cooking

Three a.m, destined to stay awake another hour, because I'm cooking. Yeah, cooking.

I know it's a bit strange, but it's a creative outlet and very soothing. Tonight it is "brook lodge water chestnuts." Last night it was "red velvet chocolate cake"... earlier this week it was chocolate chip cookies. Those are all gone. I have sons.

Why cooking? Non-threatening, left over mid western comfort I suppose. Beats depressed angst-ridden writing, wouldn't you say?

In this room.... the Christmas tree, eight feet tall and nearly as wide. Douglas fir…. The branches are a bit weak, but the needles are soft. That's important when you leave it up for a month and forget to water it starting about the second week.

There weren't enough branches for all the ornaments, even as wide and tall as it is. The ornaments are a habit, some would say a collection but we spend money on such silly things I think habit is more appropriate. They were something easy and inexpensive to trade as youth, and I've collected them since the early seventies. Nothing of more than sentimental value, but there are ornaments from all the milestones it seems. One from our honeymoon, one for each child's birth. One my husband gave me the third year we were married that says "twenty five years together"… it would have been romantic if he'd actually read it!

So many of the ornaments have stories… were gifts or purchased with special people. The tree is like a journal too, keeping its memory pockets.

Last week I was in Chicago, in time to get snowed in. I felt like I was there for my lethal injection of Christmas cheer. Everywhere I went, the decorations seemed gaudier, the music relentless, the compulsion to buy buy buy overwhelming. I succumbed enough to tire of wearing my heavy wool coat, to realize the tax was as high in Chicago as it is in Houston, and to know that if I bought anything of substance, I'd have to check my luggage.

And now I am back, where cold is fifty degrees, and the time warp that goes along with travel has overtaken me. The injection of Christmas spirit took over on Monday and I invited some fifty people to my home. On Monday, there were no signs of a holiday here. Now each corner is adorned with something festive and if I were anyone but me I'd be "bubbly."

Instead, I am cooking. And the chimes to the oven timer say I'm finished for tonight.