Please Don't Hate Me! Here Have a Cookie

I babysit this adorable little girl who I in my Sunday School class on a pretty regular basis. Lets call her Lucy, because I don't want to put her real name out on here. The first time I baby sat her somehow the topic of food came up and I promised that some time we would bake chocolate chip cookies.

So a few hours before I was suppose to go over and baby sit her I open up my well worn copy of The Joy of Cooking and look for a chocolate chip cookie recipe. I put a bar of frozen butter into the mixer and let it thaw for a bit and start getting out the other ingredients. I had to call my dad to pick up brown sugar on the way home after my mom swore that we had some in the house. And then when I was measuring the flour it spilled everywhere. It was just kind of those aaaah what a mess moments! But everything after that went well and a made the batter and put it in a Tupperware to take to Lucy's house.

Chilling in the fridge waiting to be taken to Lucy's

With my moms warning of "Don't forget the Tupperware" still ringing in my ears, I walked up the stairs to Lucy's house and rang the bell. Her mom let me in and Lucy ran up to me asking "Did you bring the cookie dough." I told her I did and her smile was huge. 

After Lucy's mom left we set out to neatly put the cookies on a tray and into the oven. But when they came out they looked like this

Doesn't that look yummy?

All the cookies had squished together. And get this, Lucy doesn't like vanilla cookies with chocolate chips and thought I was bringing chocolate chip cookies with chocolate chips! She had a try me bite and decided that she didn't like them. But hey the cookies were amazing, if slightly under baked and a gigantic mass. I'd make them again another day. And next time I babysit Lucy I'll bring chocolate cookie dough with chocolate chips. And in case any of you were wondering, I remembered the Tupperware. My mom was quite surprised. 

Those Who Don't Learn History

When I first was given an iPod I didn't have any money to buy songs. I downloaded the few CDs I had onto my computer and then my dad introduced me to the wonderful words of podcasts. They were funny, informative, and best of all free. And I have been a huge fan ever since. I've always wanted to start a podcast, but never stuck with it. Well that all ends now.

I'd like to introduce you guys to my new podcast, Those Who Don't Learn History. Its about all sorts of history in all sorts of places. So if history is your style, or even if it isn't check it out in the iTunes store and tell me what you think. Or don't if you really don't feel like it.

The Few The Proud The Teenage Girl Scouts

Some people make fun of me for being a teenage girl scout. They think its weird, although when I ask why they never really have a concrete reason. Personally I think that the scouts is wonderful. Especially Girl Scouts. They teach girls and eventually women about their opportunities and you learn how to be a strong independent women because of it. I was a brownie, and bridged to Junior, but the troop at my old brick and mortar school closed down after Katrina hit and the troop leader moved. Later on I would learn that a lot of troops closed down for that reason in New Orleans.

Well about five years went by and my baby sister started in the Brownie troop that had recently started at my old school. It was still my current school at the time. Around the same time I listened to a podcast from the lovely women at Stuff Mom Never Told You over at How Stuff Works about the Girl Scouts and their progressiveness during the suffrage movement and beyond. The combination of those two things spurred me into looking into rejoining the Girl Scouts. And through my research I learned that there was something called a Girl Scout Juliet. What the heck is that, you might ask. Well, a Juliet (named after Girl Scout founder and all around awesome person Juliet Gordon Low) is a Girl Scout that works without a troop. Meaning she does things on her own. Awesome I thought, since we hadn't had a troop for girls my age at my school EVER.

So my mom and I dragged our butts out to the Girl Scouts of Louisiana East Headquarters to get my stuff and sign me up as a Juliet. But when we were there someone contacted us that a few other girls were getting together and started our own troop. I feel like I have talked about my troop before, so lets skip ahead to this winter, when my service unit was holding a sing along. For anyone who isn't "in the know" a service unit is a bunch of troops in one area of the region.

The leader of my baby sisters brownie troop asked if I would help them learn a song for the sing along, so one Friday I went with my mom to the meeting and for an hour was in charge of teaching about 30 girls to sing Sleigh Ride and You are my Sunshine. Not the easiest task, makes you think twice about having... 30 kids.

Anyway, I go to the sing along to volunteer, because the email that was sent out said that Senior and Ambassadors were needed to run things. Come to find out I am THE teenage volunteer. There were are few moms and troop leaders but no one else under the age of 20. So I passed out cookies and kept people in line until it was time for the Sing Along portion. Where my baby sisters troop leader had me go and sing with them to "keep everyone on key."

After the sing along portion ARNO gave a presentation, and I walked around the area to make sure everyone staying where they were suppose to be and no one was doing anything that could harm them. Slowly people trickled out, and it was mostly Girl Scout staff and troop leaders left. I was standing with my mom as she talked to someone about cookies or something when a woman wearing a Girl Scout of Louisiana East polo came up to me and asked who I was. After hearing that I was "the" teenage volunteer, she asked me to give an interview.

I had seen people with a video camera wandering around all day, filming the singing and talking to other scouts. Eventually I found out that they were from something called "Speak of America" or something along those lines, I can never remember. They asked me about why I liked being a teenage girl scout and with the 100 year anniversary of the start of the scouts coming up how I think it helped the feminist movement. After words the woman in the polo came up and said that she really liked my answers and said that I was very eloquent for someone my age. She then asked if I would be ok with coming with her for some press things. I said yes, and my mom was ok with it so we'll see where that leads.

A Gem Hidden on a Shelf

Sometimes just browsing the shelves at a library will unlock treasures you never knew existed. That seems to be a common theme on my blog, but those are some of the truest words I have ever well... written I guess. Every book is a story waiting to be told behind its covers. And if you wander the shelves of an old library you might find a story that will stay in your memory for ever.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton is one of those stories. I fell upon it randomly at the library and decided to take it home with me. The story is told by many points of view, in many time periods and places from present day Australia to before the turn of last century London. It hops place and time in every segment and can sometimes be very confusing, however by the end of the first part the characters have become family and the mystery they are trying to unravel your own.

The premise is about a little girl, at about the age of four, found alone with a suitcase on a dock in Australia in 1913. The man that runs the wharf takes her home and ends up adopting her, but not telling her that she is not the biological child of himself and his wife until she is 21. And at the age of 65 she is given the suitcase she is found with. Nell, that is the woman's name, goes on an adventure to find out who she really is but dies without truly finding out. But her granddaughter Cassandra continues the search, and take the reader on a crazy journey where you can never quite predict the out come.

The Forgotten Garden is truly a work of literary genius, and I am really surprised it doesn't have more of a following. The story is complex and weaves together like hair in a braid. As Cassandra discovers more about her heritage the reader does also but by reading about it as it "actually happens." My dad had to make me go to bed one night because I just could not put it down. I can't wait to read more works by Kate Morton and I urge you all to go and pick up a copy of The Forgotten Garden, it is worth buying. Its a story that I will read again and again over the years and give copies of to my friends so that they can enjoy the story as well.

What Would You Do?

Hearing about all of the disasters going on in the world and hearing the survivors stories makes you wonder what you would do in that sort of a situation. And you come up with a calm clear plan of action. But the truth is, thinking about a life threatening situation hypothetically in the comfort of your own home is so much different then actually living it. Because after the fact you have all of the information. But during the event there is so much confusion that normally you don't have to full story until its to late. I've heard these stories of people who refused to get on lifeboats when the Titanic was sinking because they thought there was no way something that grand and powerful could sink. The Titanic was so sturdy out on the ocean and the life boats that looked so small on the sea. But by the time they figured out that those rickety life boats were the only things that could save them, it was to late. And the great ship, the one people said was unsinkable, was going into the bowels of the Atlantic.

That's a lot like what people said about the Twin Towers. They were so tall and regal. A symbol of the modern world. Of progress. But being so massive so eye catching they were also a target. But on September 11th 2001 to most people they were offices. Until a shake that changed everything. Angel in the Rubble by Genelle Guzman-McMillan is about that day. To her, September 11th was just another work day. But after a string of events she ended up piled under the wreckage of the second tower for 27 hours. That's right 27 hours. And lived to write a memoir about it.

Genelle was raised religious but had fallen out of practice as the years went on and she moved to New York. But under the wreckage she found salvation in God. Obviously I am a religious person but in a different way then she is. Regardless it was still inspiring to read her story of survival. It was also heart breaking to learn about the people that would not make it out alive. You know going in what was going to happen, and though that there was no way all of the people escaping with her would make it out alive but being as hopeful as I am, reading Angel in the Rubble I hoped a miracle would happen and they would live.

Genelle promises that if she lives through this harrowing experience she would stop taking life for granted. Someone, and I forget who once said that "life was wasted on the living." And that is very true. Most of us take life for granted and sadly it normally takes a huge personal tragedy for people to realize how precious life is and how lucky we are to still be living it. I know that's what happened to me. The world is a beautiful place, even if it doesn't always seem that way. Put there is so much beauty around us if you were to just slow down and soak it in. So that is my challenge to you. Live each day like its your last. Because you never know when it might just be.

I'm Jonesing for a Coke

A little break from what I normally do for a small update about my New Years resolutions. Its been two days and I am craving a Coke like you wouldn't believe. I guess its true what they say, you don't really know what you have until its gone ey?

Its gonna be a long year.

He's Not Dead Yet

Like I said in the last post I wrote involving books, the last time I went to the library the upstairs containing all of the adult books was closed. So I was forced to look through the recently checked in books downstairs. Who ever had just checked in books really liked WWII, because I found two books next to each other about the Second World War. Next to Love why I talked about a few days ago and Unbroken by Laura Hillendrand.

I have heard about Laura Hillendrands previous books Sea Biscuit but had never read it nor any of her other books. But the description in the dust jacket of Unbroken intrigued me, and although I couldn't tell if it was a true story I checked out Unbroken and brought it home. And once I started to read it I fell in love.

The tale in Unbroken of an Olympic runner Louis Zamperini who then after a plane crash lived in a raft for almost 50 days and then in a Japanese POW camp for two and a half years. It also describes the his post traumatic stress disorder and what it was like to try to live a regular life.

Unbroken is an amazing story of survival and beating the odds. It is almost unbelievable that a human could live through what he did, and I spent the first half of the book wondering if it was a work of fiction. Zamperini's story is so remarkable and inspiring that I could not put it down. I had to know what would happen the Louis and his friend Allen who was also with him. Its a great read for the holidays, because you'll need a lot of time to read it, because Unbroken was almost impossible to put down.