Ahhh…the Christmas season. Supposedly filled with festive, good-spirited cheer, I’m sorry to say that holiday shopping really brings out the beast in some people. Today I made my yearly trek to the Houston Ballet’s Nutcracker Market, an shopping event held every year here in the Bayou City. It starts Thursday and ends Sunday, but my MIL INSISTS that we all get there when it opens on Thursday morning at ten. We, being my mom, my MIL, and me.

Traffic is a mess, parking is way out, lines are L-O-N-G, and these women are push-y! You would seriously not believe. It’s like a cattle drive: ladies weighed down with purses and purchases, going with the flow or fighting up-river. Women in kitten heels and leather pants and feathered sweaters and anything else you can imagine, all crammed into a convention center type space (not the enormous George R. Brown Convention Center that hosts the annual quilt show, but still). Women wander around with no sense of direction, no concept of where their belongings begin and end, sipping bloody marys and sampling the rather stunning array of holiday food items laid out for a taste. In the background are rotating children’s choirs and the raucous, boistrous cacophony of women’s voices.

Just writing about it gives me the heebee-jeebees. It’s really rather amazing that I make the trek back every year–it’s so not me. But I do. And every year I find that special something that I would never have found anywhere else.

But I’m not crazy. If the line’s too long, I pass it up. If the price isn’t right, I keep on walking. But some of these ladies will stand in a thirty minute line for restaurant spaghetti sauce or Houston-famous tamales. Not me. I’ve been going to this event for fifteen years–I no longer have stars in my eyes. Now I just want to get in and get out. The pushy crowds have ruined for me. But still, I go.

And tonight, I suffer. Like an idiot, I wore boots, parked off-site, hoofed it in, through the market, and then back. Aaaiii, it hurts…

I was in the library yesterday checking out Mansfield Park for the second time. I only got halfway through last time, and it was months ago, so I’m starting over. On my way out, I noticed the display in the entryway that gets rotated every couple of weeks or so. It was chock-full of fifties romances for the ‘young modern’. Romances for those women inspired by Rosie the Riveter to work outside the home, delving into all manner of womanly professions.

My favorite title was Sue Takes Up Psychotherapy, but there were all sorts of respectable professions represented: teaching, copy-editing, catering, advertising. I actually giggled, pouring as I was over the titles and pictures on the covers of these old-fashioned romances. And as soon as I got to my car, I jotted down a few notes so as not to forget this curious little experience.

When I got home, I Googled ‘young moderns’ and actually hit on a woman who blogs about them, reviewing the ones in her own collection: Career Romances for Young Moderns. She has this to say about them:

‘…because these were career romances, the books usually ended when the women gleefully give up their career for a man. The books paint a hilarious picture of a business world that’s thankfully out-of-date. They’re a little hard to come by today, but can be found in used bookstores and online.’

I’d actually like to get my hands on one of these, just to see.

I’m always so inspired by Beck’s foodie posts (she also hosts a Kitchen Party on the Canadian Urban Mom site). I want to try new recipes and be that mom who’s always got a casserole in the oven and a yummy dessert to finish out the meal. I want to the Martha Stewart of League City, churning out adorable cupcakes and awe-inspiring decorations in a fraction of the time she and her staff must spend. And I’d probably try my hand at it if it weren’t for a couple of little road blocks.

The biggest among them is the fact that I’ve decided to focus my spare time on my writing–to give it a shot and see where it leads. Maybe after a while the frustration will get to me, but not yet. So for now, my partner in crime is the computer, rather than the stove. Another impediment to my culinary exploration is my family. They’re very picky. I’ve posted my husband’s many and varied Fear-Factoresque food aversions, and the two boys are about on par with that. Then there’s my own squeamishness over starting something–and paying for something–that’s just going to end up in the trash. So you can see why we rotate the same fifteen or so meals through our monthly menus.

But!…last week I did try a new recipe. I made Ginger Pear Muffins from scratch!

And…wait for it…nobody in my house liked them.

So I took the whole bag of remaining muffins to my mom’s house, and it seems my grandmother loves them! Success!

Next experimentation scheduled for two months hence.