Half a Cup of Coffee...

That's all it takes to keep me awake until 1:19 a.m. and counting.  A former neighbor and her grandson stopped by last afternoon to give Cornelius a gift of carrots and apples.  Corny remembered her (he refers to her as "The lady with all the Carrots"), and was suitably grateful.  After we came back inside, we had coffee and cookies as we got caught up.  It was a lovely visit, but it was the coffee that did me in.

 I finally gave up on trying to make myself fall asleep and got up to make a cup of herb tea. One of the many nice things about being off work for two weeks is that if I can't sleep I have no reason to be frantic about insomnia.  If I'm tired tomorrow, I'll lie down and take a nap.  Such a lovely solution (but one that can't be utilized when in a classroom with 27 students).  So I'm sipping tea and blogging and not worrying about tomorrow.

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A rye loaf, ready for the oven

Our Christmas Eve was quiet -- just Bruce and myself feasting on shrimp cocktail and crab cakes.  We played Rummikub (our new favorite game in the world) and enjoyed the evening.  I also kneaded up two batches of bread dough.  One was a rich (four eggs and two sticks of butter!) sweet Christmas bread that is braided into a wreath-shape.  The other, a dark rye bread fragrant with molasses and caraway seeds.  Before going to bed, I set them both out overnight to rise.





On Christmas morning, I got up early and got the rye loaves in the oven.  By the time Bruce got up, the house was filled with the aroma of baking bread.






These are what the loaves looked like when they were cooling on the rack.

And here was Christmas breakfast just a little bit later; still-warm rye bread (lightly toasted) well-decorated with butter and good French cheese.  Nice.











Later in the day Mama, Ian and Becky joined us for Christmas dinner and we celebrated over  candlelight, music, conversation and laughter.  As I grow older, I'm learning to lean in to the joys that surround me.  Today it was bread and love.  Yeah, nice!