. “And you know that! Thou shalt have no other gods before me, remem­ber? What are you think­ing? And bring­ing your baby brother into your hea­thenry? Get your ass in the house and don’t let me ever catch you wor­ship­ing idols again! Really! What’s got­ten into you lately?”

Forlorn, I unclasped my brother’s cape and fol­lowed him into the house. The paint hadn’t even dried on our idols before we were forced to aban­don them to the twi­light. The next morn­ing, they were gone.

It was about that time my mother decided my brother and I needed to be baptized.

Seeing as how my birth­day wasn’t until the 16th, you’d think that would have posed a prob­lem. But my mother was a resource­ful woman, and she sim­ply got a hold of my birth cer­tifi­cate and erased that 6 in 16 right off the page, mak­ing my birth­day effec­tively December 1st. That’s prob­a­bly the first thing I really remem­ber learn­ing: forgery.

And that’s how I came to be enrolled at St. Francis de Sales Catholic ele­men­tary school under the tute­lage of Mrs. Parker and Sister Conrad.

Sister Conrad was about a hun­dred years old and as mad at the world as a blind man at a wet t-shirt con­test. Her favorite pas­times were whap­ping kids with a ruler and pray­ing loudly for our ever­last­ing souls when­ever we dared behave like chil­dren. I was ter­ri­fied of her and avoided her as much as pos­si­ble, which I’m sure she appre­ci­ated. Nevertheless, as fate would have it, Sister Conrad and I were to be together engraved in the annals of time and St. Francis de Sales, because she believed in tor­ment and I believed in per­sonal assault.

My par­ents and I played a game every school­-day morn­ing; as soon as I was out of the car, I’d race my father’s black Cadillac down the street. I’d run with all my might along­side the chain link fence that sep­a­rated my school from the street while my father drove as slowly as he could so I could beat him to my class­room door. I didn’t know that at the time of course. I pumped my lit­tle legs like all the demons in Hell were chas­ing me, and all I knew was that I was the swiftest girl in the world; I could out­run the fastest slug and my daddy’s black Cadillac. And when I arrived at my class­room door, once again the cham­pion, I’d be out of breath and full of con­fi­dence because if I could out­run a car, I could do any­thing.

This par­tic­u­lar morn­ing, how­ever, Sister Conrad was stand­ing at the class­room door when I got there. She fetched me by the ear and dragged me into the room scold­ing me, for there was no run­ning allowed in school! Treacherous! Horrible! Disobedient girl! There is noth­ing worse to an old, Irish Catholic nun than dis­obe­di­ence, and break­ing school rules was just about the most brazen thing one could imagine.

Only, there was one thing the Irish Catholic nuns at St. Francis de Sales hated worse than dis­obe­di­ence, and that was left-handedness. Being left-handed was a mark of Satan; we weren’t sup­posed to use our left hands for any­thing at all if we could help it. I wasn’t left-handed, thank the Lord, but the small­est boy in my class, Clippy, was, and boy did he ever catch Hell for it.

Every time Sister Conrad saw Clippy writ­ing with his left hand, she’d sneak up on him and smack his hand with a ruler. Humiliated, Clippy would switch the pen­cil to his right hand, head ducked low, and try piti­fully to write. After a lit­tle while, though, he’d always switch back to his dom­i­nant hand. Learning to write was hard enough when we were four and five; I can’t imag­ine how hard it must have been for Clippy to have to learn to write with his off hand.

The same day as my unfor­tu­nate morn­ing run-in with Sister Conrad, I for­got my lunch at home. Kindergarteners did not go to the cafe­te­ria, and if we for­got our lunch, we were shit outta luck. Luckily for me, my best friend Jaimie offered to save the day and share her peanut but­ter sand­wich with me. We sat next to each other, happy as clams, munch­ing on our sand­wich halves.

Clippy appeared from the class­room with a mis­chie­vous grin on his face. “Hey Amber,” he said, “you wanna see what I can do?”

The answer to that ques­tion is always yes. “Sure,” I said, mouth full of peanut butter.

Clippy pulled from his brown lunch sac a plas­tic sand­wich baggy, to which he had tied a GI Joe fig­urine. Eyes wide as saucers, he threw the sand­wich bag into the air and we watched in rapt joy as the sand­wich bag mag­i­cally bal­looned into a para­chute, gen­tly float­ing the GI Joe to the ground.

It was prob­a­bly the coolest thing I had seen in all my five years of life on Earth, and Clippy was absolutely beam­ing he was so proud. I was about to clap when Sister Conrad snatched Clippy by the ear. “Clippy, what do you think you’re doing? Is that garbage you just threw on the ground?”

“No ma’am!” Clippy pleaded. “It’s not, it’s not, it’s — ”

“I know per­fectly well what it is, boy! Should we add lying to your list of offense for the day? Shall we?” And she swat­ted him with her ruler, accus­ing him of lit­ter­ing.

“Now you pick that up and throw it in the trash where it belongs,” she said, eyes hard as stones. “And don’t ever let me catch you lit­ter­ing again.”

“But Sister Conrad — ”

She swat­ted him again for inter­rupt­ing her and for gen­eral inso­lence. Defeated and on the verge of tears, Clippy picked up his GI Joe fig­urine and makeshift para­chute and deposited them into the trash.

“And what is going on over here?” she asked, turn­ing to Jaimie and me. “Are you eat­ing Jaimie’s food?” she asked me, incredulous.

I knew bet­ter than to argue or explain; I’d seen Clippy get hit enough to know how use­less it was. I merely nod­ded. “Yes.”

“Horrible lit­tle girl!” she cried. “Get out of here! Give Jaimie back her sand­wich! Go out to the play­ground; I can’t even look at you! Stealing other people’s food. I won’t have it!”

I handed Jaime back her sand­wich; I couldn’t look her in the eye. I had only taken three bites of sand­wich, and I was so hun­gry. I turned and walked off toward the play­ground, my mind filled with thoughts of Clippy and his poor toy in the garbage, and my ears filled with the sounds of my stom­ach rumbling.

I hated Sister Conrad. I hated her, and wished she would die. As I walked out to the play­ground, I found myself pray­ing with all my heart for the good Lord to snatch Sister Conrad from the surly bonds of earth and whisk her off to Heaven where she could sit at the LEFT hand of God the Father Almighty (just because that would have burned her up real good) and to keep her far away from Clippy and his wicked­ness and glo­ri­ous friends who share their peanut but­ter sandwiches.

But appar­ently it wasn’t enough for Sister Conrad to embar­rass me and send me off to the play­ground half starv­ing; I was no more than twenty paces away when I heard her behind me, fol­low­ing me, yelling at me in her hor­ri­ble, raspy, old hag voice.

“Back in my day we’d have got­ten a good spank­ing for steal­ing other people’s food! ‘Thou shalt not steal’ the Bible says! And don’t think I didn’t see­ing you encour­ag­ing that hor­ri­ble Clippy to lit­ter our beau­ti­ful school! I just don’t know what is wrong with chil­dren today. Nothing a good pad­dling wouldn’t cure, I tell you what, you spoiled brat!”

And at that, I’d had it. I’d had enough of Sister Conrad. I’d had enough of her ear-pulling, hand-swatting, garbage-spewing, tor­tur­ous, hate­ful ways. I was so angry, so humil­i­ated, so hun­gry that I did what any hot-blooded lit­tle five-year-old child would do.

I turned around and punched the liv­ing day­lights out of her. I got her right in her gut with all the strength my tiny lit­tle body could muster.

And a week later, Sister Conrad up and died of a heart attack.

We found out at chapel, and when my class­mates heard the news, sev­eral of them turned to me and made chok­ing sounds, or drew their index fin­gers across their throats in a slic­ing motion. “You killed Sister Conrad,” boy whis­pered to me.

The idea that I killed Sister Conrad left me in a tizzy. Could I really have killed her? Was it pos­si­ble? For days on end kids came up to me on the play­ground and called me the witch-killer, the nun-slayer. I could get no relief. I was marked.

My mother noticed some­thing strange about my man­ner and after a few days she asked me about it. When I could hide my ques­tion no longer I blurted out, “Mom, did I kill Sister Conrad because I punched her?”

My mother drew me to her chest, stroking my hair, shak­ing her head. “No, baby,” she assured me, her voice sooth­ing. “Sister Conrad was an old woman, and it was just her time to go. Now, you shouldn’t have punched her; that was a very bad thing to do. But you had noth­ing to do with her dying.”

I pulled away and looked up at my mother. “I didn’t?” She shook her head. Crestfallen, I turned away. “Darn.”

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Thanksgiving.

I complain every year about Thanksgiving, because I grew up celebrating the holiday with extended family: siblings, aunts, cousins, friends, and tables of food. But ever since I left home, Thanksgiving has just been me and my husband, and then as our kids came along, our kids.

That’s just four people. When you grew up celebrating with dozens, four is a pretty lonely number.

Three days before Thanksgiving, I found myself standing in line at the grocery store. The cashier asked me if we were going to visit family, or if we were hosting dinner at our house. “Oh,” I replied, “it’ll just be the four of us this year. It’s kind of lonely.”

The cashier looked at me with brown doe eyes and shrugged one bony shoulder. “Hey,” she said, “at least you’re not alone.”

I’ll never be ungrateful for just the four of us again.

We pulled our family Secret Santas out of a hat after dinner last night. Today—or possibly tomorrow—we’ll watch Elf and decorate the Christmas tree. We will not be joining the hordes of shoppers fighting to spend money they don’t have on crap they don’t need. We’ll be holed up together in our little house, playing video games and noshing on leftovers.

The four of us. Just the way we like it.

Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season.

Be sure to read: The Dance Party on Jefferson Avenue to get your post-Thanksgiving grin on. This guy is genius. Want to be him when I grow up.

As you can see, my Thanksgiving shopping is done. Six bottles of wine for two people. It ought to be a good holiday.

And, okay, yes, that’s a bottle of Welch’s Sparkling Grape Juice hiding in the back, there. My mom used to buy sparkling juice for me and my brother when we were little. She called it kid wine. But she didn’t buy this brand, she brought the Martinelli’s Sparkling Apple Juice. My kids prefer grape juice. That works for me, since this was cheaper anyway.

We did buy 6 bottles of wine. It’s just that my desire for wine doesn’t understand, “You have to wait until Thursday.” So we opened the merlot. I didn’t know it at the time, but I don’t like merlot.

That’s okay, though. 5 out of 6 ain’t bad.

But it was my response. I just saw Father Jim on Friday.

I just received an email that the pastor of my daughter’s school passed away unexpectedly during the night. He was found dead this morning.

I didn’t know him. I’m not a Catholic and never attended Mass with him. In fact, I would never have known who he was at all except that I was at school with my daughter last Friday, standing the parking lot, when Father Jim walked by. My daughter smiled and waved to him. “Hi, Father Jim!” she called. He grinned and waved back.

He wasn’t old. Maybe in his 60s? I can’t be sure.

It just doesn’t seem right.

I know that seeing someone on Friday doesn’t stop them from dying in their sleep on Wednesday. But it sure feels like it should.

The best place to get donuts in Austin is Mrs. Johnson’s bakery. They keep weird hours, appealing, ostensibly, to the 420 crowd, but the donuts are soft and fluffy and not too sweet. Good texture, good taste, and they always give you a nice, hot glazed to eat in your car along with the rest of your order.

We didn’t make it out to Mrs. Johnson’s today, though. These donuts came from Super Donut in Bastrop, which while not 5-star worthy, are still super yummy.

Occasionally I bake donuts. Or rather, fry them. The trouble with making donuts is two-fold. One, I’m, terrified of hot oil. Like, sweaty palms and butterflies in my stomach scared of it. Have you ever seen that episode of Mythbusters where they put jawbreakers in the microwave and then put pressure on them, causing them to explode? Remember when the intern got the 200+ degree melted sugar splashed on her face and neck? And remember how she went screaming out of the room?

That’s what I always think about when the oil starts heating up. And to answer your question, no, I don’t cook bacon.

Anyway, the hot oil is only the first problem. The second problem is that donuts are only good within the first two hours of taking them out of the hot oil. After that they’re just sort of mediocre, and in my opinion, not worth the calories. And given that they’re a lot of work to prepare (like many yeast-based breads) I just don’t think they’re worth it.

However, I have some very fond memories of homemade donuts from childhood. My mother used to take us camping a lot, and one of the things we made were camper’s donuts. You take a roll of those refrigerated biscuits, (you know, the kind where you peel the paper off the can and then bang the can against the edge of the counter until it POP!s open) pop a hole out of the middle, deep fry those suckers, and then frost them with store-bought cake frosting and sprinkles. Super sweet. Tooth-achingly so. And probably, to an adult palette, inedible.

But my oh my they were good when I was a kid. Every time I have a donut I think of them.