If this is Christmas Eve, I can't WAIT for Christmas!

Y’all know how much I love Christmas. And if you’re one of Les filles Hingston you’ll not only know, you’ll understand. (Hola Lyn!) I’ve had Christmas music playing since…well, before there was snow on the ground. And given the fall we had, that’s saying something!

I love buying Christmas gifts. Getting them is nice too, but the planning and plotting behind getting them is what I truly love. And if – as I did this year– I’ve done something particularly clever (The Girl thinks I failed with finding her a ticket for a concert in March; I have TWO in my hot little hands, waiting to be wrapped…and then unwrapped) then it’s even better.

I have a hard time keeping secrets, so it's even ok that most of my Christmas shopping is done after all the baking is paid for. If I bought things any earlier, I'd be telling people.

Even being at work is a good thing. I was going to be off today, in fact, I worked all of last Friday (my day off) to ensure that I would be able to to stay home without using vacation leave. Still, stuff happened so here I am at work.

Why is that good? Because we close at one today, so I can leave at lunch and not come back. And yet get paid for a full day! So if I were home, I would have worked eight hours last week to have four hours off today. Very bad math indeed.

This way I have lots of time to do fun things like laundry and shopping and yet have a whole day squirreled away for use in the depths of January. Because I think a night at the spa in Moose Jaw would suit me just fine. I may even buy myself a gift card with the Christmas money my dad sent. (Thanks dad! ) A night at the spa without kids and without dogs. Woot! (Does this mean I’m giving up on going somewhere hot at some point? No, no sir, it does not. But let’s be realistic a night in The Jaw is more likely than a week at the beach).

So why is my Christmas eve already out of control? Because despite the hour (not even 8:30 at the time of writing), this is my day so far:

I was making bread for the deli this morning and I knocked over the bag of flour. This meant several things: first, no more bread for the oven means less bread for my pocket. Less bread baked is less bread to deliver, which will make the buyers sad. Given how many I did make, it was NOT worth getting up in the night to bake bread before going to work. Being overly tired is ok when there is a decent pay-out. Not so nice when there isn't.

Since I didn’t have a third batch of bread to bake, I was finished much earlier than planned. Which means I had time this morning between baking work and work-work. I did get three loads of laundry done but if, when I get to the Laundromat I find that it’s closed I will have three bags of clean frozen clothes and no dryer, and three bags of dirty clothes still needing to be done.

The final problem is that flour is really hard to clean. Yes, it sweeps up and all but every time I thought I had every last bit I’d slip in a few grains I’d missed. So, the tragedy of the flour is Act I of my Christmas eve morning.

Act II was the slippery walk way. Not the stairs that I’ve cart wheeled down before. Those The Boy took care of last night (something I didn’t notice until this morning, when I saw that someone had hacked all the built up ice and snow off of the front steps). No, this time it was the driveway. I slipped, saved and fell. The slip was the ice, the save was NOT dropping the tortiere or the fudge*, the fall was because my brain decided saving myself was not as important as saving the baking. Which is actually kinda true. ‘Cept I slipped and my shins hit the car as I slid under it. Not completely under the car, just I was facing the car when my feet went shooting out in front of me, dinging my shins and sliding under the car. So yeah for the baking, boo for the falling.

*As I lay on the driveway flat out on my back I looked in awe at the STILL BALANCED pie in my left hand and the STILL STACKED trays of fudge in my right. I have no idea how I managed that.

I put the pie and the fudge down, brushed myself off and opened the trunk. At which point, in my own driveway, by an inanimate object no less - I was stabbed. Slashed would be the better word, actually. A combination of cold and the usual strangeness that is my life meant that when the trunk popped open the metal bar thing that makes it pop open (and keeps it open) snapped like a twig and slashed me on its way out. That thing must have been under some serious tension.

I have no idea how to fix this, if it is even fixable. I suspect this is NOT a duct-tapeable situation! Welding? Soldering? Magic? I don’t need fixing, thank heavens (well, not as far as this morning’s disasters go), but I suspect I’ll have a bruise or ten to deal with tomorrow. And really…I’m more or less used to various and sundry bumps, cuts and bruises. I think a bruise from being stabbed by my own car would fall into the “sundry” category. So there, Act III and the end of the morning.

Drat – should never have said that. It is now 8:45, and I just got an email from a customer who got their baking yesterday. They ordered tarts, in their words “one half dozen of each”. I checked, that is what they said. What they meant, apparently, was one AND a half dozen of each kind. And they want to know if I’ll be baking next week, and willing to make a dozen mince tarts and a dozen butter tarts. Sigh. It’s hard to get enthusiastic about baking tarts when I’ve made so many this past week. However…the babies will be going to their dad’s for Christmas later in the week, so I suppose I could my customers happy and make more tarts. And The Boy will be pleased if there is a butter tart or ten to spare when I'm done. (He made fairly short work of the dozen that I had left over earlier in the week. I ate one, The Girl doesn't like them and didn't have any, and yet somehow there is only one left).