Kicked Out of the Kitchen and Loving It

For the last few months, I've been kicked out of the kitchen more and more frequently. My daughter's been bitten by the baking bug, and she is staking her claim to the family kitchen. She picks out the recipes, takes out the ingredients, and gets cooking, and she is determined to do it alone (at least until it comes time to deal with the hot oven).

If I close my eyes, I can picture her chubby little hand and her giant smile when I first hoisted her up on a kitchen chair and handed her a wooden spoon. She was my eager assistant, first alone, then with her brother and her sister, for years, until she lost interest, too tween and too cool to hang with her mom in the kitchen.

But now she's back. On her own terms. Without mom at her side. And I couldn't be more proud or excited that she's chosen a path to independence that produces sweet treats, even occasionally sharing the dough with her brother.

Bella's current favorite cookbook is Teens Cook Dessert written by Megan and Jill Carle, two teenage sisters with gorgeous photographs. It's real baking from scratch with personal introductions that really speak teen/tween. I'd love to meet these inspiring young women and thank them for getting my daughter so excited about cooking.

Happy Wordful, Five Minutes Wordless, and Way-back wednesday.

The Poetry of Six Word Memoirs

This week Sunday Scribblings has challenged their readers to write poetry.

Poetry stresses me out so much that it gives me serious stomach cramps.

Iambic pantameter was a rhythm I never understood. Rhyming is a skill I never acquired... in either my native tongue of French or English. Mad/Glad/Bad/Sad is about the limit of my rhyming prowess.

So rather than trying my hand at a true poem and covering myself in ridicule, I thought I would do a six word memoir, a form of poetry in its brevity.

Six word memoirs are featured at Smith Magazine. It's worth heading over to read some of the truly hilarious ones there. My favorites include the book title, "Not quite what I was planning," Hemingway's famous opening line, "For sale, baby shoes, never worn," and the romantic, "We were roadkill on love's highway."

And so... without further ado... here's my 6 word memoir:
"Would rather be late, than bored."

What's yours?