The rain did not wake me up last night, although I am not exactly sure why. It certainly should have, what with how hard it was coming down, but perhaps the wind drowned out the noise. Driving to work this morning was a challenge – one that reminded me of why it is that sometimes having a larger car is a good thing. Or rather, having a larger car that is not also tall is a good thing; those people driving SUV’s and those strange boxy Elements probably were hating life the entire time they fought their way across the causeway. It was the kind of wind that has me hanging onto the steering wheel with both hands because I know if I raise one even for an instant, the wind will shove me out of my lane.

By the time I got to work, it had only gotten worse. The wind howled and the rain fell pretty much all day. There were times it would start to gust so hard we could not help but stop what we were doing to stare out the windows. It blew in the opposite direction of the natural flow of the river just outside my office, to the point that the normally calm river was just a seething mass of swells and waves, with the occasional floating tree. It was actually, at times, rather exciting to watch, although none of us in the office really wanted to be out in it. Weather wimps that we are, we all decided to have pizza delivered than to try to go somewhere to get lunch and bring it back. I felt sorry for the poor pizza delivery guy as he wooshed in the door, assisted by a particularly insistent gust of wind, and then just as quickly was sucked back out again, minus a few boxes of warm cheesy goodness.

It was still going strong in Sacramento when I left, but luckily by the time I got home it was starting to calm. The road home, much to my surprise, was not even the slightest bit flooded, although apparently parts of the town did lose power. We went and got dinner at a Chinese food place in town, and then came home and put in the last DVD in the season 5 Buffy set and watched every remaining episode. Now that they are all done, I am feeling faintly adrift. It’s not as if we don’t have plenty of things left to watch – there is the season of Firefly, and the first season of Angel, and this does not even include the current offerings from NetFlix, one of which might even be another few episodes from Star Trek: The Next Generation. But what I really want to watch next is more Buffy. I want the last two seasons to be released, preferably within the next few weeks, and then once I have watched every last episode in the remaining two seasons, we can start back at the beginning again

After church today, standing in the social hall drinking coffee, one of the other pianists came up to me to tell me I’d done well. And then she added with a grin “The rest of us were just glad we weren’t you today.”

I know exactly what she meant, of course. Today was the day the minister decided to do a thing on the 12 Days of Christmas, which somehow translated into me having to play 11 hymns. Toss in a prelude, a postlude, and an offertory, and I was facing one heck of a lot of songs to muddle through. It didn’t help that I was out of town for the past four days and even though I did spend a few hours practicing them before we left, I was sounding a bit rusty as of last night. Toss in the added bonus of finding out that the hymn numbers had been mixed up so I hadn’t even practiced one of the ones I was supposed to play, plus oh, did someone forget to mention there was that little song for the lighting of the advent candle, and it was just one big barrel of fun!

Actually, it wasn’t as bad as I am making it sound. Sight-reading has never been my strong suit, but oh boy is this accompanist thing forcing me to work on that! I’ve been picking up on all the little tricks – how if you can’t play all the notes, you make sure that you at least play the bass note and the melody, and if you can toss in a few extra harmony notes with the right hand, you’re pretty much golden.

It was a pretty musical morning, even without the fact that I was playing the piano for most of it. A friend and I sung a duet (where if the rest of the congregation had no idea just how low I can sing, they got a really great chance to hear it), and then those of us in the choir who were there (which basically was only five of us) did a rather hasty rehearsal before the service in order to prepare for the two songs we did during the 12 Days of Christmas thing. Since the choir accompanist is out of town, that meant we did those acapella, which was actually pretty fun, even if I did have to keep switching between alto and tenor because we didn’t have enough people otherwise to cover all the notes.

After the musical interlude that was my morning, Richard and I drove off to Sacramento to go to Fry’s. I needed to get an extension USB cable for my dad and Richard wanted a USB hub for his laptop and while we were there we found a birthday present for Richard. On the way home we stopped off at Walmart because someone told me they’d found this thing that I cannot name because I want to get it for my mom for her birthday and she reads this occasionally. But they did not have one, so we settled for toothpaste instead. Plus as we were in the parking lot we saw the cutest little spotted brown owl just sitting happily in one of the little tree islands between the cars, and we also discovered a new Mongolian Barbeque restaurant, to which we promptly went for lunch.

The rest of the day has been lazy, lazy, lazy. We pretty much camped out on the futon downstairs and watched season 5 Buffy, while either knitting (me), poking on the laptop (Richard) or trying very hard to get in the way of either (the cats). Ah, such a nice way to end a weekend.

It is a firm and fast tradition in my family that the day after Christmas, my mom and my sisters get up ungodly early and hit the after-Christmas sales. Normally most of us are not hard-core shoppers, but for this we are willing to deal with the combat shopping, if only to score all the stuff we need for the following year. This year we ended up doing things a little differently. Richard and I and my little sister and her husband all got up ungodly early and drove for a very long time to go to a huge nursery called Molbacks, which also sells all manner of gorgeous home decorations. We sat in the car for a while since we got there too early but eventually slipped and slid our way across the icy parking lot to the Starbucks across the street for some desperately needed caffeine. Then we got into line and joined the throngs of people who poured into the store to ransack the rather impressive remains of their Christmas stock.

It’s hard doing combat shopping when you’ve only got limited room in your suitcase, but nevertheless, Richard and I managed quite well. We found all sorts of marvelously silly Christmas cards, and there were some adorable ornaments for next year’s stocking stuffers, and a gorgeous nativity scene that is all one piece and looked sturdy enough to withstand feline intervention. And in the meantime (or at least during the car ride there and back, and during the side trip to get coffee), we got a chance to chat with my little sister and her husband, just the four of us. Considering I don’t get a chance to see them very often, it was a nice bonus.

We met the rest of the family at a restaurant for lunch (they’d decided to actually forgo the early morning combat shopping), and then once the kids were down for their naps, my mom and sisters and I set off again, but this time to the fabric store.

I think if I’d been back home I might have had a problem resisting all the cute things, but I kept whispering ‘suitcase space’ to myself and avoided buying anything. Well, okay, that wasn’t technically accurate. I did succumb to the urge to go visit the yarn aisle, and after perusing a few pattern books I ended up buying two skeins of gorgeous soft yarn and a new pair of large circular needles to make scarves. In my defense, one of the scarves will be for me.

I did better than the rest of them, I think, since after I’d finally broken down and picked out yarn and needles, I found the rest of my female relatives pondering lace and flannel, and eventually enough fabric was cut to make a whole plethora of flannel pajamas for all three of the kids. When we all finally escaped that store we ended up meandering around Target until my cell phone rang and we realized it was time for the shopping to end.

Then it was back to my little sister’s house for a dinner of all the leftovers from Christmas, plus more cookies and more candy and more laughing and knitting (As an aside, note the picture by this paragraph – every single one of those tins was full of cookies). At one point we lured all the kids downstairs to the family room and left them, slack-jawed, in front of the television watching Veggie Tales Silly Songs DVD while we adults crowded around the kitchen table. Out came the cards, those husbands who are still a bit unfamiliar with the game (like Richard) were given extremely hasty tutorials, and the annual family game of Nerts commenced. It’s a wild and raucous sort of game, where speed is of the essence, and since we were playing in pairs there was a lot of hollers between partners as hands would grab for the same cards, Cards flew across the table and more than once we all broke down laughing so hard most of us were red-faced and crying. The kids, I am sure, thought we were all just a little bit insane, and to be honest they were probably right, but it didn’t matter. It was a lovely way to end the evening, even though that hadn’t been the original end in mind – there was a movie and we were all going to go downstairs and watch it, but by that time I was starting to feel queasy again so Richard and I regretfully headed back to the hotel so I could crash for the night.

That brings us to this morning, where we woke up to discover that sometime last night it snowed, just barely enough to cover the grass and cars with a fine layer of frost. It was enough to get the kids excited though, and I took complete advantage of the situation. We got them into their coats and boots and then we slapped those goofy hats I made onto their heads and let them loose in the yard to run around and laugh and play and enjoy the beautiful day.

At one point my younger brother-in-law scraped enough of the snow off the cars to form snowballs, which he doled out to eager little hands to fling at the rest of us. I think the kids would have been perfectly content to stay outside and romp through the frosty yard for hours, but eventually we adults got too cold and ushered them back inside with promises of stories and hot chocolate (and of course more play time with silly plastic lizards and make-believe insects).

Richard and I hugged our goodbyes and then my brother-in-law drove us to the airport, where we joined the huge lines of people who were also headed home from the holidays. The plane home was just as full as the one we took earlier in the week, but the ride was smooth and it landed on time, and Richard’s parents met us at the airport and drove us back to their house, where we sat around and talked for a bit and played with their cat and dogs before finally loading up our car with all our luggage and presents and heading home.

The cats have been milling around, wanting to make sure we remain in eyesight at all times. There is a huge stack of mail to wade through, and I still have yet to sit down and do an hour or two of practicing on the piano, since I’m supposed to be the accompanist tomorrow at church. I have a feeling we’ll be up late tonight, and that the cats will do their best to prevent me from getting much sleep at all. But that’s okay. We had a fun Christmas and it was lovely to spend all that time with all that family, but it is just as lovely to be, finally, home.

Tuesday night we drove down to Richard’s parents’ house to start the holiday festivities. After we’d had a chance to bring in our luggage and presents, and just as they tantalized me with a copy of one of the worst of those cheesy newspapers you see at checkout lines, we all piled into the car to go look at lights. It was hard to leave this particular cheesy tabloid behind, but that was because on the front cover there were ‘exclusive’ pictures from Osama and Saddam’s gay love nest (yes, my thoughts exactly), and even better, a huge two-page spread on how scientists have found garden gnomes and plastic flamingos on the moon. I think the highlight of that article came near the end when a scientist was quoted (anonymously, of course) as being disgruntled about the discovery because they were ‘making our solar system look tacky’.

Anyway, lights. We went to look at lights in this one part where they do it up huge every year. Except that apparently we picked the same night every one else in the surrounding three counties decided to see the lights as well and the traffic getting into the park was horrendous. We wiled away the time yelling out the names of the stores as we inched our way past them, and occasionally dancing in the seats. Yeah, I fit into this family far too well.

Wednesday was a nice and mostly lazy day. Everyone got up as they felt like it, and we all lounged around in the living room drinking coffee and talking (or in my case, not so much talking – since my voice still wasn’t at its best – as knitting). Richard and his sister painted cookies – a task I have taken part in before but decided against this year due to being sick. Eventually Richard’s older sister and her fiancé showed up so we could eat lunch and get busy with the opening of presents.

The preceding years we’ve done the Christmas Eve festivities in the evening, and it’s tended to be rushed. Plus it meant that after dinner and presents and everything else, Richard and I never got home much before 1 or 2 in the morning, meaning we were more likely to be tired and grouchy the next day. This year things were so much more relaxed and I think we all felt like we got more time to just sit and talk and enjoy being together.

Before we were ready, it was time to head for the airport. Richard’s parents very nicely volunteered to drive us so we wouldn’t have to deal with finding parking for the car, and we got there with plenty of time to spare. Then it was on to the extremely full plane, where I got to remind myself how much fun it isn’t to fly with clogged sinuses, and then we were landing in Seattle. The original plan had been to go directly to my little sister’s house, but by the time we’d landed, my head was hurting and I was feeling pretty lousy. I love my sinuses. Really I do. I am sure of it. So my brother-in-law took us directly to our hotel instead, where we checked in, climbed the stairs to our room, figured out how to turn on the heat, plugged in the laptop and checked our email (because lousy feeling or not, I am still a nerd) and then finally went to sleep.

Because there were three very small people under the age of 6 at my little sister’s house, my parents and we had to get up and get there fairly early. The kids were surprisingly patient, considering that there were stockings hanging with candy canes peeking out the tops, and piles of presents under the tree. But finally everyone was ready and stockings were emptied, and frankly, if it were up to my niece and my oldest nephew we could have stopped there, because the highlight toy of the season were these silly plastic lizards with tongues that stuck out when you squeezed them. And for the rest of the time we were in Seattle, they amused themselves for hours chasing each other around the house, having their silly plastic lizards eat invisible mosquitoes and flies.

All three of the kids are old enough now to have fun with Christmas. My oldest nephew (who is 5) is quite the good reader, so he got a lot of books. The niece, who will be four next month, got a train set which drew excitement from all three of the kids. And the nutcrackers that my dad brought back from Germany made a huge hit – at least with the two older kids. And it was fun to watch all of them – to see their excitement with each package, and to see that they were all able to watch other people opening presents and get excited about those as well.

The rest of the day was spent being comfortably lazy. I sat on the couch and knit, or read books. Everyone else talked or read or napped. Eventually we all crowded around the dinner table for the wonderful dinner my little sister cooked, and ate until we were all far too full. Then more sitting around, stuffed and sleepy and still having fun watching the kids play with their lizards, or my nephew’s new walkie talkies, or the train set, until those of us in the hotel headed back to try to get some sleep in preparation for the after-Christmas combat shopping the next morning.

Christmas is almost over and there is so much over the past few days I want to talk about. Mostly it is family stuff – both families, but there are some other things to mention. So I will start with those, tonight, while I’m still awake enough to get them down, and deal with the rest later.

The hats: I was prepared to be stopped at the airport security gate and told I’d have to give up my knitting needles (because technically I suppose they could count as sharp objects). In preparation for this I had printed out the sheet from the TSA website where it says that they are, in fact, allowed. To my disappointment, they did not even blink an eye at the knitting needles – although the tins of cookies in the smaller suitcase caught the attention of the scanner and it had to be tested for explosives. I suppose seeing two large round metallic objects in a suitcase could be disconcerting.

Because the first two hats I made were too small, and then because I’d been so sick, I only managed to get one of the ‘final’ hats finished before we left for Richard’s parents’ house on Tuesday night. Luckily they didn’t seem to mind me knitting while I was there, so the second hat was started and finished by lunchtime on Wednesday. And the third hat I started at the airport as we waited to board our plane, and was not finished until this afternoon, after all the presents were opened and we adults were sitting around in a cinnamon bun-induced stupor while the kids chased each other around the house with little plastic lizards who would stick out their tongues if you squeezed them. And amusingly, the final hat I made – which is just a little loose on my oldest nephew’s head – fits me perfectly.

It felt odd, later, not to have any more knitting to do. It made me wish I’d purchased yarn for the sweater I want to make for myself, so I could have at least started on that. Oh, and speaking of sweaters, that cute little blue sweater I made for my nephew fit just fine – with one teensy exception. It will not go over his head! Somehow, even though I followed the directions, the neck opening is just too small, and I’m honestly not sure there is any way to fix it. I’m not upset about it – after all, the sweater was just for fun and it can always be used to clothe a large teddy bear – but I do wonder how I managed to screw it up. I sense more knitting lessons in my future as a result. At least all three hats fit fine – although I imagine it’s a bit harder to screw up a hat than it is to screw up a sweater. At least that’s the theory I am sticking to.

The food: Despite trying to divvy up the cookie baking so no one would have to do it all, we ended up having enough cookies to feed a small third-world country for a few weeks. My little sister went a bit gung-ho with baking, apparently, since there were boxes and boxes and boxes of cookies – almond teacakes, anise shortbreads, pfefferneuse, chocolate crinkles, and on and on. It did not help matters any that she had the kids make a train cake for dessert – fashioned out of two pound cakes iced and then covered liberally in various store-bought cookies. Plus there was the fudge, and the box of homemade candies that comes yearly from a friend of my mom’s, and bowls of M&M’s, and some kind of sugary sweet everywhere we turned.

Since my sister and her family are vegetarians, we did not have the usual Christmas meatloaf. Instead we had a pretend meatloaf – made from the Boca crumbles – which was actually quite good. And again, my sister went all out. I think she saw an excuse to try out a bunch of recipes on a crowd and went a little crazy. There were brussel sprouts with chestnuts (delicious, but then I love brussel sprouts). There was mashed potatoes with roasted garlic, Yorkshire pudding, stuffing with onions and apples, and we started the meal with an incredible potato and cauliflower cheese soup spiced with just a tinge of curry. The only ‘traditional’ dish at the meal was the green bean casserole. I think we all ate until we were far too full, and I’ve a mental list of which recipes I want her to give to me (like that soup!).

More later – probably in tomorrow’s entry. I am pleasantly full of far too much good food, and far too many cookies. For the first time in over a week I can breathe normally and my sinuses are (mostly) behaving. Our hotel room is warm and I’m a little tired and hoping that, unlike last night, I might actually be able to sleep. And I am, rather pathetically, wondering most of all whether we might be able to find a yarn store at some point while we’re out tomorrow doing the after Christmas shopping because if I cannot work on sweaters, at least I could possibly be making more hats.

Dear Santa,

I know I’m leaving this until a little late this year, what with it being the day before the big event and all, but I figure you can still manage. After all, Christmas magic, and all that.

This year I want the following items. Most of these don’t have to be wrapped, so I’m making it even easier for you. See how thoughtful I am?

1. Please bring me a dragon. A small one, preferably house-trained. Must get along well with cats. Larger dragons would be fine but I’m not sure if our yard is quite big enough, so smaller is better. I know I asked for this last year, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask again. One cute little scaly dragon?
2. I would like one of the regular networks to realize just how idiotic Fox really was to drop Firefly, and to immediately call Joss Whedon and ask – no, *beg* – him to resume the show, giving everyone big raises and signing them all on for a contract for at least a few years. Also, it needs to do so incredibly well that the network can then thumb its nose at Fox and do a networky version of the ‘Neener, neener’ dance. Also, Fox would be so ashamed it would stop making those brainless ‘reality’ shows. Okay, so maybe the last one is a little too big even for you. But really. Firefly. Bring it back. For that I might even have to break down and get cable.
3. I would like a little visit from some of the cast of Lord of the Rings. The guy who plays Aragorn is to come and serenade me, and can you arrange to have that echoy thing going on while he’s singing? Also, Orlando Bloom – but only in his Legolas costume – can come and perch on my porch and give me soulful looks. I’d ask for more, but I am, after all, a married woman. So I will settle for the serenading and the soulful looks. Although if you were willing to bring along a baby Ent or two, that would be extra cool.
4. I’d like a new pair of sinuses please – a pair that doesn’t get all clogged up every time the weather changes or I catch a case of sniffles. Also, if you could arrange to do that before I fly home from Seattle so I do not have to endure the stabbing needles of death behind my eyes during take-off and landing due to changes in air pressure, I would be ever so grateful.
5. And lastly, or perhaps more importantly, there are some people in my life that want and need things, Santa – want and need them more than anything. One of them wants a baby, and she’s an awesome mom, Santa. Surely you could drop a little bit of your magic her way this year to help her get her wish, and get it soon. Some other friends need jobs – truly awesome jobs that challenge and excite them and give them something to look forward to every day. I know this economy’s been pretty bad lately, but see what you can do.

Thanks very much, especially if you can swing that last one. Give my regards to all the reindeer.

love,

Jennifer

Last night as I was sitting at my computer I heard a rather impressive crash from behind. Richard had been putting away all of our gaming gear, including a huge stack of books and our green Tupperware bowl (that may have, at one time, been meant to actually store food) in which we store the majority of our dice.

Like all good gamers we have quite the collection of dice, accumulated throughout the years by buying individual sets, or by purchasing ‘Dice by the Scoop’ at various gaming conventions. I have picked through all the dice and selected out the prettiest ones because if I’m going to be a nerd with a hefty bag of dice to my name, by golly at least they’ll be swirly, pearly, girly, sparkly dice. Richard, being a guy, could care less how ugly his dice are so he tends to end up with all the boring speckly ones. Long-term readers may recall my feelings on speckles (which has nothing whatsoever to do with dice, now that I think about it, but oh well). And in order to keep our dice separate, mine all live in a grey cloth bag that is carefully tied shut to keep the dice from escaping. The dice in the green Tupperware bowl, however, are free to roam as they wish, should the bowl ever tip over. Or, perhaps, be dropped from a great height.

So in case you haven’t figured it out, the crash was the container of dice, landing on the floor. Dice skittered out of the closet where the gaming stuff lives, and a cat or three took off for parts unknown in wide-eyed terror from the attack by small numbered monsters. It was quite exciting there for a second or two.

However, the dice on the floor weren’t really what made this all so gosh darn funny. You see, the closet in which the gaming stuff lives is also the closet where the litter boxes are. And Richard managed to drop that bowl of dice so the majority of the spillage went directly into…uh…a pile of nice soft granules made from all those bits of corn that are left over once they take out all the edible parts and stick them in cans, which we use because the clay litter tends to clog up the Littermaids.

I couldn’t help it. I started to snicker. Despite his protestations that it wasn’t funny, eventually he joined in. There we were, crouched down over the litter boxes, eying the dice. It didn’t help matters any when one of us (it might have been me) said something to the effect of “Look Hon, the cats have laid us a nice fresh crop o’ dice” in her best redneck drawl, followed by another of us (quite possibly him) adding, “Hey, I need another 20-sider. Call in the cat!”

As for the aforementioned dice which were littering the…er..litter boxes, well.. After all, they are Littermaids, which means that they are self-scooping, and judging from the pristine quality of the bed on which the dice reposed, they had recently self-scooped. And after all, we were talking *dice* here, and no self-respecting gamer ever lets go of any of his or her dice. No matter how ugly or speckly they might be.

Today was the day the over-the-counter sinus medicine I’ve been taking finally stopped working at all. Thus, today was the day I gave up. There are only two days left until I am supposed to climb onto a plane, and the last thing I want to do is arrive in Seattle and promptly throw up on my poor brother-in-law when he meets us at the airport. So today I finally called the advice nurse and made an appointment to see my doctor. It probably helped my cause that my voice still has not completely returned, so I was cracking and squeaky on the phone.

I suppose, in retrospect, I should have given up earlier. But the problem is that half the time I go in for a sinus infection, I am told that it’s a virus, there’s nothing they can do about it, so just go home and suck it up. This, despite me telling whoever it is I am seeing that I get these in waves and that the only thing that reliably makes them go away is antibiotics.

Today, however, was a piece of cake, but that was probably because I actually got to see my regular doctor, and not whoever was on call for urgent care. I told him how long I’ve been sick; I noted my tendency to these sorts of infections, and I also noted the impending plane flight. The nifty thing about this guy is that, unlike the other doctors I’ve seen there, he actually has this habit of *listening* to what his patients are saying, and asking pertinent questions which makes it obvious he’s paying attention. So before I knew it, I had a prescription for antibiotics with nary a fuss at all. Phew. They may be huge horse pill antibiotics and they may come with slightly unpleasant side effects, but if they can make this stupid thing finally go away and let me handle my plane flights without worrying about whether or not my head might explode, I don’t care.

It’s been another long and (mostly) lovely day. We got up early, with all good intentions of making it to the church with plenty of time to get everything set up for the coffee hour after the service, since we were hosting it. Those plans were waylaid only slightly by the discovery of yet another trail of ants inside the house – this time, of all places, one of the litter boxes. Naturally this meant I had to dump the entire box and wipe it down, since I didn’t want the cats scrabbling around in ant-spray-contaminated litter. Bearing in mind that we have been cleaning up at least one infestation of ants daily for nearly the past week, can you blame us for – later in the afternoon – putting ant stakes directly into the paths of any ants we could find around the outside of our house. I am getting so incredibly sick of dealing with them, and I’m starting to get a little nervous. I hate dealing with ants in my own house and I do not want the poor pet sitter to have to deal with them while we’re gone!

Despite the ants we managed, somehow, to make it to the church with just enough time to arrange cookies and fudge on trays, start the coffee, and mix up a few pitches of lemonade. Then it was off to the sanctuary for a few hours of practice before the service, during which we finally sang the cantata.

I am so used to singing cantatas that are nothing more than barely disguised Christmas carols with sappy readings stuck in between, so when the director introduced the music to us this year, it was a nice surprise. Some of the words of the songs were familiar, but few if any of the tunes were ones we knew, and the readings in between all seemed to convey the meaning and the intent of the piece without being overly saccharine. Such a nice change!

I hadn’t been sure how well I’d do after a week of coughing and sniffling, but I took some sinus meds when we got to church, tried to hold back when the entire choir was in unison, and saved my voice for the times when the tenor part was most needed. The accompanying celloist was marvelous; the duet between bass and soprano was lovely, and even though they’d have loved us if we’d stood there and croaked simple children’s songs at them, still it felt good when the congregation gave us a rousing round of applause at the end.

In a way I was glad that we were doing coffee hour today, because that meant I could sneak into the kitchen directly after the service and busy myself with coffee cups and spoons and trying to find where they keep the sugar in the church kitchen, and I didn’t have to make much in the way of small talk with what remained of my voice. We got a lot of compliments on our cookies, and most especially on our fudge. My mom and I split the last gingerbread man, divvying up arms and legs and body parts between us, and my dad – home from Germany for a few weeks – helped corral the used dishes and bring them to the kitchen for me to load into the dishwasher. There were hugs for friends we won’t see until after Christmas and cheerful wishes for holiday travel, and then we were done. We did lunch with my parents and talked about the bible study that all of us (except my dad, since he’s been in Germany for months) are involved in, and discussed what Ezekiel really saw in those wacky visions of his, or who Isaiah really might have been referring to, and then they followed us back to our house to ooh and aah over all the new additions to our backyard (yes I will post pictures one of these days, honest I will).

After lunch Richard and I sat down and figured out who we still need stocking stuffers for, since the really cool stocking stuffers we’d ordered nearly a month ago never showed up, and then we set off in our own cars to finish the last minute shopping for those missing stuffers, and for each other.

We’ve strung out the opening of Christmas presents for each other over the two days previous to Christmas in the years past, but since we’re heading down to his parents’ place on Tuesday night and flying out to Seattle on Wednesday night, we either had to do our gifts to each other tonight or Monday, or wait until we got back. I am too impatient to wait that long, and tomorrow night will most likely be crammed full of last minute packing and cleaning and (I am sure) killing of ants. So we first decided to open our stocking presents, and after that it didn’t take much before we were opening our under-the-tree presents as well.

I feel hopelessly spoiled this year with Christmas. Richard got me some beautiful skirts and tops, proving once again that he knows better than I what clothes will look good on me. There was a bag of some of my favorite cookies in my stocking, and a nice stack of books for me to read – lots of short story compilations I’ve been eying and one of Judith Martin’s etiquette books since she always makes me laugh with her oh-so-polite humor toward manners, and lots of little goodies, and for some reason, a whole handful of bright orange practice golf balls, which I spilled immediately onto the floor because even though he claims they are for me, we both know who they were really for. The cats were extremely interested in the whole process, since after all the unwrapping of presents always means lots of boxes and paper to play in, so the bright orange balls were batted and skittered across the floor within moments of them touching down.

And so now we are lounging about lazily, unwilling to let the weekend be truly over, munching on an oh-so-healthy dinner of Christmas stocking goodies – cookies and chocolate and peanut brittle. Next week is Christmas, and in only a few days I will be on a plane to Seattle. This winter cold I am battling shows no signs of wanting to leave my sinuses and I am starting to panic, ever so slightly, but for now I am doing my best to remain optimistic. Because really, if I need to panic over something, better to do it over the ants.

What with being sick and tired and lacking any energy I have been seriously lacking in getting all of my Christmas baking done. Since we are hosting the coffee hour after church tomorrow I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer. So this morning I got up, and after coffee and breakfast, I stirred up the dough for the gingerbread men while Richard made a trip to the grocery store.

By the time he got back I was halfway done with the gingerbread cookies and had the first few ingredients in the pan for the first batch of fudge. Unfortunately the can of evaporated milk turned out to have been lurking in the cupboard for far too long, so off he went to the store again while I stayed behind to finish the gingerbread men and stir up the dough for the teacakes and the cookie press cookies. Back he came, this time with fresh cans of evaporated milk, and he set to making both batches of fudge while I continued with cookie duty. Then he and I traded off using the cookie press to squish out little almond-flavored white snowflakes and green trees onto the pans.

The cookie press I now have used to be my mom’s. A few years ago I got one of those new types that works somewhat like a gun, with a trigger, and I hated it. I could never get it to work right, since I am just enough too short to get the right kind of pressure on it from above, and usually had to have Richard crank them out for me. I think it was last year or perhaps the year before that my mom mentioned how much she really wanted one of the newer cookie presses because she didn’t like hers. My ears perked up, and when she got her new one, I got her old one. I love this thing. It’s metal instead of plastic, and the cookies come out with just an easy turn of the handle at the top. No squeezing; no having to stand on a stool to press down on the pan. Just a little turn and poof – out comes the cookie. They don’t make them like this anymore.

Fudge mixed and poured, cookies pressed and baked, and teacakes baked and rolled twice in powdered sugar – once right when coming out of the oven, and again right before packing them into a tin – and we were finally done. The house smelled deliciously like chocolate and cookies. There were one or two of each kind that broke, or didn’t come out quite right, which meant we each got a few nibbles as they cooled. All of these cookies, however, are all best when they’ve been allowed to sit for a day or two, to let the flavors meld.

And then, once all the cookies were packed away into the lovely metal round tins I bought last year, we finally went off to see Return of the King . The theater was packed, but that was no great surprise. There was applause when the introductory credits started to roll in the beginning. There were wild cheers and raucous applause at just the right moment in the heat of the battle. And there was even louder applause when it was all over. There was the pretty elf boy to sigh over, and poor wretched Gollum to pity, and creatures horrid and nasty enough to make me cringe, and then all the endings which wrapped up all the stories, one after another. I cannot believe that this was the end.

It’s been a nice day. I got all the baking done. I finally got measurements for my nephews’ heads so I might finally be able to finish their hats. We saw the final episode of one of the biggest fanboy/girl trilogies ever to be put onto film. And we finished all that off with a pivotal episode of season 5 of Buffy. Neither the dull ache of sinus pressure building up in my head, nor the fact that when we got home we were faced with yet another incursion of ants wandering aimlessly across the floor in three rooms can make it any less of a nice day.