one more thing sarah palin and i have in common

A sample of my famous pumpkin muffins

Since I know that only two people read this blog and both of you know I'm interning in a hospital-based hospice, I don't need to say it again. I guess I just did. So you're hearing it twice. Not that this is unusual. As you also know, I frequently repeat my favorite stories or biographical facts. My sisters refer to this as "Oh no, Jenny's Telling an Ireland Story." This bulky label refers to a time (ok, most of a decade) after I returned from studying abroad in Ireland that - according to those little minxes - I did nothing but regale anyone who came within two feet of me with the EXACT same tales of comical woe from my stay in the Land of Eire. My repeat performances were so identical - right down to inflection, hand gestures, and over-the-top facial expressions - that they claimed they forgot what day, month, and year it was when I climbed aboard my soap box for a little Irish cheer. "Is it June of 1994? Or March, 2002?" one sister who shall remain nameless said when I launched into my personal fave: "Did I ever tell you about the day the University closed the library because they said it was "too windy" but really it's because there was a big soccer match on?" This story is very funny but I won't go into it now because I'm pretty sure you've heard it.

A perfect time to segue back to the point of this post. So every Wednesday there's a "team" meeting at the hospice. Doctors, nurses, chaplains, social workers, the music therapist (more on her later). We're mostly there to catch up on who died during the past week and to discuss the plan for the folks who are still with us. The meeting can be a little grim, so I decided to lighten things up by bringing in a sumptuous pink box of my moonface & wally goodies. I'd be the hero of the hospice. Everyone would love me. The cute doctor who looks like the Baltics version of Elvis would think I was radically fly. All of these thoughts were pumping through my brain as I baked up a batch of pumpkin bread "cookies" from an improvised recipe at 1am while listening to Chet Baker on repeat and reading about schizophrenia (for school and not because I was attempting to self-diagnose).

Now, I know better than to try to pass off any untested gluten-free/vegan recipes I've created at the spur of the moment, especially when I've listened to "Funny Valentine" 8000 times. But I decided to wing it. The next morning I made a batch of maple icing, slathered it on the sizeable "cookies" and rolled out the door.

So I get to the meeting and plunk my pink box (not THAT pink box...sorry mom) on the table and everyone lunges for it. I settle into my seat convinced that my myriad skills will be lauded and that Gorky Park Elvis will turn his sideburns my way. The reality? Apparently, the "cookies" may have looked ok, but turns out they more closely resembled a toasted hockey puck in weight and texture. For anyone who hadn't broken a tooth with the initial bite, there was a soft (ok, softer) center, but few made it that far. More than one iced puck was bitten into and accidentally dropped and flipped (icing side down) on to the table because the eater wasn't expecting the jawbreaker quality and unwieldy size. The meeting was peppered with sounds one would normally expect from grapefruit sized hail slamming into concrete.

Goal!