7.

April

I ate about 15 tons of oatmeal cranberry white chocolate chip cookies today. I have been thinking about the oatmeal cranberry white chocolate chip cookies for weeks, maybe even years. In particular, I’ve been thinking about Anne Bramblett’s o.c.w.c.c.c., the cookies that shattered the Wookie Cookie empire. I couldn’t admit it at the time, but the truth is Anne’s cookies were better—they were just better. Jesse had the tiny M & Ms going for him, but overall Anne made a better cookie. There it is. I said it.

I attempted Anne’s cookies today for my tea party. We drank fancy flower tea and ate small food and I entertained lil Helen with my Muppet puppet collection and assortment of Play-Dohs. Jeb and Ceilo came over, so the dogs had their own party outside (which involved a lot of whining at the door and tormenting Milo’s soul by eating the bone he’d been hiding and visiting, hiding and visiting for three weeks).

So it was a fine day, had fun, really like my new grown up house, blah, blah, blah—but really all I can think about is the chicken that is STARING AT ME RIGHT NOW. Ab sent me the new extraordinary chickens calendar, and though there are few things I love more than those chickens, April always scares the shit out of me. It has this horrible bumpy awful head and this year the photographer really zoomed in, so there’s just no escape, nowhere to run. To make matters worse, the chicken is peeking at me, positioned on the right side of the page, leaning in. I put the calendar in my kitchen on the wall above Milo’s food—on the wall that is directly diagonal to my happy nook where I sit everyday and write. It’s watching; I cannot escape that horrible eye and knobby head-claw. It’s too terrible. But, as Ab knows, you have to be very careful with these chickens. I can’t piss this one off—not this one. Not April.