Tea parties and cookies galore

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

A week from today is Christmas. The house smells of baking. Today the helpers make dough for another 1500 cookies and baking starts. The rest of the dough goes in the fridge for tomorrow and Thursday.

Mid-afternoon, the book group arrives for tea. It's relaxing to set out china and serving pieces brought from our life in Seattle. There's little chance to use it here since meals and events tend to be informal. I figure the women won't judge me for using good dishes and cloth napkins.

What You Are Looking For is in the Library is this month's book, a pleasant series of life-changing encounters with a librarian and books. It's a delight to discuss how each month's assignment affects group members. We have different personalities and backgrounds, which makes sitting around the table even more interesting.

They leave as W and Melvi come back from a birthday party at 6 PM. Food is put away and dishes are done within an hour. Whereupon I fall into bed with a book ...

Wednesday

W and I eat leftovers and drink hot chocolate for breakfast before calling our moms.

The Mastermind group, meeting online from around the world, gives me good counsel (guten Rat.) I follow up their advice immediately. What a relief to have trusted backup voices affirming what I know = some projects don't belong on my plate. Twisting myself into others' timelines for volunteer work is a wasted effort; neither the work nor the satisfaction are good.

Baking day. The house smells of peanut butter cookies and melted chocolate, spread on ginger cookies while the butter comes to room temperature.

IbuS and I work together though the bulk of the work is hers. I shove ChaChas (Indonesian M&Ms) into the tops of the cookies and put them onto cooling racks. They're stored in whatever we find - bread savers, cake domes turned upside down, and plastic boxes. Between, IbuS makes lunch: marinated tofu, egg sandwiches from yesterday, rice, and veggies. Pretty good.

Innumerable cups of tea get me through the day. A surprising hit yesterday was the Twinings Gingerbread Joy tea, a variation on chai flavors.

Thursday

Due to slippery conditions, rain, and Christmas proximity, the mountain hike is cancelled. Group members wish each other Merry Christmas or Happy Christmas, depending on the country of origin.

Instead of a hike, W and I walk along the river to Dalaraos for Sunda food. It's mid-morning as we eat but we wander up the hill before catching an angkot (taxi bus) partway up to our intersection.

The string needed to close our cookie bags is nowhere in sight, said an admin. Since hearing that, we've tried to find colored string in several shops, including this stationer.

From the outside, the stationary shop looks like a dark hole with graffiti sprayed on its corrugated walls. When you move to a new location, you get used to a different storefronts as well as sorting out what's available inside.

The beloved (or hated) durian fruit is ripe next door at the new fruit shop. Each spiny oval is 10-15" (25-35cm). The rack might be outside the shop, but you can smell the fruit from inside and from the street.

When we get home at 11 AM, IbuS and IbuA are baking and chatting. I remind IbuA that she needs to finish the chocolate dough for 1200 cookies today. She whips up 7 or 8 double-batches and bags them. In the last month, we've gone through at least 12-15 kg of butter, bags of flour, and more sugar than I could track.

While the mixer whirs, IbuS bakes cookie sheet after sheet in several ovens. The timers ding ding ding all day. I lift the cookies off the sheets onto cooling racks and put them away. The last batch is baked before they go home. The full bins and boxes are stowed in tubs, along with about 2500 other cookies, made over the last few weeks. Tomorrow we package!

Friday

W and I drop into the hall to check where the string is to close the bags. We've been told they're not at the hall so we ransacked our house, to no avail. This morning on the way home from the walk, we pop into the IES storage basement to root through all the bins. We check various rooms at the hall. Nada.

Before we go home in defeat, I decide on another look in the kids-classrooms. On the shelf is the colored string we've wasted time trying to find. It is in plain sight. We take it home and I cut the string before anyone arrives.

When everyone shows up, the assembly line starts on the first batch of 140 bags. IbuA has agreed to work an extra day and Alice helps us get this DONE. It's one task per person until you have capacity to help someone else. Then you hop over and help others catch up.

• open the bag and put in 2 kinds of cookies - IbuS
• put in a specialty (frosted) cookie and 2 more kinds of cookies - IbuA
• pull the string through a label
• close the bag with a bow and put it into the "finished" tub - Alice and I.

It's efficient and we finish the first run in record time. The second (120 X5 cookies) is packaged before the second batch of labels arrive. when they do, we add the labels onto the strings and tuck those away. The third run (+100 X4 cookies) goes even faster.

We've made 370 bags before 11 AM. The helpers wash the emptied storage boxes and the floor, make lunch for themselves and PakG, and leave for home by noon. They take the cookie discards for their families to enjoy.

SO... MANY... cookies.

W and I walk to Miss Bee to get away from the smell of baking. These flowers are worth a second look.

The shapes and colors are exotic.

Dead seed pods, split open by their fall from the trees above, look festive.

I order linguine, so rich that I can eat only half. W enjoys his fish and chips.

After work, we head to Robin's for supper. His home is an artist's showcase, with prototypes of his furniture and artwork. I like these end tables, designed for ships on a cruise line.

He shows us his grandma's recipe for Rösti, a Swiss method of preparing grated potatoes. 

And I learn how to make chopped chicken the German way. It's a taste of home at Christmas time, which is comfort to a soul far away from family.

Saturday

Fresh baking arrives from Dr I. W and I enjoy one each for breakfast and a second for lunch, along with yesterday's pasta leftovers.

After a massage to unkink my back, W and I head to the hall where the worship team is rehearsing. Back by noon, there's time to write the talk for the final Sunday of the year.

It's a 3-book Saturday. Before our walk, I finish a novel Her Sanctuary about the witness protection program. Managing Leadership Anxiety has come highly recommended by several trusted leaders. I listen to the audiobook while my body is being pummeled.

The final book is Still Alice, the story of early-onset Alzheimer's. My closest cousin died of that 4 years ago; how little I knew of her struggle and her family's loss, even when she tried to explain how her memory was failing. All three books are the kind I like to learn from: well-written and engaging.

The groomers arrive to clip poodle hair in time for Christmas. Our friend's little dog joins the pack while they're gone overnight. I wonder what our family and friends are doing this weekend. Feels like they are very far away ...

Read more:

*For justice will return to the righteous, and all the upright in heart will follow it. Psalm 94:15

*A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit..The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. Isaiah 11:1-5

*Jesus said, “And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.” Luke 18:7-8

Moravian Prayer: Gracious God, we long for restoration on our own schedule, but we know your time is not our time. We have no doubt that you have heard our cries and will answer them. We thank you for your faithfulness. Amen.