The Fright Before Christmas Eve

So I'm having a really hard night. I'm having to pull someone else's shifts at work even though I wasn't finished with Christmas shopping, hadn't even touched baking and my tours just weren't getting done all by themselves while I was trying to pull together the perfect Christmas, work, bake, work, shop, work and keep my sanity intact as I pulled off the biggest juggling act of my life.

It.

Is.

Crazy.

So, tonight I get home and I knew I had to start some type of cooking. Any type. The first thing I thought of was perhaps the easiest.

Applesauce cake.

I haven't made applesauce cake in years - maybe about ten for the simple fact that I had no oven in the last place we lived. It was a rental and the landlord wasn't exactly too keen on keeping up with what went wrong. We ended up replacing the original stove ourselves but when that oven went up, I vowed he was going to fix it or we'd do without.

So without was the outcome.

This year, we have an oven in this wonderful condo we've called home for the last nine months. So what do I do but buy everything you can think of to bake for Christmas. While I had something to bake it in, what I didn't count on was how much time would be involved if I were to have everything done in time for Christmas.

Oh, I bought stuff to make applesauce cake, stuff to make 3 candy cane coffee cakes, cookies, ham, turkey, you name it.

So, tired as I was after working, I knew I had to start as Christmas was day after tomorrow so I started with applesauce cake. Well, when it was done, the recipe called for taking it out of the pan to let it cool. When I took it out of the pan, it fell apart. It looked horrible but smelled dreamy, so I doctored it up with icing and wrapped it up in tin foil and set it aside for sampling when it cooled.

But, while I was doctoring up my applesauce cake, I keep hearing a siren. I threw the door open to see if I could see where it was coming from or at least if I could smell smoke, but nothing. Thinking it was the TV, I went back to cooking.

Remembering the turkey needed thawing by tomorrow night, I pulled it out of the fridge and threw it into a pot of salted water so it would thaw quicker. After I did that, I read the instructions on the ham (read yesterday's post about that) and I figured I'll just go by the instructions because I didn't know what in the hell I was doing as I've never cooked one before.

While I was trying to figure out my plan of attack, I heard that sound again. It couldn't be the TV as there was a different show on by that time.

I threw the door open and could hear it in the distance. It was definitely a fire truck. I didn't smell smoke, thank God, but I couldn't help but to think of the poor family who were perhaps without a house after tonight.

I sighed, went back in the kitchen, fed the dogs, and started cleaning up my mess. I'm really really tired by that time just thinking about having to get up the next day, go to work again when normally I'd have the day off, and try to figure this ham thing out. I knew I wanted to bake cookies and was tossing around the idea of doing that, then the ham tomorrow after I got home from work. Things were just going through my head so fast, I was getting dizzy just thinking about it.

And there it was again. The same piercing sound of a siren obviously coming from a fire truck.
But, this time, it was coming from the front of my house.

I ran out on the deck and could hear it approaching me. Then I could see it approaching me. A humungous firetruck going a little too slow for comfort in front of my house and I started to panic. There are only 2 other families in this whole condo complex and I didn't know if maybe one of their condos maybe caught on fire and we were next to go???

My heart started pounding.












The dogs started barking.









It was getting closer and closer and closer and...










It got right up in front of my place and....









It was freaking Santa Claus waving at me. Freaking Santa Claus on a freaking fire truck riding by me like this was the most normal freaking thing to do in the freaking cold at freaking 7 p.m. at night.

Anyone have a clean pair of underwear to spare?