E.T. II: Revenge

I have had a very busy day. I spent the morning editing my friend Maria's blog, and in the afternoon Ida stopped by to teach me the song we are to sing at the church's Christmas party this Sunday. We are singing a song together--an old Swedish psalm with quite a few throat-wringing trills--and Ida tells me I am singing the first verse solo. I've never done that before, but I am not one to step away from a challenge. The snow was falling thick and heavy by then, with the wind howling around the corners of the house, and Ida had to leave at four to visit her grandmother, before she was completely snowed in (Ida, that is, and not the grandmother). The moment the door closed behind her, mother set me to work on lighting arrangements. I helped her fill two vases with a string of lights and move plants around and put up Christmas stars in the window and carry boxes down to the storeroom in the cellar.

 Mike looking decidedly proud in father's Scottish kilt-apron

Samuel and Oscar are usually the ones in charge of youth group on Friday evenings, but they were both busy and so the responsibility fell to me. But as there was a blizzard raging outdoors, no one showed up except for Mike, who arrived bundled up to his eyeballs and wet from melting snow. We put on aprons and made saffron buns, forsaking traditional shapes for the creative marvels of camels and pirates and ducks, and while we waited for the dough to rise we watched Jamie Oliver's Thirty Minute Meals (while discussing how we'd like our future kitchens) and an episode of NCIS, and later on, when mamma, pappa, Mike, and I were all sunk deep into the recesses of the leader-clad couch with a freshly baked saffron bun in one hand and a glass of cold milk in the other, we watched Alien 3, which makes me think I should watch the first two as well, though I doubt they play out very differently. Animatronic monsters that slink about the crevices of a convoluted ship and people who expire in an explosion of red. My mother thought a bit about this and came to the conclusion that E.T. must have been the source of all such thrillers.