Made it to Christmas Eve

No matter how organized I am, no matter how many things I get done ahead of time, the days leading up to Christmas are always a mad rush. Before this past week started I thought I had everything under control, but then on Sunday the 15th, Chester (big white cat) got sick (necessitating multiple trips to multiple veterinarians, massive amounts of money spent, miserable attempts at "pilling" the cat, the cat's retaliation in the form of not using the litter box, etc.), and our internet went out (necessitating multiple calls to CenturyLink, a fruitless trip to buy a new router, an attempt to use an old router I found in the garage, and a day spent waiting for the CenturyLink technician to show up). I spent a lot of time cleaning, but certain things didn't get done, most notably the bathroom floor. Finally on Saturday night Rocket Boy came home, to everyone's joy, but that night he discovered that a cat had peed in the bathroom (the pee was under the bathroom scale, which I would have discovered if I'd cleaned the bathroom floor). Then on Sunday night RB came down with the flu (necessitating a trip to the emergency room on Monday morning). Just one of those really special weeks (actually 9-day stretch, but whatever).

All that was enough to keep me from doing the last bits of Christmas prep. And so here it is Christmas Eve and we're almost -- but not quite -- ready. I still have most of the presents to wrap, and of all things, we don't have enough Hanukkah candles to make it through the eight days. The grocery store is out of them, Target is out of them, Michael's is out of them, JoAnn's is out of them. McGuckin's is probably out of them (I admit I didn't go there today to check). It's 3:15 pm on Christmas Eve and I don't want to go to any more stores. We have enough candles for tonight and tomorrow night, and then after that maybe we could use birthday cake candles. Or not burn Hanukkah candles, since we're not Jewish and we really don't need to! We like to, though, especially on the nights when we're also burning advent candles. We'll see what happens.

I managed to get eight batches of cookies made this year, if you count fudge as a cookie, which we do. Here are the eggnog cookies and the meringues that I screwed up, so they're flat. They still taste good, though, and the eggnog cookies are yummy scrumptious. Those aren't anything my family ever made -- I think I got the recipe off the internet at some point. Don't know why I thought I needed another cookie recipe, but they are tasty.

The last two batches were oatmeal crunch (which we also call date crunch -- it has dates, oatmeal, and nuts -- I use walnuts) and fudge. I usually make good fudge, but something went wrong this year, and it doesn't look right, too grainy. It looks like the butter didn't mix in properly. It tastes OK, so I'm going to go with that.

Last night the kids and I made our usual trip to Westminster to get a honeybaked ham and had our usual dinner out at Chili's afterwards. But boy, with Rocket Boy home sick in bed, it wasn't much fun. Actually, correction, it was perfectly pleasant. I just missed him. The boys and I go out to eat every Saturday night, sometimes at Chili's, and it's usually fine, as was this night. But when Rocket Boy's in town, it's natural that I should want him to eat out with us. Oh well, not his fault he got terribly sick.

Can you hear that self pity creeping in? I'm so glad he's home and we're all together. And I'm so mad that he's sick! I'm mad that I'm probably going to get it next -- I feel very tired today. And the kids will get it, maybe. And I'll have to take care of everybody while being sick. And by the time Rocket Boy is all better, it'll be time for him to leave. There, I said it. I'm feeling it. I'm owning it. And there's nothing I can do about it.

So now I will finish this post and go put away laundry. After that I'll wrap presents and unload the dishwasher. Dinner will be pretty easy -- I just have to steam broccoli and bake sweet potato fries in the oven. The ham is pre-cooked and pre-sliced. I bought rolls, so we'll heat them up. And we'll drink sparkling cider. Couldn't be easier. On Christmas Day I'll make Barbara's famous potato dish, and we'll eat that with the ham and rolls and maybe a green salad. There's very little for me to do. After that, if I do get sick, the cupboards, fridge, and freezer contain lots of easy to prepare (or already prepared) food. I've made things easy on myself and on everyone. It's all going to be fine. You did it, kiddo, you made it through the ramp up to Christmas. It's all going to be OK.