All posts by jenipurr

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All I want for Christmas

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I suppose I could blame the Gemini in me, but the truth is that I am a procrastinator of the highest level. If you give me a deadline that I know I cannot miss I will get things done. I am marvelous under pressure, actually – I’ve done some of my best work in the last frantic moments before something was due. Projects at work (and when I was younger, at school) will be completed on time and consistently because my job (or my grades) depends on it. But when there is no deadline and no urgency about getting something done, I lack the incentive to finish. Setting deadlines for myself does not work because the problem is that I know that I am a big slacker and will just find a way to move that deadline back again and again until I ignore it completely. After all, it’s not like I’m going to fire myself, or give myself a failing grade, or do anything remotely dastardly that would convince me to not mess with myself as task master again.

But I recognize that my procrastinating tendencies can be a problem. I tend to start things with the best of intentions but then they fall by the wayside as I move on to something else. However, in my own defense, it’s not like I’m incapable of finishing anything at all. After all, for the past several years we’ve had all our Christmas shopping done early, the cards out on time, and all the baking done. And occasionally I manage to surprise myself and follow a project through to completion (such as sponge-painting the dining room, or sewing and hanging curtains, or organizing the garage). But most of the time I will get almost all the way through, and then find something else that drags me away before the final pieces are complete. This would be why the molding was never put back on the floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelves in our bedroom (and why we have a large wad of tissues stuffed under one corner because there is a little bit of a draft there that the molding would likely cover if we would actually PUT IT BACK). This is also why there have been pencil marks on the wall of the claustrophobic toilet room in our master bathroom for probably over a year now, and cans of paint downstairs for the faux sky project I keep intending to get to, one of these days.

So this year I have decided that, of all the things that I could want for Christmas, the one thing I want most of all is a Finisher. I know such a thing does not exist, of course, but that does not prevent me from dreaming wistfully of getting one underneath my tree. In my imagination it looks kind of like a little house elf, but with lots and lots of arms that whirl around at top speed, and it mutters to itself in a squirrely little voice and there is a sound like a high-pitched motor when it darts here and there around the house while I watch in awe. Actually, I don’t even want it under the tree. I want it zipping about the house while I sleep on Christmas Eve, doing what it is meant to be doing, which is finishing all the projects that I have started over the years and that still languish, dusty and undone.

The Finisher could start, for example, with the breakfast nook tree. The artistic friend who helped me start this thing has agreed with me that perhaps in hindsight we should have made it an oak tree – something with really big leaves for which I could have created a nifty stencil or sponge and which would have been finished one heck of a lot sooner. But no, we picked teeny tiny leaves – each one taking careful application of three different shades of green – and that is before she even starts in on giving them their final realistic touches. I will let my artistic friend take care of the ending details, but if I had my very own Finisher, at least all the rest of the several thousand leaves still to be painted would be finished.

Next, the Finisher would move on to the sewing machine – or rather, to the pile of half-finished curtain panels that have been sitting beside it, slowly gathering protective layers of cat hair as the feline members of this household make them into comfy little nests. I had the best of intentions for these curtain panels, and in my defense I did, over the course of about a year and a half, manage to plow through curtains for the computer room, double-panel curtains for the bedroom, and a set of lovely yellow ones for the dining room which hung for only a few days before we realized that they just weren’t going to do and replaced them with lace panels. So all that remains in this entire house in the way of curtains are the ones for the breakfast nook – very simple tab panels in white cotton, with little tiebacks in blue. I cut the fabric and did half the pressing and hemmed up half the panels…but that was quite likely almost a year ago. The Finisher would de-cat fur them, sew them, iron out all the wrinkles, and even hang them for me so I can finally get rid of that last set of temporary paper shades which have hung in those three windows for the nearly four years we have been in this house.

Because this is my fantasy, my Finisher would be super-speedy in getting all my tasks completed. Next it would tackle all that billing paperwork I’ve been meaning to file for the past year, and it would organize all those photographs that are overflowing the cardboard box I’ve been stuffing them in since 1992 (the last time I put a photo in an album). It would riffle through all those print-outs of all the recipes we’ve tried in our quest to expand our repertoire of healthy dinner ideas and copy them neatly into the cookbook I bought for this very purpose several months ago (but which has exactly two recipes copied into it so far), and it would also decipher my scribbled notes on the margins of those print-outs to incorporate all my recipe modifications so I don’t have to try to remember every time whether or not I left in some crucial ingredient. It would move all that miscellaneous desk stuff from my old desk to my new desk – the new desk that was built into the office and which has been there for nearly four years, drawers still mostly empty, waiting for me to do this very simple transfer. But my Finisher would immediately know what size organizing caddies would fit in the drawers and separate everything out by type and I would no longer have to extract my passport from a glob of Petromalt at the back of the miscellaneous drawer because it didn’t have anywhere else to go. Oh, and speaking of my passport, the Finisher would also fill out and actually *mail* in the paperwork to get the darn thing updated with my ‘new’ married name. Do I need to point out that I have had this ‘new’ name now for over three years?

At our monthly craft night earlier this month the hostess asked each of us what one thing we wanted to work on for ourselves for the next year. And I immediately said that I needed to work on finishing things. So Santa, if you’re listening, I could really use your help. Just one Finisher. I am even willing to forego my yearly request for a small, winged dragon (fire breathing optional). Just bring me a Finisher, even just one on loan. And in the meantime I swear I’ll do my best to keep on working on those procrastinating tendencies so that next year maybe I won’t need that Finisher underneath my Christmas tree.

I swear it, Santa. I’ll get right on it. Just as soon as I finish this baby blanket I’m knitting. Oh, and did you see that cute pattern for the afghan? And I have this great idea for painting stripes in the downstairs bathroom, and I was thinking that maybe I need to put together emergency kits for our cars, and one of these days I really need to get outside and weed the path in the backyard like I’ve been saying I’m going to do now for months, and while I’m out there I really ought to finally organize all those leftover rocks from when we built the raised flower bed so they don’t lie in untidy heaps all over the ground for another year, and we really need to take the recycling to the recycling center, and, and, and…

I think I am doomed.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Recap

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Yes, it’s 2004 in review ( because I have decided I am not going to subject you to the entirety of the letter we mailed out, and instead do a slightly modified version that might have a wee bit more snark than I’m willing to send to distant relatives).

I’m still happily employed at the company by the river, poking at databases, collecting data on random things like the number of cell phones in Lichtenstein, writing papers, organizing food drives. We entertain ourselves by trying to identify the various birds (Finches! Starlings!) and river critters (Otters! Sea lions!) that pass by in the river down below, and the blue heron across the river entertains itself by occasionally swooping right past the window and trying to give me a heart attack. Back in February Richard was finally offered a permanent position for the job he’d been doing nearly a year already as a temp. We cheered. We celebrated. We eyed his insurance and my insurance and immediately switched both of us to his insurance because the one I have access to stinks. We checked out all the nifty new benefits he gets as an employee of the university. For example, since I am now married to an employee of the university, I qualify for a discount on classes through the university extension. You would not think that would be all that complicated, but apparently I just might be the first employee spouse who’s attempted to take advantage of this nifty deal. Great merriment ensued as faxes and emails zipped back and forth among departments as everyone tried to figure out just what this whole thing actually entailed. Luckily we finally worked it out by Thanksgiving, which meant that I started my Adobe Photoshop class (which is online so I do not even have to *go* anywhere to take it. Yay!) last month and am looking forward to finally learning the secrets of how to remove red eye from photographs without manually coloring in every stupid bit by hand and thus ending up with family portraits full of people with large black irises, much like scary cartoons.

This year we’ve done a bit of traveling – for once, most of it not work related. I zipped up to Seattle in May to take a class in chocolate making with my little sister. We had a marvelous time. We made piles of beautiful, delicious chocolates. I could not repeat anything we did now to save my life, and it’s probably just as well, because the last thing I need is recurring knowledge of how to make perfect truffles. Less than one week later we drove to Ashland for five days and four plays, and had a marvelous time. Being good little nerds we tracked down a pub with free wireless access and made use of it, even though we had a perfectly good (okay, I cannot type that without laughing) dial-up connection at our hotel just a few blocks away. After we’d recovered from that I zipped off to the mountains for our annual girls-only weekend with my sisters, and instead of regaling strangers in a bar with karaoke and gambling away tens of dollars in quarters, like we did last year, this year we decided to rappel into a big bottomless pit. Okay, it had a bottom – it was just very, very, very far down. It is important to note here that we were all scared out of our wits, but it was marvelous fun and we ate a lot of ice cream to recover and have decided that one time dangling from a rope over certain death is enough for one life time for our family.

Chocolate making and rappeling haven’t been the only new skills I’ve picked up this year. Thanks to two very long Saturdays spent at Habitat for Humanity workdays, I now know how to pour (and smooth) cement, dig (and fill) a french drain, and hang dry wall. We also learned that after you spend eight hours breathing gypsum dust from hanging dry wall you start getting a little punchy and pose with your fellow drywall hangers and your matching cordless drills in Charlie’s Angels poses. Also, cement is heavy. And pea gravel. And, for that matter, sheets of drywall. Oh, and this year I also participated (sort of) in an emergency goat c-section, but I figure that’s not a skill I’m going to be using again and again.

After putting our names on a waiting list last Thanksgiving of 2003, we finally got our Prius. I can now obsess about miles per gallon with the best of them. Cruise control is my friend. Also it does really well on road trips over mountains, even though it seems to not be too crazy about the cold. Pretty much as soon as it arrived we got antsy to take it on a road trip, so in October we took another five days and decided to do a whirlwind road trip up to Seattle, and then back down the coast of Oregon. I do not recommend doing this in only five days. I also do not recommend doing this in a really big storm. Whoosh

Richard and I have found new ways to share experiences together this year. In August I finally broke down and decided that I could either live with the chronic sinus infections, or I could suck it up and go get stabbed with tiny needles in the hopes of making it better. They tested me for all manner of allergens and it turns out I’m allergic to dust and pollen and pretty much anything furry and four-footed. Yes, that includes cats. Luckily I’ve now graduated to only one shot a week (although the nurse still shakes her head every time she has to measure my hives and welts), but since Richard’s been getting his for years, every three weeks we get to go in and get stabbed together. Heck, we even recently started getting our quarterly allergy check-ups together. It’s all kinds of romantic.

This year Richard and I also got to share another experience – leaving school. After lots of thought, he decided to withdraw from the Master of Library and Information Sciences program because, although he still loves books and libraries, the MLIS program was not meeting his interest in information technology and computers. At least he was smarter than me and made the decision more quickly, instead of waiting until the last minute to drop out (like I did after four years in graduate school, when I knew I didn’t want to be there after the first quarter!). He’s still serving as library commissioner, however, which is really cool because, as his wife, I got to take part in the library drill team during a parade this summer. I got a free t-shirt out of the deal, plus the realization that some people cannot spell ‘Book’ while marching.

I am still obsessed with yarn, and knitting, and yarn, and needles, and did I mention the yarn? This year I have made some gorgeous sweaters and afghans and other things which I will not mention here because some people who read this journal are quite possibly getting them for Christmas. I still have not yet tried socks, but once I get over my next spate of gift knitting (and by the way it would be nice if my friends could plan their pregnancies better and not have their babies due all in the same week!) I may just break down and tackle the sock mystery. We’ll see.

While this year’s been pretty good to us, it hasn’t been so good to the cats. There was the whole incident with Zucchini in April (involving daily x-rays and all manner of fun, and the realization that there are times when you actually look forward to the nastiest hairball you have ever seen in your life). In October, our oldest cat Rebecca died unexpectedly and with no warning. And not two weeks later Allegra was diagnosed with bone cancer in her jaw and given a window of about six months. Luckily the other cats remain fairly happy and healthy, even if they are starting to put on a couple of pounds as they grow older, and continue to take an active part in ‘assisting’ me with my knitting, distributing small stuffed toys all over the house, pruning the indoor plants, and holding down the furniture by taking extended naps.

So that about sums up my year. There’ve been ups and downs, but it’s mostly been a pretty good year. Here’s hoping next year brings more of the same.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Sunday at random

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As we were driving down the street this afternoon, on our way to meet my parents for lunch, I eyed a few of the more tawdry holiday displays we were passing in dismay. And then I turned to Richard and said ‘Promise me that there will never be any inflatable creatures on my front lawn.’ And then I relented just a little and noted that the only inflatable creature I would be willing to accept would be a lemur (mainly because I figure the chances of Richard tracking down an inflatable lemur are slim, and even if he does it’s likely to be far too expensive for just a joke).

I am a little concerned about the fact that he said he wasn’t sure he could make that promise. And that was before I agreed to the lemur. Hmm.

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It is very hard to type when there is a cat leaning on my arm and licking the back of my hand. He is purring though – quite loudly – so through the rules of cat ownership, I cannot chase him away. I am also telling myself that one should never pass up on a full-hand exfoliation for free. If he starts in on my nose (like he sometimes does at night) I may have to rethink this decision, but for now, the hands are getting mighty clean.

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After seeing Green Tuna’s entry about this very unique nativity set, I cracked up, and immediately showed the link to everyone I could. This included, among others, every member of my family, several coworkers, and my boss, who just happens to be the husband of the pastor at church.

Today I asked her if he’d shown her the set and she immediately started laughing. Not only did she, too, think it was wonderful, but she then noted that it spurred quite the lengthy discussion afterwards on other key marshmallow moments in the bible. Consider, for example, marshmallow Adam and Eve, in graham cracker fig leaves, or perhaps an ever so slightly toasted Moses in front of the burning bush. Really, the possibilities are endless.

My little sister says they need one. I am pretty much now convinced that I need one too. After all, it has been pastor-approved.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Flight patterns

Yesterday my boss came into the office and went immediately for the binoculars. At first I wasn’t sure what he was looking at, until he pointed to the tree directly outside our office door and mentioned that it was full of finches. It took a moment to realize what he was talking about – finches are tiny little things and their colors blended into what remains of the leaves on that tree, but I finally saw one, and then another, and then suddenly I realized that the entire tree was swarming with them. Through the binoculars I could get a better glimpse of the green feathers on the males, and the perfect black and white striped wings, but without the binoculars they were just tiny little brown blurs, bouncing from twig to twig. There was something almost a little disturbing about the whole thing. And it’s not that the tree hasn’t been swarming with birds before – occasionally huge flocks of mockingbirds or blue jays decide to perch there, and sometimes the starlings that nest on our balcony zip around in the branches, but they are all large enough to see. This was a little different, however – they were too small, too well camouflaged, until suddenly you realize that the tree is alive with them. It was sort of like suddenly discovering that something is swarming with ants.

I blame Hitchcock for this, of course. My brain would never try to convince me that swarms of finches were the remotest bit disturbing if it hadn’t been for Hitchcock.

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I had grand plans today – plans that involved lounging around in my pajamas and bathrobe until afternoon, working on Christmas cards and some last-minute Christmas knitting, and maybe even tackling another lesson in my Photoshop class I’m taking through University Extension. But Richard suggested cornmeal waffles with pecan butter for breakfast and that, of course, meant that we would have to go out to get them, which meant that if I was going to leave the house I had to do things like put on presentable clothing that doesn’t have little purple moose all over, and shoes that are not fuzzy inside, and do things to my hair so I would not scare small and unsuspecting children.

So instead of lounging today, there has been waffles and a little shopping, and lunch with my parents and my sister and her husband and the world’s cutest nephews. The oldest charmed the computer/math nerd side of his family by informing us that he’s been acing the timed math tests and by quizzing us on our multiplication tables. He’s only in first grade and he’s already doing multiplication. I figure we’ll have him coding by the time he leaves elementary school.

This afternoon I did get some of that knitting done (although not as much as I’d hoped), and this evening we had a three-hour choir rehearsal, which went surprisingly well, considering this is the first time we’ve actually practiced with the string quartet which will be playing with us during tomorrow’s cantata performance. We drove home through pea soup fog and listened to the BareNaked Ladies Christmas album on the way (an early Christmas present from Richard), and managed to do the final batch of signing and folding and stuffing and sealing all the Christmas cards with annual Christmas letters enclosed. And now there is nothing left to do but just a little more present-related knitting, and the last round of present wrapping, and we are done.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Decisions on food

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As proof for why it is that our no-cookie mandate was a good idea this year, yesterday morning I had three of them for breakfast, slathered with a little glob of chocolate frosting. I have no willpower when it comes to Christmas cookies. We’d hoped to foist most of them off on the rest of the group at the potluck, but it turned out that, despite many more of our group saying they were going to come, there were only five of us who actually showed up. Luckily I’d brought lasagna, someone else brought a salad, and we found a bag of rolls in the fridge, so we had a complete meal. The other cookie-bringer was feeling a little overwhelmed with extra cookies as well so we all sat around the table – kids included – and painted enough to feed to the choir, since rehearsal was last night. But that still meant there were great piles of cookies to go home with us. What to do, what to do.

Yesterday morning I piled cookies onto two festive paper plates, Richard wrapped them in plastic wrap, and we took one each to our offices. The remaining cookies were left on a plate at home with a note for the cleaning elves (aka Merry Maids) to please help themselves. So – no more cookies. Sigh. This morning I was hoping there might be one or two cookies still lurking on the plate at the office, but by the time I made it in there was nothing left but crumbs. I was reduced to eating chocolate for breakfast, which, in retrospect, made the cookies look like quite the nutritious alternative. Yesterday was a veritable cornucopia of goodies – my cookies, the See’s chocolate we were sent for meeting our office food drive goal, and a bag of extremely flaky pastries my boss brought in. Today all that was left was the chocolate, for which I was grateful because otherwise breakfast would have been bad coffee and microwave popcorn and I am not sure that is the best way to start the day.

Speaking of our food drive (which officially ended last Friday, but who’s counting), the fifth and last office finally met their goal. It might be a week late, but we’re going to let that slide because the important thing is that, as a company, we managed to bring in nearly a ton of food. For the first time trying to coordinate a company-wide event that seems to me like a pretty good success. Also, there was chocolate (or in the case of the late office, there will be chocolate later). So we are all quite happy. Even though there are no more cookies to eat. For now.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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The redecorator

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When we put the tree up a week or so ago I emailed my little sister to tell her about how nice a tree it was, and mentioned in passing that the cats had, so far, shown absolutely no interest in the tree at all as we were hanging ornaments and draping it with strings of lights and garlands. This in itself is a little surprising since usually when we are doing something new in the house the cats have to be right there in the middle of it to investigate. My little sister’s response was that this state of affairs was bound to change at Oh My God What the Heck Was That in the morning.

The cats, however, have been uncharacteristically cooperative this year. I realize that upon saying this I may just be jinxing myself, but so far only three ornaments have left the tree – and those are all the soft or nonbreakable ones which we deliberately hang near the bottom so that if (and when) they come loose there’s no danger of broken glass or broken memories. Two of the ornaments have been little stuffed critters, so naturally they have joined us upstairs. A much larger stuffed critter – a holiday moose with very long legs – has also been catnapped and dragged upstairs. I suppose we could be upset but it’s hard to be upset when you’re laughing. This is just what Rosie does. We live in state of constantly traveling stuffed toys, arranged artfully up and down the stairs (see picture below), piled in little clumps at the foot of our bed, or left on the rug in front of the bathtub. There is always humor to be found in her latest rearrangement, as well as in her methods of acquiring new material to cart around the house.

Last night Richard was packing our lunches for today – lunches that included raw carrots, baby bell peppers, and pea pods. Apparently he dropped one of the pea pods on the floor without noticing. In other houses with cats this pea pod might have remained where it was, or have been batted about on the floor, or even chewed and left for dead. In our house, however, nothing is ever certain except that the cats will continue to keep us on our toes.

This morning he found the pea pod in his slipper. Sometimes it is not just the stuffed toys that travel. Rosie has been doing an awful lot of purring. I think she’s quite pleased with herself. I have to admit that we are too.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Not exactly holiday cheer

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Ever since news that the proxy bid seemed to have actually worked, I – and a lot of others, I am sure – have been obsessively checking the news for word on whether or not the hostile takeover would succeed. Yesterday, all of our fears were realized. After 18 months of fighting and nastiness, Oracle has won. They will be purchasing Peoplesoft. Damn.

In case any long term readers had not already figured it out, the Big Fish I worked for several years ago was Peoplesoft. And believe me when I say that I harbor no love for Peoplesoft in this whole thing. They swallowed up my previous company and made huge promises that they would not lay people off and that they would not shut down a number of aspects of our software, and that they would continue to support the original customers. And then once the ink was dry on the papers and no one was listening to the Little Fish’s concerns because no one cared, they broke every single promise. At Little Fish, we consultants had at least been treated like people and not just numbered money making machines. At Peoplesoft, however, we all got a rather nasty dose of big company culture. It was made quite obvious to all of us that they did not give a damn about us, unless we were bringing in money. I – and a lot of others – got out the fastest way we could. Yes, we took huge and painful pay cuts and some of us had to move, and it was hard, but we were the lucky ones. Others stayed – familial or other obligations meant that they could not afford to take such drastic drops in salary. Some of those who stayed are my friends, and I have worried about them, each of them, the entire time, even as I thanked whatever deity or higher power might be responsible for at least letting me escape.

So now Peoplesoft finds themselves on the opposite side of the fence. Our merger (with Little Fish) was at least pleasant and mutual. The one with Oracle is not. But the board of directors is not motivated by what is good for their employees and their company – they are motivated by money. Despite the fact that Oracle’s very own rabid dog spokesperson (Larry Ellison – that loving, caring person that he is completely incapable of being) came right out in the beginning and said that the sole reason for the purchase is to put Peoplesoft out of business, and screw all the people he would be laying off in the process, the board of directors suddenly got it into their heads that gosh, maybe Oracle cares about the little guy after all and will treat all their people nicely (maybe even as ‘nicely’ as they treated the employees of every smaller company they swallowed). It was just a coincidence that this happened once Oracle upped their offer one final time and all the board members will go home fat, rich, and happy. Oracle can make all the promises it wants about supporting existing customers and continuing to develop existing software and trying to avoid layoffs. When the ink is dry on the papers and the tech world no longer gives a damn about the fact that this takeover was hostile, Oracle is going to be able to do whatever it wants, and I firmly believe that Ellison will get his nasty little way.

I know that this sort of thing is the very heart of capitalism. But it does not make it any easier to watch and accept. There’s a lot of good people who are going to have a pretty huge axe hanging over their heads for the next few months, and I hope that one of these days, the board members who make decisions like these – who screw over so many people who deserve better – get a triple helping of karma (or at the very least, a horrible full-body rash that itches worse than anything they could ever imagine, and lasts as long as possible). A lot of people are going to be hurt because of this. But why should Oracle care. And really, while I wish that I could just smirk about how turnabout is fair play, after what Peoplesoft did to us, it’s hard to hold onto determined vindication when people I know are in the way.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Handiwork

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Today has, except for a brief interlude called work, been all about food. It started this morning when I put together lasagna. Our social group at church is having a holiday potluck tomorrow night and I knew that I would not have time to do this any time between now and then. In order for me to get a lasagna into the oven so that it has cooked by the time we have to be at the church tomorrow night to open the doors and let everyone else in, the lasagna has to have already been put together by the time I dash home from work, which means that since I knew I’m not going to have time tomorrow morning since I shall be dutifully exercising, and I knew I was going to be spending any spare kitchen time tonight making cookies, the only time left to assemble a lasagna was this morning. So I rushed around doing that while Richard made coffee and packed lunches, and then I wrapped it in aluminum foil and stuck it in the fridge to wait, and we rushed off to work, where I discovered that the simple fact that I built a tiny little database to store very limited data about our projects means to some people that I must also have intimate knowledge of every little detail about every single project this company has ever done. Ha ha ha. Fun times, folks. Fun times.

The act of putting together lasagna and dealing with noodles and tomato sauce and minced garlic made me hungry for pasta all day. So when I got home from work I immediately began chopping up onions and peppers and garlic and mushrooms, tossed them into a frying pan with some tomato paste and a few sprinkles of random herbs and spices, let it all simmer together so all the flavors could blend, and then served it over whole wheat spaghetti, with grilled chicken and parmesan cheese on top. For an experimental, throw-it-together-quick meal, it turned out pretty good.

And yes, I did casually toss out that ‘baking cookies’ comment, didn’t I. One of the activities at the potluck is going to be the painting of sugar cookies for the kids (and also any adults who feel the urge to play with icing and sprinkles). The woman who suggested it wasn’t sure if she would have enough time to bake enough cookies and asked me on Sunday if I’d be willing to make some too. I was a little distracted at the time, and not thinking too clearly, so the word ‘sure!’ came out of my mouth before I knew what I was doing. So much for our self-imposed holiday treat moratorium in our house. I had intended to go to the monthly knitting circle tonight but realized that if I was going to churn out a few dozen cookies I just wasn’t going to have time to do both. Sigh. So instead of working on last minute Christmas presents and hanging out with other yarn-obsessed persons we ate dinner and watched the second half of the Earthsea miniseries, and then I dragged out the big bowl and the flour and sugar and shortening and cookie cutters and made half a batch of cookies. Considering that the original recipe makes enough cookies to feed a small army, half a batch is still a lot of cookies.

But it was actually kind of fun. Christmas is really the only time each year anymore that I do any kind of baking, beyond occasionally dumping a can of pumpkin and a box of spice cake mix into a bowl, stirring it together, and dumping it all into a pan to cook for half an hour. Plus there was admittedly a little selfish part of me that was glad I was making cookies to bring because I really do not like regular sugar cookies. They tend to be bland and a little too crispy and too sweet and I have never quite seen the point. But this recipe, which we have always called sugar cookies, isn’t the same as every other sugar cookie in the world. The cookies come out thick and soft in the centers, with just a hint of crisp at the very edges, and a deliciously delicate hint of nutmeg in the dough. My parents and my sisters like to frost them and my mother even sometimes covers them with coconut (yuck), but I prefer them plain, or with just a sprinkling of brown sugar on the top.

There are now bells and stars and Christmas trees cooling on towels in the kitchen, and the air is filled with the smell of cookies and nutmeg. There are splotches of flour all over my shirt, and quite possibly in my hair (rolling out cookie dough is a messy process). Making cookies really is one of my very favorite things about Christmas. And so I suppose I have just really been looking for an excuse to have at least one small baking frenzy. They aren’t gingerbread men, and no cookie press or raisins were involved, but they are, at least, cookies (and quite tasty cookies too because a good chef *always* samples) and they will just have to do.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Fudge decadence

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As I write this we are watching A Wizard of Earthsea on the Sci Fi channel, and it is, quite surprisingly, not too bad. The dialogue is a little choppy and contrived at times, and I think I really want to smack the main character upside the head, but apparently that was the way he was in the books too. I read the entire series, years ago, back when I was junior high, most likely, and all that I recall about them is that they were ever so slightly depressing. I read the series, in fact, several times. Do I remember a single thing about the plot at all? Of course not.

As in most cases like this, however, as soon as Richard said he wanted to watch the miniseries I decided to hold off on rereading the books until after the series has ended. I did this for the Lord of the Rings series and was able to enjoy the films completely without obsessing over anything they might have changed in translating from print to film. Okay, I’ll also admit that I didn’t exactly want to read those books again because they are very long and very tedious, despite the fact that I liked the story. But it’s a good rule to live by. I know my enjoyment of the Harry Potter movies has been seriously marred by how recently I’d read the books. That doesn’t stop me from occasionally dragging out the entire five-book series and reading them from beginning to end, non-stop, during a very long afternoon, knowing all the while that I will regret this as yet another Harry Potter film makes its way to the big screen.

The rest of the day has been fairly uneventful. I got up and did not work out because my workout partner (my mom) was in Seattle to go see The Nutcracker with a certainnearly-four-year-old granddaughter and that was as good an excuse as any skip the exercise. Instead Richard and I hunched over our breakfast and wrote up shopping lists, which we divided into two – one for him to take to the Co-op in Davis and one for me to take to the regular grocery store, since the Co-op does not believe in carrying mundane things like fat-free, aspartame sweetened yogurt. While I was there I noticed that our Safeway now carries all three varieties of the No-Pudge brownies, which meant that I had to buy the two we had not yet tried, go home, and immediately mix them up and toss them into the oven. We had plans for something with fish for dinner, but instead we had brownies – raspberry and mint (not in the same brownie, obviously) which, as decadent as that sounds, was actually a very low Points dinner – so much so that I think maybe I might just need one more piece. Possibly now. Hmm.

This has been a Holidailies entry.

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Preparation

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Richard’s been fighting off an upper respiratory infection for nearly two weeks now. It looked yesterday like things were getting a little better, but then this morning he was right back on his nebulizer the instant he woke up. Ah, the joys of asthma. I feel a little guilty because it’s my fault he’s sick this time around. I got it first, after all, and one of the perks of cohabitating is that if one of you gets sick, the other’s bound to catch it eventually. Except that I – being asthma free – tend to get over it a wee bit faster (well, aside from the whole my-sinuses-hate-me-and-are-trying-to-kill-me-by-making-my-head-implode thing), while he’s left to spend days on end trying his darnedest to hack up at least one, if not both, of his lungs.

Despite the hacking and the wheezing (on his part) and the impending sinus pressure (on my part), somehow we both made it to choir practice. The cantata is next week and I have been dutifully listening – and singing along to – the rehearsal CD in my car on the way to and from work now for weeks. I think I have this thing just about memorized. I also think I may have just about reached my limit for O Come, O Come Emmanuel for the year.

The children’s pageant was this morning and it was delightful. The two youngest boys were sheep, and weren’t too sure about the words to the songs or whether they were even supposed to be singing, and were more focused on whether or not they wanted to leave their sheep ears on their heads or not. One little angel kept fidgeting with her sparkly tinsel halo the entire time she was singing. It was all the typical things that happen during a pageant that make it so much fun to watch.

After church Richard and I zipped off for the weekly run to Costco to pick up a few huge sacks of rice for the food drive, and then came home to finish off the rest of the Christmas decorating. For the past few hours Richard’s been either climbing around on the roof or teetering on ladders and stepstools inside and out putting up all the lights. I stayed inside, since me and heights don’t mix, and instead of untangling lights compiled a list of people who will be getting cards, and then spent an hour or two addressing and stamping and signing. My handwriting isn’t so great to begin with; after an hour or so of addressing and signing it will be a miracle if anyone can actually decipher our names at the bottom of the cards. This is why the majority of people get a typed letter from us each year instead of something scribbled in a card, since I figure they’d probably much rather be able to actually read what we’re telling them.

The lights are up now – Richard just called me to come see them, so we both traipsed outside and stood in the middle of the night-quiet street to take it all in.

In the dark the lights are the only decoration that’s visible – along with the sparkle of the lights on the tree through the bay window in the living room. It’s cold outside and the fog is rolling in again, as it has been for the past few days. But our house now has the welcoming glow of tiny white lights in every room I walk through, and the smell of pine still lingers in the air if I stop and focus long enough to find it.

This has been a Holidailies entry.