Cookies and Gingerbread Houses on Disaster Lane

I woke up this morning thinking I had a dozen Christmas tree cookies lined up on my kitchen table ready to decorate. I didn’t. I baked them in my dreams. Once again I'm wishing against all odds and common sense that someday it will be proven that our dream life is one we actually live in an alternate universe because I do some pretty awesome things when I’m thrashing about in my bed. If you could see the mess my sheets are in when I wake up you’d know that “thrashing” is a good word to describe what I do at night. The only time I sleep like the dead is when I’ve taken an Ambien and I try not to do that unless there’s a full moon and I’ve remembered that fact early enough to pop one of those pills.

I probably dreamed I was baking cookies because several of my fellow residents had a cookie baking production line going to make gingerbread cookies for our upcoming cookie decorating party. I signed up for the party right away to get one of the twelve available spots. I did it last year and I had a frustrating-but-fun time trying to keep up with the others who’ve had years of experience as mothers and grandmothers painting cookies, while that was my first experience. I’m super competitive with anything crafty so the pressure is on to see if I learned enough last year to decorate some cookies I’m not ashamed of and won’t have to eat right away to hide the evidence. As a kid my mom did bake cookies around the holidays but nothing that required putting frosting buttons and bows or faces on baked goods. I’m writing this on Sunday and the event takes place on Wednesday so you won’t see any cookie photos in this post. 

What will happen in time to share in this week's post is the results on who won the gingerbread house building contest---results are due on Tuesday. You would not believe the controversy the Art Professor’s bombed-out house in the Gaza Strip caused. Last year they kept the houses on display for several weeks, including while and after the voting took place. This year they pulled them down and tucked them out of sight after only 4-5 days. Then the kitchen manager sent out an email with photos of all the houses and gave us just a few days to vote. 

The night before the houses disappeared I got a phone call from woman who was looking to rally support for going to the management and asking them to take the bombed-out house out of the show. "A gingerbread house contest is no place for a political statement," she said. Can you believe that? Not the part about it being the wrong place for a political statement but the part about being so offended that she and a few others thought it should be removed and they were willing to take action to make that happen. This is what intolerance leads to---fighting over something as insignificant as a gingerbread house in a senior community.

Several people did confront the Art Professor face-to-face while the houses were on display but she said she’d been involved in showing and setting up art displays for years and is used to defending controversial pieces on display. I felt bad because I was one of the people at a lunch table one day who encouraged her to build a gingerbread house knowing full well what theme her house was going to be. 

The person who called me even claimed that one of the professor’s former students probably built the house for her and she should be disqualified on that count alone. She says that because the professor has macular degeneration and that was her only proof. One of the houses was built by a group of people in the Memory Care building. Should they be disqualified? Should the couples who built a house together be disqualified? Such silliness! I doubt it is true that she didn't build the house. There was certainly nothing precise or complicated about the house, but even if she did have help, so what?

Another lady said, “Christmas is a time of joy, this [house] doesn’t belong here.” Two wars are going on in the world and this woman---who goes to church nearly every day---is not willing to be reminded that not everyone’s Christmas is going to be filled with sugar plums and carefully wrapped gifts? She has a right to an opinion but why make a big deal out of it? Tell your friends you hate the house. Don’t vote for it. But what gives anyone the right join an effort to have the house removed thus canceling out the professor's first amendment rights? I wish I had said that to Ms. Offended as we stood looking at the houses on the first day they were on display. Instead I said nothing except “it makes my house look better” and I’m ashamed of that. I should have said something to defend the right to be different in a contest with no rules. I should have said we're never going to achieve world peace if we won't/don't acknowledge the sufferings of others. 

By the way, one of the women rallied against the bombed-out house is the same woman who was responsible for the renaming of the ‘Secret Society of Liberal Ladies’ dinner group to the ‘Tuesday Dinner Discussion Group.’ Another concession to Ms. Offended we made is instead of eating at one large table we broke up into three tables and rotate who sits where so we don't call attention to ourselves. We're more secretive now than before which is ironic when you think about how we used to made our Tuesday reservations out in the open as the Secret Society of Liberal Ladies. It was a playful joke, until it wasn't.

Back to business: Whoever took the photos of the houses, didn’t do a very good job which I can’t help thinking had a bearing on the results---some people didn’t even have time to see them in person. And the controversy sure put a damper on the results. The house at the top was my Cupcake Cottage and it won First Place. The next three houses below were built by my friends.

 

 Built by my writing group friend

My writing group friend and his wife made this one. It's hard to see in this photo that the tree in the window has working lights and the window pane itself is made of sugar as is the 'green water' feature in the front. The Royal icing has the cutest footprints in the 'snow' and the tree in back is made out of spearmint candy and is absolutely perfect and looks like a high end, carved candle.

Built by the Art Professor

This is the bombed-out house. Coffee grounds were rubbed into the gingerbread to make the walls still standing look charred. I never got a chance to photograph the paper that went with the house (or any of the houses for that matter) which told the symbolism of the elements that were used. The house was named after one that Oppenheimer had lived in while working on the Atomic bomb.

The pink yarn house below was made by a former kindergarten teacher---she's The Cheerleader if you're a long-time reader of my blog. It's a godawful house in my opinion but the woman is such an upbeat and playful person to sit next to at the lunch table and whenever I get that chance to do that I know I'm going to have fun. She went around telling people not to vote for her house, that it wasn't a serious entry.

Built by The Cheerleader

Below is other samples of the houses submitted. I don't know who built the first two houses but they were cute. 

Built by the Memory Care Building residents

 

For some reason they didn't name a 2nd and 3rd place. I haven't been out of the apartment to find out what the gossip machine has to say about that. But nothing about this year's contest was 'normal' by comparison to last year. The barn you see in the background in one of the photos above kept falling apart and the window trim on another house kept falling off. They'd get repaired several times a day but the frosting or glue used wouldn't hold. (Maybe this was a contributing factor on why the houses disappeared earlier than expected?) The pink yarn house never got the gingerbread roof put on. It was sitting off to the side, the victim of a strong wind according to the builder's note. Oh, and I thought it was totally unfair that the kits provided weren't all the same i.e. we didn't start out on an even playing field. The lean-to cottages took less candy and time but it would have been harder to be inspired with less 'canvas' to work with. Anyway, the theme of this year's show could easily be called The Houses on Disaster Lane. Winning first place felt like a hollow victory.

Until next Wednesday. ©