Cue Paul McCartney

Yesterday was bliss.

Unfortunately, this morning I woke up to the dull realization that today isn't yesterday. And what fresh hell awaits me today? We won't go into that right now. Instead, I'll keep things light and breezy. I'll spread sweetness and light. In short: I'll talk about yesterday.

Oh, the blissfully blissful bliss of having blackbird as my personal shopper! (For anyone just coming in, she went through the hassle of buying a Wii and is shipping it to me.) We talked on the phone yesterday, and the bliss continued. Even though my my kids were home, they kept their contributions down to wandering on stage from time to time to say something to me in a duck-like quack. Which was not overly intrusive, not to mention that now blackbird knows I'm not making up the part about having children. Which gives this blog an air of verisimilitude.

Also: surprise! She's hilarious. (That was irony. Of course she's hilarious.)

Also: I actually had fun volunteering at my kids' school. I was a lunch lady. It was fine. My daughter even seemed pleased to see me.

Also: I baked Oatmeal Crispies for the Girl Scout meeting, using a new recipe, which I put together amazingly fast, thanks to my KitchenAid mixer. The resulting cookies were well received.

Also: Girl Scout "Thinking Day" went well, and what is crucially important, my daughter appeared to enjoy herself.

Also: I changed my kids karate class from Wednesday to Monday. The Monday class is smaller, and the students have with a wider range of abilities. My kids did great! And there were no moms waiting with me, so I read while I waited.

Also: dinner was at McDonald's. I know. I even ate there myself. I know. But double Filet-O-Fish^TM sandwiches, people!

OK, so. Now to deal with today. The two fundraisers I'm chairing. The lack of Filet-O-Fish sandwiches (even single ones.) And the engine light on my VW Passat. Which turned on a couple of days ago. Yes, the car that was in the shop for three months. And now has to go back again.

Well we got no class / And we got no principles / And we got no innocence / We can't even think of a word that rhymes / so we'll stick in a recipe.

School's Out for Summer. Today was the last day.

The kids were only at school for an hour. One hour. Why do schools do these things? I joked to my son when I dropped him off this morning that I had time to go home, drink a cup of tea, and go back to get him. At least, it started as a joke, but it turned out to be a prediction. I was just finishing the morning paper, looked at the clock, and whoops, it was time to go get the kids.

Oh--and yesterday? Was a Teacher's Institute Day. So we didn't have school. Other than play Nintendo, yesterday we did--gift bags. My daughter, I'm afraid, didn't really understand the principle, so we gave bags to all her teachers from Junior Kindergarten to Third Grade. My son has a lot of Special Ed-type helpers, none of whom I had ever heard mentioned until last night, but as far as he was concerned, they all deserved a bag.

So we bought, and I stuffed: ten bright red bags with coordinating red tissue paper and big shiny red bows; 11 purple bags with purple tissue and purple bows.

Isn't it lucky that I had exactly 42, count 'em, 42 boxes of Gevalia coffee to put in the bags? All because my husband and I are too lame to cancel our monthly delivery even after we switched to tea. I call that serendipity.

Each bag also got half a dozen home-made cookies. My daughter and I tweaked the recipe from Baker's Chocolate, so I'll provide it here. This is the cookie version of a brownie, or maybe a truffle. Or maybe flourless chocolate cake. This is--seriously--a lot of chocolate. So I'll call them

Almost Flourless Quadruple Chocolate Chunk Cookies

8 ounces of Semi-Sweet Baking Chocolate (60 percent, if you have it)
3 ounces of Unsweetened Baking Chocolate
6 ounces of White Baking Chocolate, coarsely chopped into chips/chunks
12 ounces of Semi-Sweet chocolate morsels
1 stick of butter
3 eggs
1 and 1/4 cups granulated sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
2/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp. Baking Powder
1/4 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Put the unsweetened chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, and the butter in a large microwave-safe bowl. Zap for two minutes, stir, and zap for another minute. Stir. Maybe zap again for a minute. Stir until completely smooth. Cool while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Beat eggs and sugar in large bowl with electric mixer until very well blended. Pour in chocolate and butter mixture and vanilla. Mix well. Blend in flour, baking powder, and salt. Sir in white chocolate chunks and semi-sweet chips until well mixed.

Drop by rounded tablespoons onto greased baking sheets.

Bake for 10-12 minutes. Cookies should still be moist, but not gooey. Cool on the pan for a few minutes. Remove from baking sheets and cool completely.

Note: because there is no liquid except for melted butter, melted chocolate, and egg yolks, you'll find as the batter sits, it starts to become increasingly solid. So for the last two batches, I roll the batter into balls before placing them on the cookie sheet. This keeps the cookies attractive.

I don't want to brag, but these are truly amazing. And I don't even like chocolate all that much. I mean, I like it, but it's not a substitute for sex or anything like that.

Yesterday I doubled the recipe, so much chocolate was unwrapped and melted or chopped. Yes, I should have taken pictures, either of the cookies being made or of the Teletubbie-colored gift bags, but once again, the battery on the digital camera was dead.

We had a mad rush to get to school this morning, carrying the 21 gift bags. There were too many to carry, so I went over early and dropped two big trays of gift bags off, then went home to get my kids and take them around to distribute the bags. The teachers were very touched; I think a lot of them were very surprised. (Especially the kindergarten teachers.)

In other news, one of the other mothers told me this morning that she had six girls in my son's class over at her house yesterday, and they voted for their favorite boy. My son was the winner.

This might be my last peaceful summer.