I was in charge of the book club meeting last night.  Andrea dumped the book choice on me after no one liked My Losing Season last month.  I figured it was Christmas time, no one was in the mood for another heavy tome involving child abuse, so I chose Janet Evanovich's first Stephanie Plum tale; One for the Money.  I hadn't read it in years and had forgotten all the details so I enjoyed re-reading it.

Yesterday afternoon, I hit the liquor store to pick up some wine that went with the book.  This particular book club considers the wine more important than the book.  Half of us don't read the books but we all drink the wine.  Several members only joined, in fact, when they were assured that reading wasn't required.

So I didn't want to blow the wine selection.

For anyone not fortunate enough to have read Ms. E's books, Stephanie is a bounty hunter.  An incompetent bounty hunter.  Imagine Rhoda Morgenstern with a gun.

The first wine I chose was a chardonnay from Smoking Loon.  I thought that was an apt description of our heroine.  When I spotted the Red Truck, that was an obvious choice.  Finally, considering what  happens to the red truck in the story; Dynamite.

That was the easy part.  At seven pm, the book club was meeting at my house.  Here's the thing; I don't entertain.  Jay entertains.  He just lets me tag along.  But Jay has classes on Monday night and I knew he wouldn't get home until 9.  The house was pretty clean, but I had a vague idea in my head that more might be required.

I needn't have worried.  When Josie got home from school, she announced that the book club should meet in the living room because it's the prettiest room in the house.  Then she went to work.  While I was wandering about in the kitchen, wondering if we had any more napkins and where they might be, she was sweeping and dusting the living room.  She even moved the dining room table off the carpet and vacuumed.  She's much stronger than she looks, that table ain't balsa wood.  Once she had everything spic and span, she set to work on the refreshments.  She set out the wine bottles, as many glasses as she thought we might need, hung charms on them, set out plates and napkins (she knew where they were), and was demanding to know where we kept the silver polish.  She polished two trays and set out the cheese, crackers and fig newtons (read the book).  By the time the first guests arrived, the place looked like Martha Stewart had just breezed through.  She gave them a tour of the house.

When Mr. Curry arrived, he asked the other guests if they'd had the pleasure of meeting Josie.

"Meet her?" was the reply, "I want to adopt her!"

Shortly after the guests arrived, the phone rang. Normally I would have ignored it but it was my brother Andy.  He doesn't usually call me at night, the last time he did was to ask if I would babysit while he and his wife went to the hospital to deliver #3.  I took the call.

"Hello?"

"The recipe says 10 to 12 minutes.  They've been in for fourteen minutes already and they're still raw!"

He was making devil cookies.  I've written about devil cookies before and let me just say this: on an emergency scale of one to ten where labor pains are a ten, a devil cookie emergency is a nine and three quarters.

At Christmas time?  A nine and seven eighths.

We discussed oven temperature, ingredients and cookie sheets and came to the conclusion that the air bake cookie sheets could be the problem; just stick the cookies back in and cook them till they were done.

Back to the book club.  All the women read this one, none of the men did.  Some of them seemed to regret that decision, the more we discussed the book.  A certain scene that took place on the floor behind the eclair stand in the bakery interested the men very much and lead to some very entertaining conversation.  Bottom line; none of us remembered ever playing "choo choo" as a kid. 

The phone rang.  It was Andy again.

"What now?"

"They're hard.  They have a hard shell and they're hollow."  It was the voice of despair. "They look like roofing shingles."

"Jeeeez.  When you took them off the tray, did the insides fall out?"

"I haven't taken them off the tray.  I was gonna ask if you take them off or let them cool on the tray."

"Get 'em off now or they'll never come off."

Devil cookies are not supposed to be flat, hollow or hard.  I don't know enough about the chemistry of baking to know what went wrong.  Sometimes it just turns out that way and I felt bad for Andy, but at that point, there was nothing I could do. God only knows what was in those cookies.  Andy had called me on Saturday, wondering if it was okay to substitute butter for shortening in Ranger cookies.

"No.  Butter is butter, shortening is crisco."

"Oh.  I think I have some crisco, but it's really old.  It's been here for like, a year.  Is it still good?"

"It's crisco, not mayo; of course it's good."

"I don't have any oatmeal or coconut, but I've got wheaties.  Wheaties'll work, won't they?"

"Sure.  If you don't care what your cookies taste like."

"Someone told me I could substitute wheaties, or even special K for corn flakes."

"Have you ever tasted wheaties?"

"I've got some rice crispies.  Will they work?"

"Yeah, they'll work great.  But without oatmeal, coconut and with rice crispies instead of cornflakes, you're not making ranger cookies.  I don't know what you're making."

"Guess I better go to the store."

"Only if you want ranger cookies."

I don't mean to pick on Andy.  He's not my only brother who has called recently with Christmas cookie questions.  He's just the only one to inturrupt my book club meeting. 

Three times.

"Hello?"

"They're perfect!!  The third tray came out perfect, I may cry!!"

The entire book club cheered.

After the devil cookie dilemma was solved, we got down to discussing who could play Stephanie Plum if a movie were made and who could play the equally important roles of Joe Morelli (JP Hubbell would be great!) and the mysterious Ranger. 

Those of us who had read the book (the women) all agreed that we liked the end, where Stephanie, when confronted with a life or death situation with a very bad guy, not only shoots him, but shoots him through the heart five times.  We all agreed that that's what we would do; we hate it when movies show women hit (or shoot) the bad guy and then run away.

No.

You would never hit (or shoot) him once.  You would keep on hitting or shooting until you were satisfied that this particular baddy was never going to be a problem again.  Honest to God, it's like Hollywood writers don't even know any women.

The conversation then turned to guns.  Who's got them, who carries one, under what circumstances would you ever use one?  Our crowd had a wide range of opinions, although everyone seemed to be comfortable with the idea of guns.  One fellow did say that he wasn't happy with the current situation in MN, where anyone could fill out a form and get a conceal carry permit, because what if they were on the edge of snapping?

I assured him that while we had no guns, there were many things right there in the living room that I could kill him with if I happened to snap. 

At one point Jay asked each person in the room if they would ever have  gun or ever carry one.  Almost everyone had had a gun of some kind at some point.  Only one person answered "I do and I do."  When she explained to Jay what sort of a gun she owned and under what circumstances she carried it, his jaw hit the floor.

"Next to my wife," he said "You're the sexiest woman I've ever met!!"

I have no problem with the idea that everyone I meet is packing, but I don't have a gun in the house because I'm pretty sure the temptation to use it would be overwhelming.  I can easily see myself driving along with the window rolled down, taking shots at every Wellstone! sign still dotting this neighborhood.  And don't get me started on the dumbass bumperstickers you see around here.  Buck Fush?  Try Buck Shot, buddy.

Like any good book club, eventually we got around to movies.  Our favorites, the scariest we'd ever seen, the worst we'd ever seen.  Everyone agreed that 2001: A Space Odyssey was an awful piece of drek.

The party ended in a brawl over whether Bruce Sprinsteen is the greatest rock and roller ever or an overbearing, over rated poseur.

It was about 3 am when I finally fell asleep.

So why am I writing this when it's well past midnight and I should've been asleep hours ago?

I'm waiting for my devil cookies to come out of the oven.

 

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