Feats of derring do and sprinkles. And icing.

A few days ago, I was at the grocery store buying this and that and also this:

I totally admit that I was seduced by this picture, just as I will totally admit that I am a sucker for an actual Pop Tart, as long as it is a fruit flavor. I prefer, I admit, the kind of Pop Tart that has multicolored sprinkles, although in the case of the cherry Pop Tart, the red sprinkles on pink icing will do.

Where was I.

Right: Pop Tarts, homemade. 

While I'm admitting things, I'll also admit that I was feeling a little blue at the end of the day today. I had gathered my wits to finish a report and to make headway on another report, and yet--and yet, my son is still moving across America and there is nothing, not one thing, that is going to change that fact. It's a good thing, I'm proud of him and excited for him, but I will miss him. In the hour before the dark, that's what I was feeling blue about. 

I thought to myself, I'm going to Target, balm of any wound. Except, I thought, not really. No, I thought, I'm going to make something. I'm going to make those Pop Tarts.

Of course, to do that, I had to find the magazine wheresoever I had lain it. This involved roaming from room to room, and thinking about my personal failings and feeling bluer, mostly because there were no lights on, and where was that GD magazine? 

So I turned on some lights, and found the magazine, and opened it to the Pop Tart page. It was a very simple recipe. A pretty basic pastry, with egg and a little milk, so also with more richness. Plenty of butter. Blueberry jam as a filling. A very simple icing. Sprinkles. I set to work.

The recipe said it would make six pastries. And though the only people living in this house are me, the historian, and for a very abbreviated time, my son, and Bruiser, I thought, Six is not enough. And doubled the recipe.

Here is some of the butter...

...cut in tiny cubes, per my butter pastry technique...

...on top of the flour and salt, waiting to be cut in...

which, in my method, is more like rubbing in.

here's a pretty good looking pastry. possibly I didn't
get the butter as incorporated as it should have been--
there was a fair amount of melting as it baked--but still,
I think this is a handsome, good looking pastry.

baking like bosses in my oven my oven my oven!

vanilla icing, my men and my women, and the best

sprinkles, which are sprinkles of many colors, just like

the Biblical coat.

Will these pastries stave off loss? No, they will not. But they did stave off a pointless trip to Target, and they are delicious. And that, pretty much, is what pastries are for.

Style notes at the end of January.

1. first of all,

 

2. navy blue nail polish

3. By all means, if a blue sweater arrives in the mail in the afternoon, put it on directly. You will be all the cozier.

4.  All the colors of blue look good worn together, in my opinion.

5. And now it is clear: this is the reason you bought navy blue suede driving moccasins when they were on sale at Target, even though you didn't technically need navy blue suede driving moccasins.

6. little silver earrings.

7. (curly hair is either a trial or total liberation, but sometimes you might want to put it up into a ponytail when it's damp, just to remind it who is boss.)

8. turquoise parachute-silk scarf (in case you need to jump out of a plane on a moment's notice).

9. your gray coat, because sometimes, gray is a species of blue.

The morning after.

When I woke up, my eyes felt like a desert, from the tears of the night before, I think. I had an election hangover, if you will. I checked the interweb, mostly from habit. What were people saying? I think I might miss all those voices I sought out, trawling the commentary sites, the papers, the blab-o-sphere. Although, and on the other hand, I might not miss them all that much. I watched the snow falling. I observed my spirits both rise and . . . not fall, exactly, but I did feel a tiny bit blue. What is that about? I think it's the huge tide of emotion, spilling over when the newsdroids called the election, and the speeches. I was moved by McCain's concession--as gracious as one could ever hope, and then Obama's, which was thrilling and overwhelming and fitting and stirring. I had never heard before how the refrain Yes, we can worked in the context of a whole speech--how the power of it rose and intensified.

I know there's a lot of reasons to be judicious, given everything that's ahead, but I feel full of hope, and today it was good to come back to that, as I took a walk, got ready for the day, wrote, rode the train, started a new book. I kept coming back to that hope, over and over and over again.