Author Archives: mbajane

The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,504 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,886 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ

For this week’s Farm Kitchen/Do You Know the Muffin Man? Beginner Level Young Cultivator Merit Badge, Piper and I put up our muddy boots and got to talking.

Talking about? Muffins, of course. I mean, is there anything else in the wide, green world to talk about really? Right up there with Nancy Drew mystery stories, dresses with pockets, and whether or not one believes in ghosts, breakfast foods are really the go-to in any young girl’s conversational arsenal.

Perhaps Pooh and Piglet put it best:

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”

“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”

“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully.

“It’s the same thing,” he said.

But of course—and this is the really exciting part—muffins aren’t just for breakfast anymore. They belong to one of those remarkable food categories like eggs, apples with peanut butter, and granola bars: an excellent choice no matter the time of day. Midnight snack muffins? Um, yes please. Breakfast, second breakfast, brunch, lunch, snack, dinner, and dessert? They can all be satiated with a muffin. They really are the perfect food …

“Aunty,” said Piper, “you’re getting that dreamy-eyed look again. Are you okay?”

“Just waxing poetical about muffins,” said I. “Top or bottom?”

“Top, of course!”

“What if you slice them from top to bottom instead of lopping off the top like most people do? Then each half would have half a top and half a bottom?”

Piper thought for a minute, then declared me a genius. (I know, I admit it humbly.)

Our next question was regarding our favorite flavors and it was such a long discussion we needed sustenance and lemonade, so we broke out the cookie jar while we deliberated. In the end, while we did choose current favorites, we realized our muffin knowledge was sadly lacking. Example: Piper had only ever had blueberry muffins and chocolate muffins, and I had been stuck in a lemon poppyseed rut for far too long. We had a feeling this badge was going to get us out of our comfort zone, and we were right!

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,504 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,886 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ 

For this week’s Farm Kitchen/Know Your Food Intermediate Level Young Cultivator Merit Badge, Nora decided to educate the rest of her family on her newfound knowledge of … drumroll please …

FRUIT.

Yes, once little Nora realized plain ol’ fruit was pretty plain delicious all on its own, she had forgone most of her sweet treats in favor of a juicy kiwi, or a bowl of peaches and cream, or some sun-ripened strawberries.

Photo by Nino Barbieri via Wikimedia Commons

She was even starting to come out of her sugar-induced coma. I swear I saw a twinkle in her eyes I had never seen before as she bit into an Anjou pear. It was a miracle.

To earn her Intermediate Level badge though, she had to share her knowledge.

In retrospect, I probably should have supervised this part a little more. Sharing what you love and don’t love about food at the dinner table, with over-tired parents and whiney siblings and the like can be a recipe for disaster. Note to self: Janey, my dear, when you have offspring of your very own, fruity looms, remember this.

Nora had been a sport about trying new fruits and veggies. We had a blast at the farmer’s market and grocery store, picking out new things. She even went totally overboard: she only needed to do one new item per week, but she was averaging one per day. The girl was becoming addicted to it. I wasn’t sure if her mom was going to thank me, or kill me.

Photo by Daderot via Wikimedia Commons

My Final Decisions and List of New Food
By Nora

The Good:

• Kiwis
• Cantaloupe
• Persimmon (but only under ripe, then they get gross)
• Plantains
• Starfruit
• Sweet Potatoes (made into fries only)
• Purple Cauliflower
• Radishes
• Pomegranates
• Jicama

The Bad:

• Sweet Potatoes that aren’t in the shape of fries
• Raisins
• Dragonfruit
• Squash
• Lima Beans
• Arugula

The Ugly:

• Beets (until you slice ‘em, then kinda pretty)
• Raisins (should be illegal)
• Turnips (yuck)
• Bean Sprouts (scary, alien-looking things)
• Ugly Fruit (No, really! It’s a thing! A form of a tangelo!)

Since no mom wants a report card after dinner, I took it upon myself to keep the list at my house. All in all, we tried lots of new stuff, and Nora enjoyed more than she spit out. Tastefully. Into a napkin.

We also learned that taste buds change over the years (they literally wear out like an old pair of socks), approximately every seven years to be precise. So though Nora may hate arugula now, she might eat it up cheerfully as a 20-year-old. (She is skeptical.)

Time will tell.

P.S. Jane here. Still waiting for my taste buds to accept asparagus. Maybe if I bury it in Hollandaise sauce? You know, for my health?

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,504 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,886 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ

Wondering who I am? I’m Merit Badge Awardee Jane (MBA Jane for short). In my former life …  

For this week’s Bibliophile Badging Intermediate Level Merit Badge, I had shortened my TBR pile from the Beginner Level badge, only to build it back up again. I’ve noticed TBR stacks are like bunnies. They multiply quickly and at a sometimes alarming rate.

Berliner Walk of Ideas, Humboldt University by Lienhard Schulz via Wikimedia Commons

One way to keep your tomes down to a manageable minimum is to loan your books out. I know, I know, it hurt my heart the first few times too. I mean, these were my babies. What if someone abused them? Dog eared their pages? Dropped them in the bubble bath? Used them as coasters? Or worse yet, never gave them back?

*gasp*

One thing I found to help alleviate that last fear, was this handy-dandy personal library kit. I recommend it highly, not just because it essentially gives the loanee no excuse to remember who owns that book, but it’s way fun to stamp things and channel your inner librarian.

Anyway, earning my badge meant challenging my friends to a book reading contest. You can do this with your local buddies, or do it online through social media, like Facebook or Instagram. I found plenty of willing participants, and we put ourselves out there with all sorts of goals and plans. We found we were all motivated by the same things: good books and prizes. That’s right, what’s a book reading challenge without a prize at the end? I gathered all sorts of fun trinkets to award to the readers: chocolate, coffee mugs, bookmarks, fuzzy socks, gel pens, etc. Then we separated our goals into easily obtained chunks, like this:

• Most Books Read in the Month
• Finishing an Entire Collection by One Author
• Keeping Detailed Reviews of Books Read
• Finishing a TBR Stack that is At Least Five Books High
• Reading Five Biographies

The possibilities for challenges and prizes are pretty much endless.

Next, organize your fellow bibliophiles in a real Book Club. Now, when I say real I don’t mean it has to meet in person right in your own living room: if that’s not a possibility due to living rurally or whathaveyou, you can have just as much fun joining or starting an online book club. Perk to that: you get to eat all the chocolate chip cookies you baked for the occasion all by yourself. Ahem.

Once your club is off the ground, so to speak, pick a book to read together and a date to meet. Also, a secret handshake and a clubhouse is not amiss, but maybe that’s just me.

My book club? We are currently reading spy thrillers, meet at a secret location, and eat a lot of cookies. But that’s just what floats my literary boat. Can’t find one to meet your needs? Check out our own Farmgirl Book Club on Facebook, and find what’s fresh and new (or old and vintage), chat it up with other bibliophiles, meet new friends and farmgirls, even be introduced to authors. Cookies not required, but highly recommended.

The Story Book by William-Adolphe Bouguereau via Wikimedia Commons

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,504 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,886 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ 

Wondering who I am? I’m Merit Badge Awardee Jane (MBA Jane for short). In my former life …  

For this week’s Each Other/Where in the World? Beginner Level Young Cultivator Merit Badge, I wrangled me some Piper.

Just call me the Child Wrangler.

(Just don’t call me late for dinner.)

I was itchin’ to do this badge with her because I hadn’t yet attempted the grown up farmgirl version of it: National Geography. I wanted to ease my way in, so to speak. Why? Well, let’s just say geography isn’t my strong suit.

And if you teach someone to fish for a day, you teach yourself … how to fish for a day as well. Or something like that.

Also, expressions aren’t my strong suit, either.

Anyway, Piper was excited about this one because she recently been gifted a huge stack of paper maps. Most were from old back issues of National Geographic magazine and they were mostly in good shape. She’d used some already … to make paper fans, paper dolls, homemade envelopes, line her dresser drawers, and turn into paper airplanes with which she accosted nearby bystanders (like me). In spite of all that … um, geography, she had yet to do anything with her maps along the lines of what the good cartographer had intended them for: hanging them up on her walls for study purposes.

Map of Eastern Europe, 1836, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Armed with thumbtacks, we set about hanging the two most important ones: one of the United States, and one of the whole world. Hung right at eye level near her bed, I figured she would be doing a lot of learning and memorizing by osmosis.

And you know what they say: If you judge a fish a day by its ability to climb osmosis trees, it will spend its whole life believing it’s a stupid tree. Albert Einstein said that. Or something along those lines.

While I was staring intently at the map of America (When did North Dakota move over there? Has it always been there? Weird.), Piper was hanging up her own personal favorite map, one of Neverland.

You know, where Captain Hook reigns and the Lost Boys run amuck.

I was pretty sure this map had not been published by National Geographic, but I had to admit, it was a beautifully drawn map. Complete with crocodiles and flying pirate ships and mermaids! I was a little jealous and used a nearby crayon to add some mermaid doodles to North Dakota. It vastly improved the scenery.

Peter Pan, 1915, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

While Piper is not yet ready for the National Geography Bee, she had memorized quite a lot the next time I saw her. She knew the capitals of most states by their handy-dandy star icon, she knew which ocean was on which side of America, and she had added a sock to the boot-shaped Italy. She also knew the way to Neverland.

“Second star to the right,” she said, gravely, “And straight on till morning.”

We’re currently working on our flying ship to get there.

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,504 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,886 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ

For this week’s Each Other/Bibliophile Badging Beginner Level Merit Badge, I brought along my BFF, Midge, and we sauntered off to the library. Being the mom of triplets, Midge doesn’t get out much, and she hasn’t read a book without pictures and rhymes in like, five years, so I figured I’d share the love of this badge.

We both had library cards already, which was Step 1, but since Midge couldn’t find hers and mine needed an address update, we went to the front desk first. I was a little skeered the librarian lady would take a peek at my overdue fines and screech like a cat on a hot tin roof, but she seemed nonplussed. Of course, it helped that I paid down the balance and also brought her a double mocha with whip.

It’s important to keep the librarians fed and well-hydrated, don’t you know. They run the world.

Steacie Science and Engineering Library at York University by Raysonho via Wikimedia Commons

Anyway, the next part of earning our badge, Madge (er, I mean, Midge), was to check out the other things the library had to offer.

Get it? Check out the other things? (I slay myself.)

We availed ourselves of the handy-dandy free pamphlets the librarian had to offer, took snapshots of the extra-large bulletin board in the main room, and made sure to update our e-mail addresses so we wouldn’t miss a thing. In fact, our humble library offered so much free stuff, we planned out the next two months of our social calendar!

Midge found things for the kids to do:

• A Lord of the Rings movie marathon, with popcorn and trivia
• A book club for mystery lovers
• A craft afternoon

I found several things of interest that I promptly put on my to-do list:

• Read It Before You Watch It: a book club specializing in famous films that were novels first
• How to Garden
• A tour of my local cemetery, complete with historical guide
• A 25-cent book sale

Midge found several things up her own alley:

• Story-time for kindergarteners (moms get to browse the Adult Non-Fiction area nearby)
• A class for journal lovers
• A calligraphy course
• A meet and greet with local authors

We were so excited about all our new interests, we totally forgot to check out any books! So after realizing our mistake, we went back the next day. Sometimes these badges take a while … good things come to those who wait, however.

The final part of earning our Beginner Level badge was to start our TBR pile.

For those of you book newbies, a TBR pile is a To Be Read stack. Some people have these all over their houses, some relegate them strictly to the nightstand, some keep them scribbled on a piece of paper or organized on a website like Goodreads, and others (like Yours Truly) sprinkle them willy-nilly throughout the house and car. You never know when the mood to read will strike, you know?

If you’re stuck on what to put on your TBR list, ask your friendly librarian. She will be pleased as punch to give you her recommendation (and a double mocha with whip will assure she doesn’t hold back the best of the best). Tell her what your favorite authors or genres are to date, and she’ll come up with something faster than you can say Dostoevsky. Which admittedly, might not be very fast because that guy’s name is hard to pronounce.

Still not convinced about the power of your library? Check out some of these quotes, and when you’re done, get thee to your library and get yourself a card …

“The only thing that you absolutely have to know is the location of the library.” ~ Albert Einstein.

“I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” ~ Jorge Luis Borges.

“A library is the only single place you can go to learn something new, be comforted, terrified, thrilled, saddened, overjoyed, or excited all in one day. And for free.” ~ Amy Neftzger.

“Libraries represent the diversity and immensity of human thought, our collective knowledge laid out in rows of revealing inspiration.” ~ Manuel Lima.

“A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.” ~ Andrew Carnegie.

“Without the library, you have no civilization.” ~ Ray Bradbury.

“What is more important to a library than anything else — than everything else — is the fact that it exists.” ~ Archibald MacLeish.

“The library is like a candy store where everything is free.” ~ Jamie Ford.

“The idea of a library full of books, the books full of knowledge, fills me with fear and love and courage and endless wonder.” ~ Elizabeth McCracken.

“Libraries really are wonderful. They’re better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts.” ~ Jo Walton.

“There is no problem a library card can’t solve.” ~ Eleanor Brown.

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,504 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,886 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ 

For this week’s Garden Gate/Get Buggy Intermediate Level Young Cultivator Merit Badge, Piper and I wandered out to the front yard with our trusty notebook journals, magnifying glass, and a couple of glass jars with holes poked in the lids.

I think you can tell where we were going with this, righto? You got it, we were looking for some bug lovin’!

Furry, spindly, fat, eight-legged, four-legged, winged, cute, ugly (or bugly, as the pun-loving Pipes liked to say), we were all about dem bugs.

What we were not about was the anthill we accidently disrupted. Talk about ants in our pants. Okay, okay, I exaggerate, not so much in our pants as milling about our toes, but you get the drift. We apologized to the ant family (They didn’t even pause to listen though. Busy little buggers, aren’t they?) and moved to a different area of the yard.

For the Intermediate Level badge, you won’t really need the jars with lids, but we like to be prepared in case of bug adoptions. You never know when you might find a rare, exotic type lurking under your hydrangeas or scampering past your garden gnome! Why, just one of these finds of the Top Five Rarest Bugs in Nature would cement our notoriety in the world of entomologists:

• Euspinolia militaris (the panda ant): Oh, it may look all cute and fuzzy, with black and white patches that appear positively snuggable, but this ‘ant’ is actually a member of the wasp family. And we never recommend snuggling a wasp. Lest you think you can take this little guy on, we’re here to tell you his nickname is “cow killer” (and yes, they can!). Yikes. Luckily, these stinging devils are mostly found in Chile.

photo by silamtao

• Atrax sutherlandi (red-fanged funnel spider): Also called the Vampire Spider, this somewhat terrifying arachnid has red fangs. Gulp. Surprisingly though, for its fierce appearance, the atrax sutherlandi mostly just eats other insects, and won’t suck your blood.

• Lycaedes melissa samuelis (Karner butterfly): Finally, one that won’t keep you up at night with bad dreams, this vibrant blue butterfly can only be found near New York, where it sadly has nearly become extinct due to deforestation. It’s a particular and persnickety butterfly and wants its habitat exactly just-so (kind of like me, now that I think about it).

photo by Hollingsworth, J & K via Wikimedia Commons

• Titanus giganteus (the titan beetle): Back to the frightening kind, this beetle, native to the Amazon rainforest, can be 9 inches long! Let that sink in. Bigger than my whole hand. Or my favorite sub sandwich! Well, at least at that size, it won’t be sneaking up on me anytime soon.

• Dryococelus australis (the tree lobster): This ginormous walking stick insect (about 6 inches long!) only lives on Lord Howe Island, between New Zealand and Australia. Entomologists thought this amazing creature was extinct back in the ‘20s but luckily for bug lovers everywhere in the early 2000s, they began popping up again. Now, experts are breeding them so as to populate the island once more. How do the residents feel about this? Unsure. How do I feel about that? Glad I don’t live on Lord Howe Island!

photo by Granitethighs via Wikimedia Commons

Well, Piper and I didn’t find any of these remarkable bugs, but we did find some beauties to mark down in our journals. And a roly-poly named Earnest lived in a Mason-jar habitat for an afternoon before we let him go back to his family.

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,504 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,886 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,428 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,886 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

For this week’s Each Other/Let’s Go to Town Expert Level Young Cultivator Merit Badge, Andy and I—you guessed it—went to town.

photo by James Steakley via Wikimedia Commons

If only earning Merit Badges were so simple …

Once we got there (several yard sales and snack breaks later), we headed over to our local library. Not for books this time, no siree, but to see what was thumbtacked up on the ol’ community bulletin board.

We saw:

• Services from a pet psychic (Yeah. That’s all my chickens need. They already think they’re Marie Antoinette if their diva behavior is any indication.)
• Tuba lessons (BYOT)
• Something called Pickleball
• Massage therapy for the ticklish
• A seminar on DIY world domination
• Matchmaking services for the romantically challenged
• How to cook with inedible ingredients (say what now?)
• Lost: guinea pig
• Found: weird-looking rodent
• Soccer for seniors
• Conquer your fears through total immersion therapy (please sign waivers, provided)
• Community theatre actors wanted
• Underwater basket-weaving classes
• Sign Language, Shakespeare, and You

There were probably lots more, but they were all stapled and scotch-taped and thumbtacked right over one another, all willy-nilly. I thought someone needed to offer a community class on the Proper Etiquette of bulletin-boarding, but Andy was all about … drum roll, puhleeze …

Pickleball!

To earn his Expert Level badge, Andy and I were going to choose three different after-school-type activities. He had already joined Band last week, and I wrangle him in to my Book Club meetings every third Thursday (I lure him with the scent of chocolate-chip cookies. Works every time. Little guy is cute, but he isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to noticing things. Ah well. He gets cookies and some literary education, to boot. Although, he wasn’t real fond of The Bridges of Madison County, and when it was his turn to pick the novel, he chose Sir Farts-A-Lot Eats the Booger as revenge. How childish. Although, I have to say, I secretly enjoyed the book).

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes. Pickleball was to be our third activity! We were both really excited. Andy because he likes balls, me because I love a good pickle.

Sadly (and you may be one step ahead of me on this), there were no vinegary cucumbers to be found when we got to the arranged meeting place. Instead, there were paddles, nets, plastic balls with holes in them, and a tennis court.

photo by Stephen James Hall via Wikimedia Commons

I was instantly suspicious. This looked like some sort of *gasp* SPORT.

Suddenly, I knew how Andy felt every third Thursday.

Putting my fear of all things sports-related aside for the greater good, I attempted learning the oddity that is pickleball. Turns out, I wasn’t really so bad. It’s kind of like ping-pong on a larger scale. And I’m happy to report one of the sports moms brought juice boxes and crackers, so I made it through a happy camper. And Andy earned his badge. He put it right next to his dog-eared copy of Captain Underpants (I think I know what we’re reading next month).

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,504 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,886 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! ~MaryJane 

For this week’s Make It Easy/Do Your Eyes Light Up? Expert Level Young Cultivator Merit Badge, Nora and I stopped resting on our laurels from earning our Intermediate Level badge and got back to work.

Side note: how do you rest on laurels, anyway? Please advise. Is it like sitting on a tuffet?

Now that we knew the names of all of our tools and had also organized them, it was time to put them to good use. Earning our next badge required us to roll up our sleeves, don our safety glasses, and DIY all day long until the cows came home, or until our DIY abilities couldn’t DIY any longer. Whichever came first.

Side note #2: if you didn’t organize and/or purchase safety glasses while earning your Intermediate Level badge, you may or may not be forced to wear hot pink swimming goggles at this point.

Our project was a luminary. Not to be confused with the illuminati. One you can hang from the ceiling or a tree for a lovely and stylish lantern, and the other … well, I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure you aren’t supposed to put a candle in them.

Side note #3: you can of course, use candles for your project, but I recommend those battery-powered tea lights. Less danger of burning down your ‘hood.

There were plenty of ideas floating around the ol’ interweb on how to make a beautiful and fully functional luminary, and we got a bit lost down the bunny trail for a while trying to decide. Being list people, we naturally had to write down our favorites and then choose.

Side note #4: writing lists in goggles isn’t the easiest thing in the world. I recommend waiting on the goggle wearing until you actually have your hammer and nails in hand.

• Mason-jar luminaries (since there weren’t many tools involved in this one, if any, we scratched it off the list).
• “House” luminaries made of strong cardstock or cardboard. These are especially cute when they’re holiday themed: snowy and Victorian looking for Christmas, haunted and creepy for Halloween. Again, not enough tools for us hammer and nail crazed farmgirls, so we shelved this one for another afternoon.
• Tin-can luminaries. You can make sweet, mini ones using pop cans, or larger ones using the family-sized cans of diced tomatoes, tinned peaches, etc.
• Paper-sack luminaries, made from … well, you guessed it, paper sacks. These are fun when you want to use a lot, and maybe spell something out, with a letter per sack. Again though, not hands-on enough for Nora. Preschool project, Aunty, she said with a miffed sniff. If anyone has the miffed sniff down, it’s Nora. So last year.
• Floating Witch Hat luminary. These are oh-so adorbs for Halloween as well. Take a pointed witch hat from the dollar store or thrift store, pop in a glow stick, and hang from the ceiling of your porch to delight your trick or treaters. The more the merrier with this one.
• Milk jug or wine bottle luminaries. Painted and decorated, these have unlimited potential, and they’re a great way to teach your little farmkid about upcycling and keeping things out of our landfills.

Well, it’s no surprise we chose to do mostly the tin-can luminaries, with a couple milk-jug ones thrown in for good measure. Teaching a smallfry to use a hammer is an exercise in patience and bravado, by the way. Is there a badge for that? Cuz I earned one, let me tell you. I almost taught her how to use the drill, but I got skeered by the wild look in her baby blues.

Maybe next time. Until then, we are lighting up our evening skies with a whole collection of luminaries. If you see a glowing orb down the street, follow it … it’s me. And I have snacks.

Mostly tinned peaches and diced tomatoes.

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The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 7,504 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—10,886 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ 

For this week’s Each Other/Big Kid Now Expert Level Young Cultivator Merit Badge, Andy asked me to help him by shadowing him as he shadowed another.

I know. Sounds shady. Like a film noir, Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall, cue the Magnum P.I. theme music shady. But in order to earn his badge, he needed to follow in the footsteps of someone (a mentor or Farmgirl Sister) who was working in the profession he was most interested in. He had waffled a bit, I admit, while earning his first two badges in this category, but he finally settled on what he thought was his dream job.

Donut Maker and Baker Extraordinaire.

He added the Extraordinaire part, as I’m sure you deduced.

I knew he was coming at it from a purely preteen, adolescent, constantly hungry, sugar-crazed, glazed and frosted, point of view, but I figured he could learn that the hard way.

Also, I enjoy a good maple bar like any red-blooded American farmgirl, so I didn’t mind waiting in the wings. The sprinkled, deep-fried, apple fritter wings … where was I?

The neighborhood baker at the local donut shop was only too happy to oblige Andy’s request. In fact, I thought I heard something mumbled manically under his breath about slave labor and needing the fryer deep-cleaned, but I couldn’t be sure. Probably just my imagination.

Bright and early the next morning, we were off. And by ‘bright and early,’ I of course mean, in the dead of night with nothing but moonlight to light our way to the donut shop. Andy resembled a cast member of the Walking Dead, and I must admit, I didn’t look too good myself. Nobody looks good at 3:30 a.m., except maybe the aforementioned Bogey and Bacall. But they had makeup artists and better lighting.

Mr. Donut Maker and Baker Extraordinaire Senior was already up and ready to go. I’m not sure what his veins are pumping with, but I’m fairly certain it’s caffeine and sugar, not the normal blood the rest of us have. I got myself to the coffeemaker faster than you could say ‘good morning, sunshine’, and when I couldn’t find a mug fast enough, I used a large mixing bowl.

It was either that, or put my lips directly beneath the coffee spout and guzzle. And I am a lady, let me remind you. Most of the time.

Mr. Donut Maker and Baker Extraordinaire Junior found some energy somewhere in that gangly body of his, and jumped right in. He had been hoping for a hot breakfast of chocolate-glazed goodness before any actual work, but one narrow-eyed squint from his new boss kept him on the straight and narrow. He was put to the test by cleaning out some ovens.

He spent half the time reenacting the witch scene from Hansel and Gretel until Mr. Baker plugged his donut hole with a pastry just to keep him quiet.

All in all, it was one long day … that somehow was over by 2 p.m. Baker’s hours are a thing not to be taken lightly.

Me, I take mine with extra sprinkles and a mixing bowl of strong coffee. Because I am a lady.

Just not before 9 a.m.

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