Insignificant numbers.

Hub and parents, with Dee, are out shopping 3 stores to get the food for all of his childhood favorites.  So I've been home "alone" for 17 minutes.   4 minutes were spent getting the rice going for dinner tonight, 8 spent picking up the kitchen, 5 was for surfing the net (legit, actual free time), and now Baby Nar is crying.  Ugg.  After 2 days with her doting grandparents, Nar is demanding to be held all 21 of her waking hours.

I think I hear T stirring in his crib. Up from nap already.  I myself have slept a total of 6 hours the past 2 nights and not because I have an important brief to write and file or some other time sensitive task from my old life.  No.  I'm just busy getting my butt kicked by the holidays.  From my quick, but precious, recent excursions into the blog world, that seems to be the story all over.  It's good to feel a part of something. 

OK.  Must stop.  After 12 minutes of crying, mother guilt has kicked in and I must get baby.  Hope to be back later.

5 hours, 29 minutes later.  Dinner is done, Frosty the Snowman movie viewed because its the holidays, big kids in bed, but Baby N is still rooting.  I'm tired because I started this whole holiday visit staying up till 2 am making 4 curtain panels from scratch.  I had been meaning to sew the stupid window coverings for 8 months or so, but procrastination got the best of me.  It was only my 10 year effort to impress my inlaws that caused me to get the job done a mere 8 hours before their plane touched down.  Now my mother in law can change clothes in peace without my fenced backyard to see. 

Later that same day, Martha let me down.  I attempted to make her fabulous looking gingerbread snowflakes.  But the dough stuck to the pan, the parchment paper and everything else.  Even when I followed her meticulous, "freeze 15 minutes to set after rolling," and "freeze another 15 minutes to set after cutting out cookies but before transferring to pan" instructions.  Yawn.  I should have followed the recipe of that has-been, Mrs. Fields.  While her 80's bangs and hair color do look dated, her gingerbread once worked for me.  I was childless then, so maybe it was a matter of energy.

So at 9:15 pm, I mixed up some fool proof sugar cookies.  Let's just say Crisco is a necessary ingredient.  The reason for all this stress?  Another deadline, of course.  Many weeks ago, I offered to host a homemade cookie decorating party for my friends and their preschoolers on holiday break.  In our perpetual scramble to fill the days, I offered up cookies at 10 am. 

At 7:30 am today, with sugar cookie dough chilled over 1 night, my mother in law began baking.  In in the interim, I cleaned house, fed and changed kids, made frosting and assembled individual frost and sprinkle stations for the 4 and under set.  At 9:57, while changing out of my pajamas and into real clothes for the party, I glanced out the window and noticed my girlfriend circling the block.  Fortunately, she had 1 Starbucks coffee in hand for me, and the awesomeness not to arrive 1 second too soon.