gifts – Orangette

A good reason

Molly — Sun, 21 Dec 2014 06:00:00 +0000

WE ARE WELL! And now that I have dared to type that, I will spend the rest of the day sanitizing my hands, taking swigs straight from the echinacea bottle, and knocking on every piece of wood within a one-mile radius of my person. And it’s the holidays! Right! A couple of weeks ago, during a reprieve between viruses, my mother, June, and I managed to bake a double batch of Russian Tea Cakes, a cookie that my mother used to make every year when I was a kid, back when she and our family friend Barbara Fretwell would hole up together in the weeks before Christmas and churn out eight or ten kinds of cookies and candies to pack…

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Gifts ‘n’ stuff, yo ho ho

Molly — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 21:17:00 +0000

Hello again, approximately four days later than intended. Thank you for your well wishes and general kindness. I am happy to report that June, at least, is back to health, even if Brandon and I both still look and feel as though someone has crammed our sinuses full of cotton balls. Or no, scratchy wool blankets? Wet down comforters? Wet down comforters! Anyway, we’re tired of it. Of course, the days march ever on, and the holidays creep ever closer, so I’m trying to focus on that. Every year, I’m surprised anew by how much I like the ritual of choosing presents, bringing them home, wrapping them, and sending them off. Both this year and last, I am wrapping…

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From now on

Molly — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 04:35:00 +0000

Our friend Ben was here last week. He arrived on Thursday, just in time for lunch, and flew out early Tuesday morning. Even June misses him, I think. She got into the habit of standing at the top of the basement stairs – our guest room is down there, a dungeon with red deep-pile carpet and faux wood paneling and an enormous oil furnace that’s as loud as a train – and yelling, Beh! Beh! Beh! until he came upstairs. We all agree that his trip was too short, but he did stay long enough to play a ukulele duet with Brandon, to get a kiss from June, to make me a Boulevardier and a great steak, to help us host a…

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