Oatmeal Pumpkin Cookies

At our house, these are called Mama cookies and are a well-received treat. Heh heh. My kids are so snowed. Costco has a new flour they call Ultragrain, which is a whole wheat flour that pretty much resembles white flour in recipes. Try it out.

1.5 sticks butter, softened
2/3 cup white sugar
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup pumpkin puree (or butternut squash)
1 cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
A little fresh ginger, a little ground clove or nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup raisins (or other dried fruit - apricots are wonderful in this)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (or Ultragrain)

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Cream together butter, white sugar and brown sugar until fluffy. Beat in egg, vanilla and pumpkin. 3. In a separate bowl, mix together the oats, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, raisins and flour. Stir into pumpkin mixture.
4. Drop cookies by the heaping teaspoonful onto greased cookie sheets. Flatten slightly and bake 15-18 minutes or until lightly browned around edges. They remain fairly pale even when baked correctly.
5. Remove from oven and place on cooling racks. Dust with powdered sugar or leave plain.

Warning: geek book talk ahead

It's funny, I used to almost exclusively read fiction. Is it common in middle age to turn to more non-fiction? Maybe during our educational years there are just too many facts and too little immersing oneself in alternate worlds. I have every copy of the Best American Short Stories from 1985 to the present. But more and more I'm enjoying the non-fiction side of this series, such as The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009. This one was fantastic! The 26 selections came from 16 magazines including Harper's, National Geographic, Discover, and New Yorker.

Here's a short description of my favorites.

Andrew Curry - the Stasi, the East German secret police, and how they tried to destroy a staggeringly enormous amount of paper as the Wall was beginning to fall.

Frederick Kaufman - the story of POOP and how it is dealt with daily in New York City. Processing, decontaminating, and profiting from human waste. An amazing story, although I'm sure you wouldn't necessarily agree until you read this. I bet you didn't know that NYC has the world's 4th largest navy. For moving around human waste.

Virginia Morell - Understanding animal intelligence. I always love a good Alex the Parrot story, and this article contains so much more.

David Quammen - All about an infectious cancer in Tasmanian devils. And what it means when a cancer evolves like this.

Oliver Sacks - Covers what Darwin did other than write "Origin of the Species". A great guy, that Darwin.

Mark A. Smith - A beautiful piece on the wonders of little animalcules in pond water as seen under a microscope. My favorite bit is: "When Arcella divides, it first makes a second shell, into which the daughter cell is born. These are single cells making snug little homes for themselves and providing the same for their offspring. I smile at how utterly ingrained and universal these domestic activities turn out to be."

Michael Specter - A thought-provoking article on Tesco's attempt to label all the foods they sell with a carbon label, explaining the carbon footprint to get that food from seed to production to the supermarket shelf. It's a lot more difficult to define than you'd think.

Need an otorhinolaryngologist?

Nea's main doctor is an Ear, Nose, Throat doctor. You could call him an otorhinolaryngologist, but then you'd have to go lie down awhile with a cool compress to recover. So we mostly call him Dr. Schubkegel, because that's easier. We say it the German way, because we are unable to say it any other way. I should ask him sometime how he says it, and whether he speaks German. And what exactly is a Schubkegel? A push-bowling pin, sort of, it seems. I don't know what that is, either.

So. Back to what I was saying. There's several reasons why he is her main doctor. One of them is that she's had a lot of ear infections. Another reason is that we went to our main pediatrician's office three years ago when Nea was very sick, and the idiot (whose name may or may not be Dr. Jentel, for legal purposes) we saw missed her pneumonia. That doctor said she had an ear infection. Which she did, actually. We went to Schubkegel that same day and luckily he was paying attention. She was a very very sick girl.

I'm ashamed to say, the first time I took Nea to see Dr Schubkegel, I told him that I'd help hold Nea's hands down, so he could look into her ears. He pshawed at me and gained her trust instead. He's been our Main Guy ever since. If we bring in a teddy bear he offers to check the bear first. We don't even have to ask. The only thing he could do to be more perfect would be to quote a Sesame Street book we have (Farley Goes to the Doctor) and say, "Fuzzy. Normal for a bear." after checking Pink Bear, but, you know, he's a busy man. I'll let it slide.

We are currently on the fence about getting Nea's tonsils out. I'm not particularly looking forward to it, but I hear it'll cure her apraxia. Just kidding. But she has had multiple tonsil infections that have been slow to respond to antibiotics, she's missing quite a bit of school, and she's generally under the weather much too often. Also, it would help with the ear infections. On the other hand, um, surgery.

So, in summary, five stars: Dr Andrew Schubkegel: (630) 495-6000, Oakbrook Terrace, IL

BONUS
Handy diet tip, in case you need one.
Step 1: Do a Google image search for "infected tonsils."
Step 2: Never feel hungry again.

Assistive technology for all ages

Apraxia occurs possibly more frequently with older people, as a result of a stroke or other neurological impairment. You'd think more communication devices would be used in those situations, but I'm not getting the feeling that they are. Wouldn't losing the ability to speak be even worse than not being able to speak in the first place?

Roger Ebert, the film critic, lost the ability to speak due to his surgeries. He says, "I would like a computer to provide me with my own voice." You'd think that would be possible these days.
Actually, part of what I enjoyed about this article is the sense of frustration he expresses. How much he misses being able to take part in conversations. A talker wouldn't help with that much, since they are labor-intensive. But many people can type faster than they can hand-write, so the lag would be smaller.

ASHA (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association) has a fascinating article about how augmentative communication can support kids facing the end of life, as they lose more of their ability to speak: Last Words, Last Connections.

On a brighter note, here's an interesting Reading Rockets article about including assistive technologies in your child's IEP.

Has anyone ever told you ...

Silence of the Lambs came out in 1991. In 1991, at least one person a day said to me, "Has anyone ever told you that you look like Jodie Foster?" and I would say, "Ha ha, I hear that a lot. Thank you." Because honestly, I could do worse, right? Anyway, since then I've been able to chart her successful movie releases just by tracking how often I was asked that question.

So, I ran across this photo the other day.

Hmm, I said to myself, I just don't spend enough time making up stories for my kids. At dinner I said, "Did I ever tell you about the time I met Oscar the Grouch?" They were surprised and asked several questions. ("Was Oscar mean to you? Did you meet Ernie and Bert, too?") I said, "Later I'll show you a picture!" I was convinced they would immediately call it a fraud. But no. Hook, line, and sinker. I guess my kids think I look like Jodie Foster, too.

Training after 40

What could possibly go wrong with my plan? I would go swimming after not doing so for 4 months. I would swim more than half a mile (750 meters), in a combination of breaststroke and freestyle, which would entail swimming for 35 minutes with only tiny short breaks to catch my breath.

Yeah. And then my back would go out. Who could have seen that coming?

I'm such an idiot.

Next book

Looks like a good one: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.