Friday

Having stayed home with youngest son today, who needed to stay home, I made challah dough from scratch and am now baking it. The local coffeeshop has prepared a pan of moussaka for us (and even let me take home the glass baking dish, as the owner lives literally one street from me and knows where to find it) and I brought it home to bake after the bread.

The girl who cleans for us, also Jen, didn't show yesterday, so today I assumed her role, the role of Jen, and cleaned my house.

I tell you this not to bore you, but simply to establish that I am a somewhat, but not completely, lazy person, who also knows how to bake from scratch.

However, it is hard for me to explain my delight today at the grocery store at discovering that you can buy ready-made gingerbread man cookie dough.

Tommy, the youngest, as he is called, "And also, Tommy the dictator, and Tommy the prince," has very distinct ideas about how one should celebrate the holidays. Those ideas run along the lines of hot cocoa and marshmellows, but also gingerbread men, which he requested we make this weekend.

I make gingerbread houses, cheating with graham crackers, the week before Christmas with the kids. But I have never really been in to gingerbread men because the dough seems to take forever to put together for me. I mean, why not just make chocolate chip? So, I was gearing up for the mess, the mixing, and feeling tired by the time we would be ready to roll the dough, cut the men, and bake.

So, when I saw the dough sitting there on the top shelf, hiding, but waiting just to be rolled out, no muss, no fuss, and not Nestle, which I boycott, I bought two packages.

When I got back to the car where Tommy was waiting for me, at his insistence, I told him, "I was so excited about the gingerbread dough, that they asked me to leave the store. 'Ma'am,' they told me, 'You are scaring the children.'"

And that made him laugh and laugh, because the little bugger has never been afraid of me in his whole life.