One of my blog friends read my brother’s blog and then sent him some boxes of really cool stuff for his classroom prize box (that he normally keeps stocked with really non-cool stuff). Amongst all the goodies for my brother’s students, there was a package for my daughter.

(This woman is smart. She’s all up in the family business and knows, just from reading our blogs, that we’re within walking distance and that if she were to send a package to my daughter, it would make sense to include it in my brother’s box. If it were anyone else, I might feel a little freaked out, but ‘cause it’s Mavis, everything is super-cool. In fact, it’s better than that—being scrutinized by her is like getting a big bear hug.)

Anyway, my daughter’s package was stuffed full of little bags of all kinds of colorful fabric scraps, some already cut into squares. There was a whole bag of brand-new threads, as well as a t-shirt (“save an egg, crack a smile”) with the tag still on it. My girl glowed.

And then she sewed.

And sewed and sewed and sewed.

She’d get right to work first thing in the morning, not even bothering to get out of bed.

She set up the ironing board and the iron and then impatiently danced around me till I stopped what I was doing to go teach her how.

Her sewing machine isn’t working at present, so she’s sewing a crazy quilt by hand. I have lifted not one finger to help her, which is kind of sad because I could give her some pointers and help to alleviate some of the crookedness factor.

On the other hand, she’s doing just fine, figuring it out as she goes along. We can work on the fine points later.

This same time, years previous: butterscotch ice cream

I am discombobulated. Lit’l ol’ homebody, I-like-to-do-everything-my-way me has too much going on. So much so that it kind of paralyzes me. There’s regular stuff, like kids and rotten attitudes (mine included), cooking and house cleaning, and the skin-crawling frustration that comes from spending several months in very close proximity with each other. There’s also the outside pulls, like church, the Fresh Air Fund, correspondences, and extra-curricular activities (a writers’ group! book club! dance class! financial peace seminar with Damn, I mean Dave, Ramsey!). And then there’s the added stress of a half-dozen doctor appointments (the proverbial wrench thrown into the well-oiled machine), thanks to The Whomping Shovel, and its accompanying juggling act that is childcare. Perhaps the worst part, though, is that my brain has flipped out on me, gone all spastic. It refuses to buckle down and stay focused. Instead, it wants to experiment with new recipes and knit scarves and sort clothes and watch movies and call friends and read my mother’s book and create handwritten Works of Art, and when it can’t, it throws a sulking fit complete with protruding lip, much sniveling, and some good old-fashioned foot stomping. My brain needs to go on time-out.

In an attempt to calm myself down, I invited a new-to-me friend over for coffee and made cream scones to accompany.

I made these scones a long time ago, and then I lost the recipe and then I found it but forgot to write about it, and then yesterday rolled around and when I woke up, I laid in bed for a few minutes pondering those cream scones. The more I thought about them, the more excited I got. So I threw off the comforter, went downstairs, and over the course of the next couple hours, amidst the medicine distributions, the floor sweepings, the granola doling-out, the order barking (brush teeth! bring in wood! pick up shoes! feed the dog!), I managed to whirl some flour with butter, douse the whole crumbly mess with a bunch of rich cream, and bake up a tray of light-as-fairy dust delightfulness.

My new-to-me friend loaded up her plate with two scones right off the bat and then later, when I came back into the room after putting the little boy in yet another time-out, she confessed to helping herself to another one. Not that there was any need to confess. I doubt she has any idea how her ravenous appetite tickled me all the way down to my toesies. Inside my stressed-out body, I actually did a little whoop-and-holler jig. Cooks like me, we love people who eat.

These cream scones are a cinch to mix up, but baking them can be a little touch-and-go. They’re so stuffed with butter and cream that in the oven they slump and spread (like certain body parts will if you indulge too frequently) and butt up against each other. I’ve attempted to fix the problem by setting the tray of cut scones in the freezer for 30-60 minutes prior to baking and then popping them directly into a very hot oven. It does help, some. But still, the finished scones are more than a little on the rustic side, like me and my life.

Cream Scones
Adapted from Bernard Clayton’s Complete Book of Small Breads

These scones are delicious fresh from the oven, but even when they are a day or two old, they’re nothing to sneeze at. While hot, they are quite flaky. For this reason, I don’t recommend bothering with butter or jam—it’d be too cumbersome. Besides, they’re so rich, they really don’t need enhancements.

If you don’t have cake flour, just use all regular flour. I suspect they’ll still turn out fine.

2 cups flour
½ cup cake flour (I used Softasilk)
½ cup sugar
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, cold, roughly chopped
3/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup milk
3/4 cup currants, optional
extra cream and Demerara sugar, for glaze

Put the flours, sugar, salt, and baking powder in the bowl of a food processor and pulse to blend. Add the cold butter and pulse till the butter has broken down into smaller chunks but is not completely incorporated. Add the cream and milk and briefly pulse.

Dump the contents of the bowl onto a work surface, sprinkle over the currants, if using, and quickly bring the dough together into one large ball with your hands—do not knead. If the dough is too sticky (mine wasn’t), add a little more flour.

Divide the dough in half and shape each half into a 6-8 inch disk. Cut each disk into eight wedges. Place the scones onto a greased baking sheet and scoot the tray into the freezer for 30-60 minutes.

Immediately before baking, brush the scones with a little cream and sprinkle with sugar. Bake the scones at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes. The scones are very fragile when they come out of the oven, so let them set up on the tray for another 10 minutes or so before transferring to a cooling rack. Serve warm.

Yield: 16 scones

This same time, years previous: Molly’s Marmalade Cake, foods I’ve never told you about, part three

After countless phone calls, two trips to the ER, consultations with various nurse-friends and non-nurse-friends, and a hike across town to another doctor, we are totally exhausted. So tonight, instead of going to my book club, I decided to stay home in favor of an evening of dish washing, bath taking, sibling wrestling, fireside relaxing, and book reading. The activities—both the chaotic and drudge, the relaxing and fun—are blessedly, thankfully, normal.

Slowly, slowly, sloooowly I’m coming down from the cliff that mothers shoot up when doctors say things like “leaking fluid from the central nervous system” and “CAT scan” and “meningitis” and “hairline fractures.” Gradually, my insides are relaxing, my speech is slowing.

I still feel my little boy’s (‘cause it’s my little boy that took us for this spin around Wild Worry Town) forehead about six times every hour, and I continually make him turn his head to the light so I can check in his ear for leaking fluids, but he’s shaking off that horrible lethargy that made me so sick with nerves and he’s picking up speed, so it’s kind of hard to catch him long enough to lay hands on him anymore.

In other words, he’s much, much better.

What happened was this: my husband was digging a hole with a bar and the little boy was “helping” with the shovel and the shovel got in the hole and the bar came down on it and—WHAM!—the handle of the shovel leaped up and smacked the little boy upside the head, right behind his left ear and along the jaw line. He cried an awful lot.

At lunch (this was on Saturday), he didn’t want to eat. He said his tooth hurt, but he was pointing to the opposite side that got hit and everyone was fussing about the food, so I just chalked the complaint up to whiny-ness and made him eat it.

It wasn’t till supper that something he said made me check in his mouth. There was blood mixed in with his scrambled eggs and the back quadrant of his molar was split down to the gum, just like a log of wood when someone takes an ax to it but doesn’t make it the whole way through.

Our doctor said we should go to the ER, so my husband took him. The ER doctor breezed in and out, never even seeing the break. (I know this, because I called the ER the next morning to have them read me the records.)

That night, the shovel-whacked kid developed a fever and intense pain in the left ear. Medicine three different times, hot water bottles twice, and still he cried. During church (yes, I took him, socallmecrazy—I figured he was injured, not sick, and I like going to church), I noticed there was water in his ear. After Sunday school I corralled a nurse and riddled her plum-full of questions. Other people weighed in. Sick kid—I mean, injured kid—just laid there, playing the part of Pathetic to the hilt.

So back to the ER my husband went. After four more hours, a CAT scan, and lots of waiting while the doctor consulted with other doctors, they came home. We were to be on the alert for a spiking fever, so I was up for a couple hours last night with a feverish boy (103 degrees, which is not considered “spiking” in our hot-blooded family) and my runaway imagination.

Today’s ENT doctor decided we ought to treat it as an ear infection, which it is. How he got it, we can’t be sure—the slight cold he had? the trauma from the blow?—but in 24 hours I expect him to be as right as the rain that is falling this very minute.

There’s still that pesky broken tooth to take care of. So tomorrow we’re off to see the dentist, wheee!

This same time, years previous: the morning after