four days

like any other sensible human being this time of year, i am subsisting almost entirely on cookies and cookie-like substances, with occasional actual-food (uhh...mostly tacos, pizza, and fried chicken) thrown in.

i did make raspberry and blackberry thumbprint cookies on saturday, and they turned out incredibly well, considering i was hangry and opened a Guinness after dropping the butter on the (freshly cleaned) counter:

 on sunday, E made chocolate peanut butter no-bake cookies, and i got busy wrapping All The Things:

i'm crazy about that Santa wrapping paper. so crazy that i bought three rolls of it last year. the red! the blue! the vintage-y-ness!

also on sunday, i participated in Family Cookie Fun:

it was great! we had Christmas music on, and there were several bursts of three-part harmony. Little V had a marvelous time, and i snapped what is now one of my top favorite pictures of Mom:

she mixed a bunch of sprinkles on a plate, frosted the cookie, then dunked it face-down. she called it her "instant-decoration" tree. and she thought i was just taking a picture of the cookie, so she didn't try to pose. i'm sneaky like that!

today, i don't have clients til 5, and i've been a busy little dragon. did some dishes, paid the cable bill, ran a load of laundry (must remember to make more laundry detergent tomorrow), put up my gingerbread village:

(this one's my favorite)

worked on a mitten (trust me, it's a mitten.):

and made the dough for the molasses cookies i'm taking to the office party tomorrow afternoon.

double the recipe, i said. it will be fun, i said:

that was with two more cups of flour left to work in UNTIL NO STREAKS OF FLOUR REMAINED. i took a deep breath, reminded myself that i am a professional (no really, i used to do this for a living), abandoned the wooden spoon, washed my hands, and dove in. fold and smoosh, fold and smoosh, fold and smoosh. gently, so as not to overwork the flour. making sure to scoop from the bottom so everything got incorporated. it's delicious, and is doing its thing in the fridge.

still to come: a trip to Greenfield Village with E's family on wednesday, present-wrapping and cleaning and french toast casserole assembling and midnight church service with Mom on thursday, and then NO MORE SLEEPS YAAAAAY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

stuff and things. and things. and stuff.

- i woke up yesterday with a very tight and sore upper back, and it's still bothering me today. it's not keeping me from doing things, but it's bad enough that i'm going in to work early so i can get adjusted (which i meant to do on wednesday, and put off. BAD IDEA.).

- it's been cloudy for days here. not rainy, unlike Portland, which is on its 18th consecutive day of rain (a record, even for them). it's making for some very mellow lighting:

- E and i did the Shopping Extravaganza yesterday, and had a lot of fun! traffic was very manageable, and the lines weren't bad at all, even at Toys R Us. we left the house at noon, had cheeseburgers for lunch, Buddy's Pizza for an early dinner, and were home to walk the dog by 7:30. Quite literally, the only thing i have left to pick up is some dry sausage for my brother.

- speaking of sausage, Mom texted me to say that a box marked "perishable" had been delivered, and was now on the back porch. i asked from whom, and she sent me a picture of the shipping label, which originated from a smoked meats company in Wisconsin. i haven't been by to get the box yet, and i still don't know who sent it, but i may be the lucky recipient of bacon-by-mail for the second time in my life.

- i still have a few cards to write and send.

- i did indeed get straight As this semester, which brought my cumulative GPA up to a 2.56! (long story involving calling off a wedding and moving across the country twice in a 3-month period. don't ask.)

- the forecast for the weekend: cloudy, with a 100% chance of cookies. i'll be making thumbprint and molasses cookies on saturday, and E wants to make chocolate no-bakes and peanut butter blossoms on sunday. we also have the option on sunday to decorate ugly sweater cookies with my mom, sister, and Little V who, it turns out, likes to decorate cookies but doesn't really care for eating them. or chocolate, or cake, or milkshakes, or any candy other than suckers and lollipops. this kid has no sweet tooth AT ALL. K told me that the first time she gave Little V chocolate milk (out of desperation, because the pizza place only had chocolate milk, not plain, and the kid was about to melt down), she took one swig and declared, "This milk is BROKEN!"

- i'm having a little trouble really getting into the Christmas spirit this year. i mean, i'm thoroughly enjoying the lights, the music, all the preparations like usual, but...i feel a little flat. maybe it's the unseasonably warm weather/lack of snow. more probably, maybe it's the fever-pitch of hatred and violence that is all over the airwaves. so much death and destruction, and all in the name of a God who i'll bet has quite an afterlife surprise in store for those who disseminate hate and think they're doing His work.

off to shower, then off to the post office and work! more later!

half-day

on sunday, E had a glorious day of doing absolutely nothing except eating and hanging out on the couch watching NCIS (okay, and doing some laundry), and she expressed the heartfelt wish that I, too, would have a whole day to do fuck-all sometime soon. what i'm getting instead are several days where i get to pretend that i'm back at Fest, taking my allowed half-day off. and today is one of those days!

i slept in a little, aided and abetted by the animals. they've gotten very good at strategic snuggling. effectively, they have learned how to pin me under the blankets and go limp, so that i have either to wiggle my way out at the top of the bed (because God forbid i disturb a sleeping animal) or accept my fate and go back to sleep.

i got one round of dishes done (it's been a little busy here, and things have piled up), signed and addressed a few Christmas cards, wrapped some presents bound for Oregon, made and wrapped some babysitting vouchers for K and J (and by "made", i mean i cut sheets of cardstock into thirds and wrote BABYSITTING in sharpie on each one), folded laundry, cleaned the kitchen, hung out with E when she came home for lunch, and ate approximately ten vanilla bean sugar cookies from this recipe (minus the almond extract, and minus the frosting). I'm watching Little V tonight, and decided that slice-and-bake cookies (plus a bottle of sprinkles) would be a nice low-mess activity. the recipe calls for dividing the dough in half, so i baked half as a test-run:

they're not the most photogenic cookies in the world, but they're delicious, and that's way more important! also, there are sprinkles all over my kitchen now, because they roll right off of the cookies unless you press them down a little. so much for low-mess. hope my sister has rimmed cookie sheets.

one semester of school is finished! they haven't posted grades yet, but unless i'm very much mistaken, i earned a 4.0 this semester. and i'm all registered for next semester, too: Chemistry 105 and College Algebra, here i come! one of the girls in my Biology class will be in my Chemistry class, and we *may* have jumped up and down a little while squealing, "lab partners!!!1!.

you know what's amazing? being able to rent textbooks. seriously. if i were to buy all of my books from the school bookstore, it would run me $530. but renting the two textbooks and buying the lab manual and answer key will only cost $246! THAT i can handle!

what else? mom, K, and i took Little V to see Rudolph: The Musical, and she completely fan-girled OUT, except when Bumble was on stage. scared her out of her mind, poor kid! she was shaking and crying so hard at one point that the six-year-old boy in front of us turned around to reassure her that it was just a giant puppet.

E and i are both off on thursday, and we're going to finish up our Christmas shopping. it's rare that we get to do that together, and we're excited! she has to get...well...pretty much everything, i think, and i just have a few more things to buy. a memory stick for her mom, puzzles for Little E, sausage and cheese for my brother, a card for Little V. a couple more ornaments...a couple more giftcards...not bad for starting later than usual!