Oh, I am SO done

[rikibeth]

Family Hannukah party: last Saturday. Not nearly as stressful as it could have been. M-in-law said "don't get us anything," so I didn't. Fabric magazine caddies I sewed for Cousins Sylvia-and-Harry, and for one of Mark's sisters, and a little set of drink charms with a drawstring bag I made for the other sister. Very much in line with the tin of Lindt truffles, bag of wine, and Mason-jars-with-soup-components we got. No embarassing mismatch of spending this year.

The nieces got the bought presents. A Groovy Girls doll, Verity, for the six-year-old, because Charlotte said that's what she'd want -- and her mother said how nice it was for her to get a doll that wasn't blonde and curly, because everyone tended to get Emma dolls that looked like her. Verity had black curly hair with crimson streaks, three silver embroidered earrings in one ear, a Union Jack tank top, a black miniskirt, fishnets, and knee-high Doc Martens. Since she was a cuddly, Beanie-Baby-like doll, this was awfully appealing. Emma seemed to like it, anyway, although it wasn't the big hit that the Kim Possible walkie-talkies were.

The fairly grown-up set of drawing pencils I got for the nine-year-old were more of a hit. I'd noticed at Thanksgiving that Melanie was carrying around a sketchbook, so I figured a nice pencil set would go over well. I found one at Jo-Ann's that had charcoals and layout pencils and a few pastel chalks -- serious drawing tools as opposed to yet-more-cheapo-colored-pencils. Melanie opened them right away and started testing them, drawing the sort of figure armatures I'd learned in a life drawing class. Good.

Tomorrow is the first day "off" I'll have had since last Tuesday. Normally I have Sundays off, but I went in for a few hours last Sunday because I thought I had a croissant emergency. It turned out that I had enough reserve in the freezer for the Monday order, because they wanted "small," so I just made a batch of brioche dough, did Eli's dishes for him, and went home again. Monday and Tuesday I worked 12-hour days. Today I had to go in at 4 AM because some lousy rotten bi a customer had ordered brioche and croissant for 8 AM, and if I'd gone in at 5:30 it would have been pushing it to have the brioche out of the oven on time, because I had to make larger-than-usual batches of muffins and scones. Then, of course, she didn't show up until 9 ANYWAY.

I am mostly over my yucky COLD. I woke up a week ago with a sore throat. It wasn't horrible, but it didn't go away with a cup of hot tea, so I figured all right, a cup of Germ-Scaring Drink (an Andrew Weil concoction of ginger, cayenne, garlic, lemon, and honey), and maybe I'd shake it. I did manage to drink a cup of it, but it must not be effective if consumed from a travel mug on the way to the movie theater, or else Mark was right and I didn't put enough cayenne in it... either way, I was well able to enjoy ROTK, but I spent the next four days getting through work sustained by Alka-Seltzer Cold Plus, and warning my co-workers that if I appeared to be doing something stupid, I probably did NOT have a good reason for it, and they should point it out to me, because the cold meds turned my brain to cheese. Monday, the cold symptoms were marginally less annoying than the medication side effects, so I stopped taking the stuff. I didn't seem to get any smarter, though. Funny, that...

I also have cracks in the skin of my hands from all the extra hand-washing I did to avoid transmitting germs. I just bought some glycerine-based stuff that's supposed to fix it. We'll see.

Tomorrow we drive to Long Island to see my brother. The adorable velvet dress for my niece is done... buttons sewn on, lace collar attached, rosebuds attached, hem done... everything. And I have a pie from the store as my contribution. I think Jen actually made the specific pie, but I can't remember -- it's one of the ones we both do.

lordavon, adpaz and tristam -- thank you for the cards. I was a slug and didn't send any out this year. I did remember to give Charlotte's teacher a present, at least -- cranberry-orange-pecan bread. Made at the store, but made by me, from the selfsame Cook's Illustrated recipe that I would have used to make one at home. I'd been doing that one a lot at the store anyway to use up most of a case of buttermilk that we'd gotten for a chess pie recipe that didn't sell well. The other one I'd been doing a lot of was an apple cheddar walnut bread from a recent Family Circle. Heaven knows how I got on their mailing list, but they tell me it's a free subscription, so I scan it every month, and the recipe looked worthwhile, so I tested it -- and when it came out well, I used it to help get rid of the extra cases of apples from Thanksgiving before they went bad. It worked, too, because we didn't have to throw any away, and got in two new cases a couple days before Christmas. So I'm back to a more balanced rotation. Sour cream banana, zucchini, carrot pineapple... I like to make sure there's some variety.

I'm done with sewing for presents! Now I can go back to working on the masquerade entry! ghilledhu has the really detailed version.

Maybe I'll sew in the car tomorrow and finish the Luthien applique. Then I could do the poodle skirts fairly quickly.

I'm rambling. Maybe a piece of pecan pie and a cup of whiskey tea and it'll be time for bed.

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Merry