Right at this moment I’m supposed to be in the kitchen, cooking up my grandmother’s famous soft molasses cookies.  My carton of molasses is all swollen and hissed when I opened it.  I came online to see if there’s any information out there about molasses fermenting while in the carton in your cupboard, and could only find things about making rum from molasses, legally or illegally as the case may be.

My oven has a big splat of apple pie runover on the bottom which I keep forgetting to clean up.  I must remember to run a cleaning cycle before cooking Christmas dinner.

Along with the cookies, I need to make a big batch of my mom’s famous chocolate macaroons.  And I just realized, I totally forgot to get gumdrops for my (other) grandmother’s famous gumdrop cake!

Then I need to wrap my son’s gifts while he’s at his dad’s for the weekend.  And dig out my box of preserves which I set aside for Christmas back in the fall, and organize who gets which salsa, jams, or pickles.

Oh, and we mustn’t forget the tidying that must be done before Christmas dinner.  We’re having a few guests so things should be at least, well, non-gross.

To top all this off, we’re in the middle of buying a car.  Some idiot ran head-on into my husband (crossed 4 lanes into oncoming traffic, bam right into hubby), and totalled our car.  We just got our insurance settlement, and drove 2 hours away yesterday to where the cheap cars live.  We found the one we want, now it’s just paperwork.  Over Christmas!  At least we’re not using the entire settlement on the new car, so we’ll actually be able to bank a bit towards the debt!

Then we returned the rental car which insurance no longer pays for since they’ve reached a settlement — even though we don’t actually have the money yet, or another car.  Would you believe there was damage on it?  Three weeks we’ve had this car and have been ultra-super-duper-mega-careful with it.  We’ve even been regularly checking it for damages.  Nada, nothing, zip.  Until yesterday.  Somehow, between 3 days ago and yesterday, a big dent grew in the front hood.  It could not have been from any type of collision — it looks like someone kicked it, or fell on it.

So now we have to pay for that.  So much for banking the extra from the settlement.

Still, we’re coming out ahead.  We’re getting a car that’s two years younger than the one that got smashed, and with 100,000 fewer kilometers, plus putting a little bit into the bank.  It’s sort of a nice Christmas present, I guess.  It’s just such a hassle.  We should be grateful.  He wasn’t at all injured, for instance.  We should be thankful.  It’s a blessing in disguise.  It’s a big ol’ silver lining.

Meh.  It’s all true.  But it’s still a pain!

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