Bad Day for the Yarn Bandit

Bunny has previously reported on Kirby's en fuego yeast infection and the torture we have had to inflict on him in order to treat it. Every application of medicine between his furry toes was followed by extra love and the really good wheat-free no-itch apple cookies. Yarn Bandit figured this out very quickly and started to recognize the tube of ointment even before Kirby did. Did Kirby's squirming and squealing bother the Yarn Bandit? No, because if Kirby gets a treat, then Tiki also gets a treat. He sees it as an unalienable right and, well, the best way to keep him out of our hair while we tend to Mr. Itchy Feets is to toss cookie bits across the room so Yarn Bandit has to go get them, thereby creating the critical distance and personal space we need to carry on our terrible business with Kirbs. In fact, if you asked him, he'd probably tell you that he likes it when we torture Kirby because he always gets a treat.


Unfortunately for the Yarn Bandit, Kirby had his final yeast follow up appointment with Doctor Ginger and she declared him yeast-free, completely healed, and no longer in need of any torturous applications of medication between the toes. So no more guaranteed twice-daily really good wheat-free no-itch apple cookies as rewards. No torture for Kirby means a reduction in treats for Tiki.

Speaking of Kirby, now that his suture line has healed and his hair is growing back and his feet are no longer en feugo, he is very much back to his wonderful little self. We've been taking him to the vet for one reason or another about once a week for the last seven weeks or so and no one is in any particular hurry to start going again for radiation treatments. Since there is no urgent medical reason to be in a big hurry, we are going to take a vet break for a while (assuming The Boys let us by not getting into any new trouble) and start the fun cancer stuff again in a little while.

Dirtbunny is not a professional pastry chef

Oooooh my aching back. KP duty is done and I'm too tired to take a shower, so while my body unkinks itself, here's a bit of what Dirtbunny does on Christmas Eve.



Kirby is clean already, so no beagle bath today, thank God. Here he is enjoying himself (not) earlier in the week.





Yarn Bandit is in the Christmas spirit just fine. He's got his holiday toys all stacked up where they belong:

He's got his Big Santa and his Little Santa and his Hanukkah Harry. He is a rescue dog after all, and he stubbornly refuses to speak English, so we really don't know what his religious beliefs are. Clayton is of the tribe, so Yarn Bandit could be too for all we know.

We got him an elf suit that didn't fit too well, and he immediately took the hat off and tried to eat it, but here's your picture:

It's cute, but it also shows him rebelling against the exploitation of his cuteness, so I declare it a win/win. Kirby also has a holiday suit that neither fits him nor impresses him:

Wait. I was going to tell how I spent my Christmas Eve. OK. Well. I got up and knitted a repeat on the July Sock Club sock and started to worry about the buche de noel. Then I read the paper and worried some more. Then I sent The Man downstairs to put the kitchen towels and aprons in the dryer so I could make the buche. And then they came out of the dryer so I had some toast and some tomato juice and I commenced with the buche, which I both dread and look forward to every year. It's a big fucking deal and it feeds nicely into my martyr complex, but nothing compares and it gives me quite a sense of accomplishment. So I made the cake base and, because it's a sponge cake, I made the meringue.

And I folded the base and the meringue together and put it in the patented pan and made The Man leave the house so his elephantine stomping around--I mean, his manly and purposeful stride--would not collapse the goddamn thing. Then it came out of the oven and I removed it from the pan and dusted it with confectioner's sugar and rolled it up in waxed paper and a damp towel.

Then I put together a Union Square Casserole for tomorrow's breakfast. USQ, as it is known Chez Nous (don't ask me where I got the Q from) is an old Washington Post recipe and it combines some of The Man's favorite foods--sausage and cheese--and he is allowed to squirt ketchup all over it, which he is not supposed to do with certain of Dirtbunny's creations. Anyway, USQ is pretty much layers of bread, grated cheese, and an onion-sausage-mushroom mixture, soaked in a savory custard overnight, and then baked the next morning. It is an excellent do-ahead sort of thing.

So we got that in the oven. And then I made a sweetened Cointreau reduction. And then I was tired and cranky so I went on the web to see if I had any readers. And apparently I have a new boyfriend who talks futbol with me. Which is cool. So I played with my new friend for a while, and then I sliced up and baked some Candied Fruit Slices:

While I did that, The Man started making penuche icing under my supervision. He is starting to learn that cooking is a lot of standing around stirring stuff and following instructions. When the CFS were done and the penuche icing base was done, I set the penuche aside to cool and commenced with the buche filling/frosting.

About this time I start thinking that I want a drink, but I don't have one. I have to make an Italian meringue and I need my wits about me. What is an Italian meringue? It's an unsweetened regular meringue to which one carefully whips in a simple syrup boiled to the soft-ball stage. How do you know when your simple syrup has reached the soft ball stage? Well, the old-fashioned way is to put a few drops in water and pull them out and see if they make the requisite soft ball, but that always seemed to me like a good way to permanently remove my fingerprints, so I just use a thermometer to heat it to the correct temperature and I don't remember what that is because I have to look it up every goddamn time because I am not a professional pastry chef. Once the simple syrup is added to the meringue, you beat it until it has cooled off.

This takes a while, so I hope you like the sound of Mr. Kitchen Aid Mixer running on high speed. While that is going, you need to make two cups of whipped cream, which I can do by hand with my big whisk when I'm feeling green, but I'm already tired today so I use the little portable mixer for that. And meanwhile, I break the 3/4 lb of chocolate into chunks, brew a pot of espresso, and melt the chocolate with the espresso. You can break the chocolate into bits by hand, or you can chop it, but the fun way to do it is to leave it in its wrapper, stack the bars nicely, and whack them repeatedly with a rolling pin.

God, that's fun. I wish I had to melt chocolate every day.

Are you keeping track? You are triple-tasking at this point: monitoring the big mixer with the cooling-off Italian meringue, whipping cream in the little mixer, and making sure the chocolate melts smoothly without turning grainy or burning. Did you know that if you burn the chocolate, no amount of sugar will make burned chocolate taste okay? Go on, ask me how I know.

So my Italian meringue is cool and shiny and firm and my cream is whipped adequately and my chocolate is melted, but sort of grainy, because Dirtbunny is not a professional pastry chef.

Beat the chocolate into the meringue--oops, I mean Italian meringue-- and then fold the whipped cream into that, and then scoop about two-thirds of what you have into a clean bowl and put it in the fridge to use as frosting later.

It is time to fill the buche, so get it out and unroll it.

FUCK FUCK TRIPLE FUCKETY FUCK!

Too soggy. It broke. Dirtbunny, it appears, is not a professional pastry chef. Deep breath. [Later, as I write this, it occurs to me that I could have had a drink at this point, but that did not occur to me in the moment, so I faced it sober.]

I am pretty sure this has happened before and that it all comes together in the end if I'm careful, so I forge on ahead. I have eaten unfrosted birthday cake chunks from a bowl. I can do the same with a buche if I have to. Shit happens, especially to me.

So, Dirtbunny brushes the broken fucking cake with the sweetened Cointreau reduction. The Dirtbunny spreads the now even more soggy sweetened Cointreau reduction soaked broken fucking cake with the chocolate and cream enriched Italian meringue.

Then I carefully, carefully roll it up.

Then I carefully, carefully put it on the plate with the broken side down. And then I put the whole thing in the fridge on the theory that, if the filling gets cold and therefore firmer, it will help seal the cracks and hold the broken fucking cake together.

And then Bunny has a sandwich.

And then Bunny puts confectioner's sugar in the penuche icing base and frosts the spice cake. The frosting does not want to stick to the cake so by the end, Dirtbunny is throwing wads of frosting at the sides of the cake like wads of wet toilet paper hurled at the bathroom ceiling and patting it down with her hands. It is done. Dirtbunny smooths it down as much as she can, but it is yoogly. Dirtbunny is not a professional pastry chef and cares a lot more about how it tastes than the presentation, but this is a little much. Sigh. It can't be helped, so it goes in the fridge and we return to the buche.

Retrieved from the fridge, the buche has not collapsed, which tells me that the cold-filling-as-glue science experiment has worked sufficiently. Furthermore, the filling I set aside in the fridge to use as frosting is firm enough that I don't need to stiffen it up with cocoa. So we are ready to go. Carefully, carefully spread the frosting on in long strokes. Looking good, looking good. Hey! It's holding together! Excellent! Trowel on the rest of it and use the spatula to make bark-looking marks in it because a buche is a log after all.

There you go! Not bad for someone who isn't a professional pastry chef. And it all goes in the fridge until tomorrow when it will be EATEN. Arrrrr!

That, my friends is the face of deprivation and injustice. So sad. No chocolate taste-tests for beagles. He liked the cake batter, though. No chocolate in there.

One last thing: sauteed apples. I am not going to want to make these tomorrow morning, so I do them now while The Man starts cleaning up my mess. Granny Smith apples cooked in butter until they are soft but before they disintegrate into applesauce, then add some brown sugar, some cinnamon, and a generous glug-glug-glug of Calvados and cook that quickly until the sauce is kinda syrupy and then you're done. At last.

And so The Man and Dirtbunny put the last of the food into the fridge and we clean up the kitchen and he does the dishes, and I wash my hands really well and put some hand cream on and it's time to turn on the Christmas lights.

And when I'm done here, I am going to get myself clean and spend the rest of the evening on the sofa with a glass of spirits and some seasonally-appropriate music and some beagles and yarn. And I'll make oyster stew, but that's just heating stuff up on the stove. And then back to the sofa.

I leave you with a gift from the Old Man, who sent me this a while ago:

This photo, circa 1920, shows three generations of my family in the feed store my family had back then in the town in upstate New York where I was born, my parents were born, and my grandfather was born. The little gentleman in short pants is my grandfather, who has been gone for a while now. The handsome fellow with his feet up on the counter is my grandfather's father, who died before I was born. My grandfather grew up to resemble his father quite closely. The older fellow in the work coveralls on the left is my grandfather's grandfather, Garrison Gillespie, born in 1852, who came to the United States with my great-great grandmother Kate sometime in the late 19th century. We all come from somewhere. This is where I come from.

Merry Christmas.

Random Friday

1. Today we got a form letter from our mortgage-holder informing us that they are solvent and secure and everything is hunky-dory yessireebob. Which is an odd letter to get, if you ask me. Didn't Enron send out similar rosy notices to somebody right before it collapsed? We had no reason to think our mortgage holder was in trouble. Hmmmmm.
2. Kirby got his stitches out this week and saw the oncologist today. Happily, his form of cancer is only rarely fatal, although it can cause problems and it would be much better if he didn't have it. It's possible that the surgery did the trick and it won't come back, buts odds are that it will comeback eventually. So we will be doing radiation treatment after the holidays. But we can all breathe a little more freely now.
3. By the way, just because you went in to the vet for sore paws and the vet saw cancer unrelated to the sore paws doesn't mean that he sore paws will automatically go away. In fact, if the reason for the sore paws is an untreated yeast infection in between the pads, then the paws will probably get worse while you're off being distracted by cancer and amputations and whatnot. So now poor Kirby has a RAGING EN FUEGO yeast infection. The treatment is frequent cleaning between the pads with medicated wipes. It hurts. Kirby squirms and shrieks and gives me warning bites when I'm doing it. I feel like shit over this, which is only fair and just because if I weren't neglectful in the first place, I would have noticed the problem before it got to this point. He's suffering because of me, and my punishment is that the only way he gets better is if I torture him by cleaning his feet.
4. We bought a fake Christmas tree this year. It is still in its box, sitting there, taunting me. You're lazy and behind schedule! You're lazy and behind schedule!
5. Q: If Dirtbunny has a virus that won't go away, how many days will it take for The Man to catch it? A: 61 days
6. Q: Say three nice things about President Bush. A: one--I know you are trying to be all tough in public and pretend that you have no doubts, questions, or regrets about anything you did while in office, but I believe that in your heart of hearts, you know you have made mistakes. two--Thank you for closing the government on December 26. three--Sorry. I only got two.
7. Did you know that even if you give Yarn Bandit an extra evening potty break about half an hour before bedtime, you still have to give him his regular potty break immediately before bedtime or he will wee in the house during the night?
8. If Yarn Bandit is going to go in the house in the middle of the night, whether he goes #1 or #2, he invariably does it in the bathroom. This is not ideal, but at least we can toss the bathroom rug in the wash. Isn't there something interesting about that? It's as if he knows that this is the place where we go when we have to go in the middle of the night.
9. Big knittings-on happening here, but you will have to wait. Typing time takes away from knitting time.

Dirtbunny's Fifty Things You Maybe Didn't Know (or Want to Know) About Christmas Chez Nous

1. It's not Christmas without Candied Fruit Slices!
2. The Man and Dirtbunny always get stressed out and argue when putting up decorations. She is a bossy nitpicker who should just do it her own damn self if she's going to be that way, and he is incompetent, do it the same way we did it last year, how can you not remember?
3. Dirtbunny wants to buy The Boys lots of toys, but they don't care about toys, so she doesn't bother.
4. The Man always wants the same thing for Christmas: Books, CDs, and ties.
5. Dirtbunny does not go to Tysons Corner Center in December unless she is trying to trigger an anxiety attack severe enough to kill her, which she isn't trying to do, thanks for asking.
6. Dirtbunny is tired of taking her knives to be sharpened. (Hey! Free Shipping!)
7. On Christmas morning Chez Nous, we have homemade cocoa and a special breakfast casserole with sausage, cheese, and mushrooms. Some years, Bunny makes cinnamon rolls, too.
8. Dirtbunny is not very good at wrapping presents.
9. Yarn Harlot has a new book.
10. A few years ago, Bunny took a nap instead of making Christmas dinner. We had Christmas dinner on Boxing Day instead.
11. We have had one white Christmas since we moved into Chez Nous in 2000.
12. Kirby is afraid of the Christmas tree for the first few days.
13. Christmas presents are for opening Christmas Day, not Christmas Eve.
14. Dirtbunny loves Midnight Mass, except that it starts about 4 hours past her bedtime. The best Midnight Mass ever was the time Bunny and The Man and The Man's Mother and Bill went to Midnight Mass at the St. Thomas More Cathedral and when it was over and we came out, the sky was crystalline with stars and there was a full moon.
15. When it comes to Christmas music, the cheesier the better. This one is my favorite. When you listen, you can practically see the sweater-wearing backup singers in their groovy hairdos doing their little 60's variety show dance moves. Good times.
16. "The Little Drummer Boy" makes Dirtbunny cry, so we fast forward through that one.
17. Fruitcake does not suck unless you make it wrong. Even so, a little goes a long way.
18. The little pannetones they have for sale in the supermarkets are mostly packaging and not much cake, plus aren't very good any way. Save your money.
19. Knitters want yarn for Christmas, no mater how much yarn they already have. Dirtbunny very much wants to make this sweater for herself, in the largest size, in a nice pink, or icy blue, or bright red. Did you know Bunny always gets one extra ball of yarn because she is a loose knitter?
20. Did you know The pattern for the sweater that Dirtbunny wants actually contains a link to the U.K. source for the yarn to make the sweater?
21. Did you know that Dirtbunny's birthday is in January? Stuff that can't be shipped in time for Christmas makes a great birthday present.
22. What's for dinner on Christmas Eve? Oyster Stew.
23. When she unwraps a present, Dirtbunny wads up the wrapping paper and flings it wherever. It looks festive for a while and we can clean it up later. The Man likes to compulsively clean up the paper right away, because he's weird. This leads to arguments.
24. Dirtbunny has started to appreciate "It's a Wonderful Life" but she still hates fucking Zuzu and her fucking petals.
25. Did you know that if you go to a yarn store with a pattern for a sweater and say, "Dirtbunny wants enough yarn to make this sweater in this size plus one extra ball in pink or red or icy blue and the yarn should not be acrylic and should be softer than Cascade 220 and it should show off the cables nicely" the yarn store people will not only be thrilled to help you, but will tell stories for eons about that nice guy who came into the store to buy yarn for his wife and they will all wish they had someone to buy yarn for them?
26. Since you been away dear, no reindeer will play here, so HURRY HOME FOR CHRISTMAS, DON'T STOP UNTIL YOU GET HERE, YEAH! Can't you just see Steve and Eydie? Steve's newscaster hairdo and Eydie's bouffant?
27. Chez Nous, we like to start drinking as soon as the cocoa is gone, and we keep going all day.
28. There must be a fire in the fireplace on Christmas day, and it's best if it's a cloudy or rainy day so you can see the lights better.
29. Don't forget the stocking stuffers! Dirtbunny went to all the trouble to make beautiful Christmas stockings, so they should have stuff in them when she wakes up on Christmas morning.
30. Lighted plastic creche scenes on the front lawn are an abomination. Every time I see one, I'm tempted to stop the car, get out, and smash it with a baseball bat. I mean really. If you can think of anything that is more of an unintentionally ironic anti-Christmas statement than a life-sized Baby Jesus made of plastic with a light bulb up his ass, then I would like to know what it is so I can look at my crazy neighbors more charitably.
31. Ultimate Christmas dessert: homemade Buche de Noel
32. Tiki knows that there is chocolate in the advent calendar, but he can't get at it. As far as we know.
33. If you love The Man, you will make him airplane cookies in Air Superiority Blue and decorate them with patriotic sprinkles. But don't bother knitting him a cabled scarf in his favorite color. The Man has no need for a scarf.
34. Dirtbunny hangs onto slights and grudges for longer than is healthy.
35. Poor people need food, shelter, and warm clothing all year round, not just during the holidays, but they also need the small comforts that we take for granted, like hats and shampoo.
36. You DON'T NEED A TICKET, for Santa Claus's party.
37. There is lots of cool stuff at KnitPicks, like this, and this, and this, and they have gift cards so when I get around to those fair isle socks I've been thinking about, I can get the sock yarn I want. And they have Yarn Harlot's new book.
38. It kind of doesn't matter what's for dinner on Christmas Day, because Dirtbunny might be too tired to cook anyway. Sometimes we have a turkey, sometimes we get a ham, sometimes we have a fancy beef roast, and sometimes we roast a chicken. But we usually have potage les doo champonies. Even if she isn't too tired to cook, we might be too full of cookies and alcohol to enjoy dinner.
39. Candy canes are never as good as I think they are going to be.
40. Dirtbunny was going to say that anyone who goes shopping on the day after Thanksgiving or the day after Christmas deserves whatever happens to them, but then she remembered that people actually got stampeded to death by the horde this year. No one deserves that. Bunny worked retail. No way she is going shopping on those days. No fucking way.
41. Two words: Egg. Nog. It now comes in lowfat, and Silk makes a regular and a lowfat soymilk version that is quite tasty.
42. Dirtbunny very much would like her cold (it is now day 65) to be gone by Christmas, if not sooner.
43. We hate "Feliz Navidad." The song, not the expression. Sorry, but we do.
44. Dirtbunny likes to get her "shopping" done way early, and online if possible, because she hates crowds and wants to enjoy the holidays by spending them at home with loved ones, not in line with shoppers. The Man starts shopping as soon as it occurs to him that Christmas is, indeed, coming this year. We usually don't see very much of him from December 22-24, and when he comes home he yells "DON'T COME OUT HERE YET" and he's grumpy.
45. Bunny doesn't order yarn for herself in December any more, because when it arrives, The Man is likely to intercept it and wrap it up as if he bought it for her as a Christmas present.
46. One of our local channels shows "Ben Hur" with no commercials during the day on Christmas Eve. If you didn't know, "Ben Hur" is about 18 hours long and is full of homoerotic longings that one might not expect to see in a movie that's sort of about Jesus. Of course, I feel confident in saying that Jesus is gay-friendly, so I don't know why homoerotic themes would be particularly out of place in a Jesus movie. If you are going to watch and you don't have means to pause it, then take a bathroom break before it starts.
47. I wish that the "Kiss Saves Christmas" special that they "excerpt" in one of the Family Guy episodes was real. That's a show I'd like to see.
48. The best Christmas present little Dirtbunny ever got as a child was a plastic cement mixer. Her brothers got trucks and she wanted one too. You could put stuff in the drum and spin it around. Awesome!
49. The Old Folks have a photo of my nephews Peter and Henry from when they were still babies, and they are wearing striped pajamas on Christmas morning, green and white on one of them, and red and white on the other. Perhaps this isn't charitable of me, but I always thought they looked like inmates at the North Pole Federal Correctional Institute in those pajamas.
50. Bunny's favorite Christmas song (for fun) is the Andy Williams version of "Happy Holidays/The Holiday Season." Her favorite carol (for serious) is "O Holy Night."

Dirtbunny's Cold, Day 60

Another sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, but no fever, why God why day Chez Nous. Yesterday, my boss informed me that he could hear me coughing two doors down with the doors closed and maybe I should go home. So I did, but not before stopping to get some new over-the-counter cold stuff. Everyone says Try Mucinex, so I did. And I also looked for candied cherries for my holiday baking, since I was there anyway, and The Man would probably not cotton to looking for the special holiday display at an unfamiliar store for obscure seasonal baking products. But all they had were green. So I got my Mucinex and went home and worked on a sock for my Daddy and fell asleep then woke up and watched Juventus until the DVR ate the last 20 minutes of the match and then I went to sleep again, only Kirby did not stay in his dog bed and decided to sleep on my neck all night.




But today I woke up with less system-clogging snot and fewer phlegm globs in my throat, so I drank some coffee and ate some Cheerios and put in a full day at the home office, where I spent most of the day making little corrections to a memo, then erasing the corrections, then putting them back in, then fretting about them, then saying what the hell no one cares anyway, then deciding I want it to be good so going back to fretting. Long story short, I didn't make a lot of changes, but it took me all day to do what I did.




It has been an interesting few days. The Old Folks brought me Thanksgiving at my house so I didn't have to leave and I didn't have to cook and I could devote all my energy to worrying about GK and his tumor removal surgery. Special Sweetheart slept for about a day and then, once the turkey came out of the oven, he woke up and he's been pretty much his ole self ever since. His boo-boo is a little itchy and he isn't supposed to lick it. If I catch him at it, I say "No lick" and he nearly always stops. If he really, really can't help himself, I show him the e-collar that he has to wear if he can't stop licking, and that puts an end to it. He is such a good good boy.


Here is his leg after the biopsy but before the mass was removed. The growth was about the size of an egg and reportedly looked like a little brain.





And here he is post-tumor removal, before he got his little bandage off.







As soon as the Old Folks left, my head filled up with snot. This is not good. I have a holiday to plan, after all, and I never really got over the last cold. The Man doesn't register that it's Christmastime until about December 23, so it's up to me. Only I'm sick (again) and on unofficial House Arrest until The Man deems me healthy enough to face the world. Not really, but he secretly suspects that I'm doing something to make myself sick just to add to his stress and fuck with him. If he catches me at any Christmas stuff that is more effort than pointing and clicking, I'm in big trouble.




So I'm doing stealth holiday planning. Step one is to decide on what decorations we are going to have, get what we need that we don't have already, and put them up without involving The Man. That sounds hard. Let's come back to that later.



Step two is food. What holiday baking will I be doing this year? That sounds hard too. I need a nap. Maybe Warden The Man isn't completely out to lunch.


OK--step three. Step three is, given that I know that certain Christmas treats are non-negotiable, obtain ingredients for making same. To render that idea in as few words as possible, find and purchase candied cherries. And that's where I started with this post.


Candied fruit slices are the one, the only, the single, non-negotiable Christmas item, and candied cherries are required. [Proof: The Man just came home, saw the stack of candied cherries, and said "Oooh! Candied Fruit Slices!"] Since they are not organic, not all-natural, and in fact are probably contaminated with some sort of radioactive isotope (how else do you explain that color?) they are not to be had at the Fresh Fields. I can send The Man to the Fresh Fields with a grocery list, and he can get groceries as competently as anyone. I cannot send The Man out with instructions to find candied cherries, because I never know from year to year where I will find them because apparently no one bakes any more. He is not going on a Northern Virginia grocery store slog for something obscure that he may never find. It's not a job for volunteers. It's a job for Dirtbunny.




So, a few days ago, when I went for some unauthorized yarn therapy, I checked at the grocery store in the same strip mall. No dice, although they did have plenty of cheap plastic cookie cutters.


Then yesterday, I found some green ones when I got the Mucinex. But no red. Green without red would not be right. I need both. This is Christmas goddamn it! (That probably made the Baby Jesus cry, but I think that grown-up Jesus would find it funny. Jesus is cool, not uptight. But I digress.)


Today, after work, I tried the Glutton Place. They have come through for me before. Not this time, although they had lots and lots of gourmet pancake mix. Are pancakes really so hard that people need a mix? I don't get it.



So then I tried one of the Safeways. After losing a parking space and nearly getting killed by an oblivious Mercury Sable-driving cell-phone yakking creep, I went in and found........many, many disposable foil baking pans, and mint sauce in a jar (yuck) but no candied cherries. And so I headed home.


On the way home, I thought, by the time I get there, it will be too dark to work on project Hermes because I don't have a decent lamp at my desk for close-up no-glasses work. So what the hell, I'll try the Other Safeway. They have a new section with supposedly organic house brand food (I'm dubious) but no candied cherries. I think about getting a Starbucks at the in-store kiosk, but I'm too depressed. I leave.



As I'm pulling out of the parking lot, I decide that this is ridiculous. Exactly what is wrong with all-green candied fruit slices anyway? What kind of citizen puts fifty miles on the car looking for red candied cherries when there are plenty of green ones to be had? Am I a liberal earth-loving person or a hypocrite? OK, I'm a hypocrite, I don't do nearly enough to be green, but am I OK with the Hunt for Red Candied Cherries? No. I am not. I will settle for green and I will embrace the imperfection of life. So I go across the street to the HT, where I bought the Mucinex and saw the green cherries. OK, trouble getting a space. Why is everyone at the store today? It's only December 3 for crying out loud! I get a space in the garage. I ride the elevator up to the store, and I stomp down the aisle towards the green cherries not exactly settled on the idea that green-only is acceptable. Maybe I'll get green while I can and keep looking for the red. No! Bad Bunny! What is wrong with you! Get the goddamned green cherries and move on to something important!




Sniff. I'll come around. It'll be OK. I can deal with green cherries. I'm a big girl and I have lots of yarn and beagles waiting for me at home.



Green cherries it is. And there they are.




But wait!




Could it be?



It IS!




THEY HAVE RED CHERRIES TODAY! YESTERDAY GREEN ONLY BUT TODAY RED AND GREEN! JESUS LOVES ME! THERE WILL BE A REAL CHRISTMAS AFTER ALL!






I got extra just in case.