Blueberries in the arctic in February, and other small everyday miracles.

Two days ago, I became an aunt!  My brand new niece, Olea Avelin, arrived into the world on the 21st.  I could not be more stoked!  And yet...

Yesterday was a day of small fumbles.  I noisily knocked over a half-full glass of water almost immediately after waking, and the rest of the day seemed to be full of similar blunders.  I have days like this regularly.  I imagine most people do.  Sometimes the blunders pile on a comic edge, and other days they slowly wear on my patience until by nightfall I feel dramatically plagued by evil spirits.  Yesterday, they had the persistent dull quality of mounting irritation.  I would just be thinking I had calmed and righted myself when I would trip over the next little hurdle.  Ugh!

By evening, I had decided there was probably nothing for it-- I should give up on attending to significant goals, and probably just "veg out."  There is so little harm that can be done from the seat of a couch, right?  

Except I was still restless, and a little bit annoyed to not be more actively battling the adversarial edge of the day.  Suddenly, I realized it was already 7 pm, and I was hungry.  I ate a banana, pretending that was dinner, and then had the wistful thought I have so often when I am a little bit grumpy and a little bit hungry: "If I had made cookies two hours ago, I would already be eating them…" 

Well, as it just so happens, I know a lady who makes possibly the world's best cookies.  I know a lot of people think they know a lady who makes the world's best cookies, but I really do.  She will probably guffaw at this, but from an outsider's perspective, I think her secret is her incredible patience.  She knows, for instance, that it is worth it to brown the butter before you make the cookies.  Even after tasting hers and eating the proof of this, I have never actually had the patience to try it, because I always have thoughts about cookies when I want them already.  In my rush to speed up or preferably even reverse time, I always skip the embellishments and throw together a basic, familiar dough and make due.  I am usually not disappointed in the moment-- I mean, a cookie right out of the oven is delicious even if it's the trashiest kind-- but sometimes I see what people are posting on their fancy baker blogs and I feel a bit ashamed that my cookie action isn't more sophisticated.  You wouldn't think yesterday, a day of personal mini-struggles, would be a likely day for broadening my horizons, but as luck would have it, my baker friend with the magic cookie touch recently posted a new favorite cookie recipe on her blog, and I stumbled upon this at exactly the right moment to save the day!  This is big, people: whole wheat chocolate chip cookies are not about health, they are about flavor.  This is the take-home central wisdom of everything wonderful about whole-grain baking.  Forget about vitamins, think about making your tongue happy!  

I won't steal Amelia's thunder-- her post has all the essential information and pertinent persuasive points needed (and a second-hand thanks to Kimberly Boyce and her Good to the Grain for providing the original inspiration).  Suffice it to say in the space of this post: last night's late-evening rally round the cookies completely changed the game.  I felt like the glass was half-full again, and moreover I didn't really care if I spilled it.  Geez, seriously: for a good time, make these.  I want to scribble that in every bathroom stall on the planet.

So I awoke into the new day feeling energized for happy things, and particularly inspired by my previous evening's baking success, and decided that the best way to start my Sunday would be with blueberry pancakes.  Specifically, whole-grain blueberry pancakes… duh!  That's what I'm saying, whole grains aren't for health nuts, they are for people who love eating maximally delicious things.  I turned to Smitten Kitchen for a good recipe, and was utterly thrilled with the results.  So was Tyler.  We ate them before we could take pictures.  Sometimes you can't be thinking about things like your silly blog, you just have to be rapturously eating.  

But, being then further energized by the sugar and the blueberries and the beautiful, silvery daylight, I donned my full outdoor gear so I would have no excuses about feeling chilly and walked Tyler to work.  The last week, we've been out and about and enjoying things like 

a bonfire on the beach near our house,

and a snowmobile trip into the valley

complete with snow angels,

so it has been a good week for the outdoors.  Tyler's sister and her family were here, which kind of kick-started our energy for local adventure.  But it has been a while since I just went wandering for the plain love of it… 

After the walk, I washed the windows, as a kind of celebration:

The left hand side is before and the right hand is after… we can see again!

And then, my sister called with news of her and the baby.  Apparently, over there, it's been a day of minor irritations, spilled breast milk, that sort of thing… sounds familiar!  I think my day yesterday might have been partly going the way it did because in the back of my mind, I was curious and maybe a little bit anxious about how it was going in my sister's radically altered reality.  The only baby I have ever had any intimate acquaintance with now has her own to care for… it's wild!  This is never going to be a blog about babies or parenthood, that is certain, and yet I can't help wondering how it's going for my sister.  She sounds great, in that she sounds like herself.  While she talked about the little hurdles in her day, I realized that her attention to them was actually a sign that everything was ultimately, in the grander sense, ok.  Maybe they even provide a little bit of necessary grit, something beside which the thrill of joy can shine brighter for.  It's a bit like the way the bitter flavor of the whole wheat flour compliments the sweetness of the cookie, no?  To tie it all in together.  My grandmother Evelyn, for which my new niece is partly named, left me this unattributed quote written into a baby book:

I give you sadness

and the gift of pain,

the new moon madness

and the love of rain.

Some people I have shared that with over the years have commented they think it's rather an odd quote to leave a new baby with.  But I'm thinking on that while I imagine my niece growing up and going through her years, tripping over this and that and getting up again.  I hope she does love rain, and mud puddles, and getting wet and dirty and coming in and getting warm and dry again.  Isn't that what it's all about?