The Goal Is Finally Reached, With Not A Speck of Purple in Sight

I wore green striped tights with the black Bachelor's robe; with those and my long red hair, I'm sure I was quite a sight. My tassel is white; I'm an English major-- Creative Writing emphasis-- and a theatre minor. The ceremony itself was amusing; I sat next to a fellow English major and we made cryptic comments the entire time. Apparantly her parents and my grandparents have been friends since their high school days, but we didn't discover that until that morning. I played with play-doh that I had hidden under my robe, and after the extremely well-organized ritual, all hell broke loose.

I decided, instead of moving around, trying to find a group of also-moving-around family who were trying to find me, I would find our non-moving car and wait there instead. Because our car is bright green (think Kermit, only florescent) I knew I could find it. I even had a vague idea of where it was parked. I climbed onto the hood, crossed my legs, and watched other people try to find their cars by activating their car alarms and then following the sound. Different people tried something else: unlock and lock your car repeatedly; as it makes a honking noise every time, follow that sound instead. Some people just had a junky car that was easy to spot or told me that they should have walked instead.

Others parked way in the back of the parking lot and walked the mile to get to it. As they walked past me, they commented that my stockings matched my car.

Yes. Yes, they do.

Chocolate In A Cup

I thank whoever gave me a cup of hot chocolate on my user info page. You must know something about my winter traditions to know that I survive on hot chocolate.

It's a family tradition to make our own hot chocolate mix. My mom has done this for my entire memory, and I missed it so much when I moved away to college that I began to do it myself. Every year, it comes out a little different. There's a little more powdered milk than all the other ingredients, there's a little more creamer than the recipe calls for, or, for some inexplicable reason, it tastes slightly minty.

I always make a mess when mixing all this stuff together. There's powder on my clothes, on the floor, all over the table, and a fine silt in all the mixing bowls when all is settled into their respectable containers. It really should be that way; it feels more chaotic, more joyful, more spontaneous.

Most of the stuff goes into a tin. My mom's got this funny collection of tins that she keeps all her hot chocolate mix in. There's Snoopy and his gang, all doing the flurry dance, and old wintery scenes and tins covered with images of long-eaten cookies. She's also got a huge amount of mugs. My favorites were always the ones that were unusually shaped; it mattered little that they had the Philmont insignia on them. Most of them are dusty and never used because we all have our favorites.

I have many a memory of morning table-gatherings with nothing for breakfast but liquid chocolate and homemade cinnamon rolls. I'm working on my own collections of tins and mugs.