Switchin' in the kitchen

My nieces were at my house baking for Easter. We made lemon squares and coconut macaroons and custard pies. Well, they did. I stood around waving my hands. By the way this the lemon squares recipe we used. I recommend it!

My nieces are funny because they are close in age but in different stages. Rosie is a little bit older and it shows. Millie is still at that darling age where she gets swept away with enthusiasm for something. "Coconut macaroons are my favorite cookie!" she announced. "What's your favorite cookie, Rosie?"

Rosie, aggrieved: "I don't have one."

Rosie is a darling in a different way. My favorite moment yesterday: when she told me that her mom had been considering taking them to the Latin mass with me on Easter morning.

"But then the choir director guilted her into going to our usual church," she said.

Then she sighed. As if going to the Latin mass would be So.Cool.

As if, no wonder she was denied it just the way she is denied so many other cool things.

That draggy choir director, "guilting" her mother into doing the boring thing.

My sister said one thing that might bug her if she went to the Latin mass for Easter was that she would miss the traditional Easter hymns. At the Latin mass there is usually only one traditional, sing-together hymn and that is at the end. So, what is it going to be? There are so many Easter hymns you love and you get only one, at least until next Sunday.

I have never found this way of operating very hard to adjust to. It sure beats the grab bag of annoying songs I used to be faced with. It is not as if you always got to sing the hymns you love.

Besides it is a good trade. I might not get to sing my personal favorite Easter hymn, "Christ the Lord is Risen Today." But we do get the Vidi Aquam chant! And over the last three years that has come to mean Easter to me.

That amazes me and reminds me I am still young.

Here I am with all this Latin in my head and writing this book on Leonard Pennario and there was not a whisper of any of it until October 2007.

Were it not for that one week in October 2007 what would I be Web logging about?

Would I even be Web logging?

It is funny to ask yourself questions about how you got where you are and why.

And when.