I suppose instead of whining about how tired I am, I should be thanking the Gods of Christmas Merriment that I’m not hung over to boot.  Last night Denis and I were invited to our friends Bob and Jerralynn’s for a Christmas party.  After the pino gris and gewurtztraminer, one of my last acts of the night was to send a glass of wine flying off the counter where it then shattered on the floor.  Oopsies!

So today I’ve spend my time quietly baking cookies, as I’ve been doing for the past week.  I always make my granny’s cookies, the spitzbubchen, but this year I decided to make zimmtsterne (cinnamon stars) as well.  Both of these recipes must be well over 120 years old, as my granny, born in 1899, learned them from her mother.

I’ve been making batches of these cookies to give away to various (very select) people.  However, there’s a nasty downside to the cookie production.  Invariably, six or eight cookies will not fit into the tin, so I put them ‘aside.’  I then decide that I can certainly eat ONE cookie, and not wreck all of my hard work on Weight Watchers.  Soon I have finished the sixth or eighth cookie and feel really annoyed.

Perhaps I’ll lose weight from the upcoming Week from Hell.  Quality Greens is my largest customer, so when they ask me for a favour, I do it.  They’re going to run their usual ad in the newspaper, but in it they will be featuring my product.  The ad will run the week prior to Christmas, so they asked me if I’d be willing to do demos in each of their four stores during that time.  I said sure, and am now wondering how I’ll survive it.

We’ve just had quite a big snowfall, and are sitting at minus 10, and I’ll be demo’ing fruitcake in Penticton, Kelowna, Vernon and Westbank.  I should probably take my space heater and an extension cord as the demos will be three hours in length.  The things I have to do to flog this product!

Last week we went to a tree farm and picked out a tree that was cut on the spot and has filled the house with an insanely strong scent of pine. For years I’ve been buying the cultured Douglas firs, as they’re easy to decorate.  All of the decorations can go on the ends, but with this pine and its leggy branches, it takes a lot more decorations.

What a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate my committment to Canada! As I said to the women at the gym, it is our patriotic duty to shop.  When one of them asked, “How so?” I explained that in recessionary times we are to spend, spend, spend.  It’s wrong and unpatriotic not to do so.  Not willing to be branded a traitor, I went out and bought tons of the most adorable Christmas decorations, and now our tree is absolutely resplendent.