For the past few days, I’ve had an overwhelming desire to cook real food — not pre-mixed, pre-packaged stuff, but actual made-from-scratch yummies.

Thursday, I had a couple of overripe bananas that were just shy of rotten — perfect for baking banana muffins. Somehow, I managed to find my muffin pan, buried under several years’ worth of dust, and in a few minutes — with the assistance of my Kitchenaid mixer — I had enough batter mixed up to fill all the cups in the pan.

I’d forgotten how yummy fresh-baked muffins can be!

Today, I went grocery shopping and, while trying to decide what kind of snacks to get, got the itch to bake again. I passed over the Little Debbie cakes and avoided the candy aisle, instead grabbing a couple of bags of chocolate chips and a dozen eggs before heading to the checkout.

Surely cookies made at home from the flour, sugar, eggs, and butter you buy at the store have to be better for you than cookies made with all the above plus preservatives, wrapped in plastic, shipped thousands of miles, and stored in a warehouse for who knows how long before they ever reach the supermarket shelf.

If you like chocolate, try this recipe:

Chewy Chocolate Cookies

1 1/4 c. butter or margarine, softened (I used Butter-flavor Crisco)

2 c. sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

2 c. unsifted all-purpose flour

3/4 cup Hershey’s cocoa (I used Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa)

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 bag Hershey’s white chips

1 cup finely chopped nuts (optional — I didn’t include nuts in today’s cookies)

Cream butter or margarine and sugar in large mixing bowl. Add eggs and vanilla, blend well. Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt; gradually blend into creamed mixture. Stir in chips and, if desired, nuts. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-9 minutes. (Don’t overbake. Cookies will be soft. They’ll puff up while baking, and flatten as they cool.) Cool on cookie sheet about a minute, then remove and let finish cooling on wire rack. Makes about 4 1/2 dozen.

What to do with cookies when done:

Open mouth.

Insert cookie.

Chew.

Repeat.

So … I’m feelin’ a bit creeped out right now after watching the renumbered/updated/digitally enhanced version of Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi, which was once known as simply Return of the Jedi or Star Wars III,  which changed when a new Star Wars III was released, Revenge of the Sith, which mean the first SW III had to change its name to SW VI, which greatly confused all us senior citizens (i.e. anyone who had seen the first three SW movies … oops, I mean the three SW movies that were made during the disco/punk/new wave eras when movie popcorn was only $4 for the large bucket AND that included all the extra butter you could eat).

Anyhoo …

So we’re sitting on the couch, hubby and I — he’s playing his guitar and I’m catching up on work on my laptop PC as the above-mentioned SW film is playing in the background on some satellite TV channel we rarely watch, but turned on tonight ’cause we thought an intergalactic battle scene would help us relax.

Apparently hubby happened to glance at the TV during the final scene where the spirits of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader appear side-by-side, smiling at Luke Skywalker as their bodies are being burned atop a celebratory funeral pyre while Ewoks and other assorted life forms joyfully cavort near the flames.

Hubby says, “Is that the guy who played in the first movies?”

I look up, not knowing whether he means “the first movies” as in the original Star Wars, now known as Star Wars IV: A New Hope,  or Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. And there is Obi-Wan, bearing a strong resemblance to Sir Alec Guinness (as well he should) and not Ewan McGregor. (As well he shouldn’t, because after all, the Episode Formerly Known as III was made only a few years after Guinness starred in the Episode Formerly Known as I.)

Beside Obi-Wan is the translucent Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker spirit AND THE BODY OF THE 1983 ANAKIN IS WEARING THE HEAD OF THE 2005 ANAKIN. I AM WRITING THIS IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE I AM TRAUMATIZED AND WHEN PEOPLE ARE TRAUMATIZED THEY GENERALLY SHOUT, RIGHT?

I am now wondering how I could have watched this movie so many times since its re-release and not noticed that freaky Hayden Christensen head pasted on top of Sebastian Shaw’s body. I mean, it’s even mentioned on Wikipedia.

Maybe some extra-buttery popcorn will make me feel better.

When I think of the pressure/obligation/necessity writers feel about social networking/blogging/cyberconnections, I think of a t-shirt I saw once that advertised a famous “31 flavors” ice cream shop: “So many flavors, so little time.”

It’s not easy managing multiple Internet presences. I have this web site and blog to express the children’s writer’s side of me. I now have a work blog, where I must chronicle my adventures as She-Ra, Princess of First-Amendment Power.  I have a Facebook page that started out dedicated solely to AuthorWorld, but somehow my persona from The Daily Planet got sucked into its orbit — now it’s connecting friends from the fiction side of me and the people I’m acquainted with on the fact-finding side. (Or as Merle Haggard might say, the fighting side of me.)

I want my fiction-writing life to be prevalent. But the part of my life that ’s my job seems to take up (and suck dry) more and more of my mental resources.

Basically, what’s happened is that my brain has turned to oatmeal. And not even the Quaker Instant Oats kind that has that yummy maple and brown sugar flavor added. It’s more like the kind you get served when you’re a patient in the hospital. It’s bland and watery and not even good for wallpaper paste.

Web site, blog, Facebook, Twitter — I can’t do it all. And because Twitter feels as though it’s the least-tangible and worthwhile of these communicative forms, at least for me, it’s the easiest one to let go. I’m still going to keep the account, for now. Maybe I’ll pick it up again when I have more time.

In 1923, William Carlos Williams wrote about a  red wheelbarrow, rain water, and white chickens, using 140 characters or less, and it’s still considered a work of poetic genius.

I wonder if folks would consider it worth retweeting today.

Long time, no posts! With vacations, catching up on work (meaning my actual paying  job) between days off, and my youngest getting married in 29 days, blogging has been, like, at the bottom of my list.

So if you can tolerate some random “catch-up” here, read on:

• The first half of my vacation was all about the grandkids — from Chuck E. Cheese night to late-night Disney movies, it was a week’s worth of baby and preschool fun.
• Our future daughter-in-law hung out with us during the second segment of our vacation. We stayed in one of those hotels that have suites with fully-equipped kitchens. Normally, I don’t cook much. But on this trip, we cooked just about every meal and it was so good. The future d-i-l taught me how to make homemade guacamole and it was incredible! I am now a guacamole guru. When it’s done, it looks like a party on a plate.  Take two ripe avocados, cut in half, remove pit, scoop out the flesh onto a plate and smush it with a fork ’till chunky. Chop a couple of tomatoes and some fresh cilantro, mix into the mashed avocado (be sure to use the tomato juice!) and add salt and onion powder to taste. (Lemon or lime juice is optional.) Eat with tortilla chips until you get sick or your pants don’t fit, whichever comes first.
• A bit of advice from one who has been there and done that: When it comes to hotel rooms, chances are you’ll get what you pay for.  In our case, an inexpensive room in a facility that appeared decent on the outside turned out to be a filthy nightmare on the inside. When we arrived at the hotel and opened the door to the room, it not only smelled bad, the bathroom floor was dirty, the kitchenette disgusting, and the hide-a-bed couch mattress was covered in weeks’ worth of filth, crumbs, and grime. We immediately left and found a spotless suite with kitchen (even a dishwasher!) at a Marriott Residence Inn just down the road. It cost twice as much, but it was worth it to be able to lay my head down on the pillow at night.

One fun things about picture books is wishing you could enter the world illustrated on the pages. When I was a child, I loved Russell Hoban’s Frances stories, and Lillian Hoban’s art made me want to close my eyes and imagine being Frances’ playmate, scheming with her to get her tea set back from Thelma, or having a bread and jam party with her stuffed animals.

I wanted to be buddies with Frances because:

1. She was sometimes snarky, sometimes clever, but mostly fair, and loyal to her friends.

2. She made up songs about everything.

3. In Bread and Jam for Frances, she and her friends brought the coolest school lunches from home, in neat containers with such items as hard-boiled eggs in egg cups and little salt and pepper shakers.

4. In A Bargain for Frances, even though Thelma tricked Frances into buying her plastic tea set, when Frances sets things right, she forgives Thelma and they’re still friends.

5. Frances was comfortable in her own fur; sometimes she wore clothes, sometimes not.

6. Frances listened to her mother, but was able to fix her own problems.

• Ben and Jerry’s froyo “half-baked” ice cream is sooooo good! Big globs of chocolate chip cookie dough, hunks of fudge brownie, chocolate and vanilla frozen yogurt — and only 3 grams of fat per serving. You can eat the whole pint and only take in 12 grams of fat. Good stuff without the guilt. Compare that to B&J’s “chunky monkey” which is a whoppin’ 17 grams of fat per serving, 0r 68 grams of fat for the pint! Makes me feel bloated just thinking about it.
• Mentioned this in a previous blog post a couple of years ago, but it should be said again: I heart Meow Cosmetics! I’ve been using Meow’s mineral makeup for about two years, and will never ever go back to that goopy stuff that comes in a bottle. It feels like you’re wearing nothing and provides good coverage. I like that it’s a woman-owned and operated small business.
• We bought our first digital camera in 2004. It was a 4-megapixel and used one of those big Sandisk cards that held 256 k. We paid more than $350 for it and all the accessories. Yesterday, we bought an 8-megapixel camera for about $120.  The camera fits in your pocket and uses a small SD card that holds 4 g’s worth of photos. Better technology, cheaper price!
• Giving in to the Sunday afternoon sleepies — which I am about to do right now!

• Found this NPR article about text messaging and how ridiculously expensive it can be. What a relief to know that I am not the only person in the universe who does not have text messaging enabled on my cell phone!
• Don’t think I’ll be going to see Land of the Lost. Apparently the TV show is more amusing.
• Reading The Tale of Despereaux. The book is way better than the movie so far. Don’t get me wrong; I liked the movie. But the movie is nothing like the book! Nothing!
• Agent Nathan Bransford has a great post on his blog about how not to use the word “blog.”
• And here’s a link to a story about the (gasp!) dark and dreary trend in YA fiction. Yawn. I’ve heard this song before. Like back in the 70s. And in the 80s. And in the 90s. And at least one other time during the early 21st century. I don’t think YA has changed, no sir I don’t. Dark and dreary has been around a long time, since the day Eve bit the apple. Dark and dreary serves a purpose. No conflict? No story. Don’t we feel so much better about our miserable lot when we read about someone — even a fictional someone — whose lot is worse than our own? And don’t we feel even better when that someone overcomes those insurmountable odds, thinking if she can do it, so can we?  The only way to experience and appreciate the exquisiteness of hope is to be caught in, and through the strength of our own will overcome, misery’s wretched grasp. Amen.

Motivational quotes, because I need some inspiration to get up off my duff and do something:

“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway. “  — John Wayne

Cat quotes, just because (more cat quotes here):

“No amount of time can erase the memory of a good cat, and no amount of masking tape can ever totally remove his fur from your couch.” — Leo Dworken

“Most beds sleep up to six cats. Ten cats without the owner.” — Stephen Baker

“Cats are smarter than dogs. You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.” — Jeff Valdez

“Cats do care. For example they know instinctively what time we have to be at work in the morning and they wake us up twenty minutes before the alarm goes off.” — Michael Nelson

Don’t people watch Law and Order anymore?

Apparently not in North Carolina.

A guy goes in a computer cafe and pretends the banana in his pocket is a gun.

In the criminal justice system, bananas are split between two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate the peels, and the district attorneys, who mash the pretenders. These are their stories.

The guy could have asked for anything. Money. Jewels. Heck, he could have pointed that loaded banana and demanded a computer.

But no.

The guy demanded Mountain Dew.

Now, if he’d said, “Gimme all yer Docter Pepper,” that would have made sense. Dr. Pepper is the official drink of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. It flows from the fountain drink machines of every convenience store in every small town below the Mason-Dixon line. Southern girls dab Dr. Pepper behind their ears like perfume before they go out on dates on Saturday night. It’s what makes Southern babies grow up to be extraordinary college football and basketball players.

This lack of common sense explains the thief’s next action — after he’s subdued by the cafe owner and a customer, the guy eats the banana.

Fortunately for everyone, a quick-thinking deputy (the Carolinas are famous for them) took a photo of the peel to submit as evidence.

Lenny Briscoe and Jack McCoy, where are you when we need you?

A guy suspected of drug dealing led Indiana Police on a high-speed chase through two counties …

… until he saw a Taco Bell.

Read the story here.

This would have made a great scene in a Dirty Harry movie.

(DRUG DEALER leaps from car, runs to door of Taco Bell; DIRTY HARRY in pursuit.)

DIRTY HARRY (stops running, wheezes, points gun at drug dealer): Freeze, punk!

DRUG DEALER (grabs door handle): I gotta have my burrito, man!

DIRTY HARRY: I have a burrito for you.  A cold steel burrito. (Cocks the trigger.) Go ahead — say ole.

DRUG DEALER: That’s all I want, man, just one more burrito.

DIRTY HARRY: That’s what you’re gonna get, punk — one more burrito, with a bullet.

DRUG DEALER: Does that come with a large Pepsi?