Potatoes in the Mist

Eric is a cooking maniac - he made vanilla ice cream from scratch (I put up a photo on Facebook). Now Zoe has decided she wants to watch cooking videos too. The funny part is, Eric likes watching a British cook (Cupcake Jemma) so he got a special scale to convert grams to cups, and we always have to convert the cooking temperature to Fahrenheit. For these cupcakes, it's 335 degrees.

I think Anne Lamont is the spiritual heir of C.S. Lewis, making it all a little more palatable and easier to understand.

2016's latest loss...Carrie Fisher. A Facebook friend wrote a heartfelt tribute - she grew up imagining she was Carrie Fisher during boring math classes, lulls during vacation, stressful moments at camp. I never imagined I was Carrie Fisher, but I read her books, enjoying her wry sense of humor. There's a popular tweet that says, "Honor Carrie Fisher: normalize mental illness and its treatment, take life a little less seriously, destroy a fascist regime."

This is our last day at the DoubleTree Hilton in Danvers. It used to be called the Sheraton Ferncroft; I had my senior prom here. Now it's all renovated. We spent all morning in the pool and hot tub. And the king-size beds are big and soft.

We're in Massachusetts and Eric is making some super-complicated chocolate chip cookies that require moscavado sugar, which he made from white sugar and molasses. Now I've got sugar on my toes, which sounds like a super-tactile Maya Angelou poem. Sugar on my toes And don't I know It's never sweet enough

We're staying at a hotel in Danvers...it's amazing! It got renovated since the last time I stayed here, about 6 years ago. And the hot tub is working again. (We often use the swimming pool and hot tub even when we're not staying at the hotel.) Zoe and I went swimming in the hot tub and pool - I preferred the hot tub, she preferred the pool. Now we're watching TV, which is always a huge novelty for the kids because we don't have one at home. We got rid of it after Eric was born in 2008 because we weren't really watching it. I remember before he was born, we were watching "Big Love," but after he was born, we just couldn't keep up with the convoluted plot lines. I think it's off the air now.

I'm reading Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Amazing writer. She also wrote a great article about Trump in the New Yorker.

Thoughts for how we can resist the Trump presidency... We should focus on winning small battles. Keep the heat on him for four years in every way. Andrea Boccelli decided not to sing at his inauguration because of pressure from us. It will kill him not to have any big names performing at his inauguration. Also turning off the TV on Inauguration Day. Wearing a resist T-shirt on Inauguration Day. Showing him in ways large and small that we will never accept him. The steady drip drip of Chinese water torture.

Listening to America. They have some good songs besides "A Horse With No Name."

I'm a little under the weather and I had a baked sweet potato for dinner. It was delicious -  45-60 minutes at 425. It caramelized a bit. Might be good with some marshmallows mixed in. I was at H&M earlier. There's a weird divide at that store - stuff I love and wear all the time, and stuff I wouldn't be caught dead in. I found a jacket in the former category. Only $49.99 with a nice, roomy, faux fur-trimmed hood.

Another good one from Marian Keyes. She has a section in her book called "Saying Goodbye" and how she hates it. She says her social battery is drained by the end of a party so it's hard for her to "give good goodbye." The whole thing reminded me of one of MIL's jokes: "The British leave without saying goodbye; the Yiddish say goodbye without leaving." There's a lot of truth to it, and in this respect I am definitely British! Marian also wrote, "According to a personality quiz, I'm an extreme introvert, which means I can only handle other people in small bursts of time." I think those quizzes only need one question: Would you rather -- 1) go out? 2) stay in with a book?

I'm reading Making It Up As I Go Along  by Marian Keyes. It wasn't available on the Kindle or in the U.S. at all (I ordered it from a third-party seller on Amazon who turned out to be in the U.K.). Sometimes when a book isn't easily available, there's a reason - it's not very good. This one, however, is funny. In one section, she talks about her trip to Laos and how she put her "anti-mad tablets" on the "bedside yoke" so she could have them in the morning. When she woke up, however, she discovered they had all been eaten by bugs or "small beasts unknown" who were in "top form" all day. That tickled me.

So Ivanka will be taking over First Lady duties, environmental policy, childcare policy, and run Trump's business. She will move to DC while Melania stays behind. Meanwhile, Trump will continue to be an executive producer for Celebrity Apprentice, which means that NBC will pay him *and* report on him. D pointed out that it would be worse if Trump were paying NBC and they were reporting on him. Still, it seems awfully muddled. I read that the conflicts of interest are simply too many to untangle and eliminate.

Trump appointed a fast food CEO as labor secretary. He seems hellbent on appointing the least suitable person for each position. I'm trying not to give him a lot of mental space...while still reading the news and resisting.

I saw the new Bridget Jones movie last night. I was worried it wouldn't be good because Hugh Grant left the project. But it was very funny and cute. There were a couple of dud jokes, but more "on" moments. And it was one of those movies where the previews don't do it justice.