Time To Make The Donuts

I had a day off work yesterday!!!

I have my regular work as a photographer and I have had some really cool clients lately. The last two were a male couple--only one is gay and one is straight. They are each other's best friends. It's sort of like me and Jimmy Nelson. I call him my heterosexual and he calls me his homosexual and I love him, dearly. That was this couple. They came in to split a photo shoot and the results made me SO happy! But one picked up his pics and the other's pics were shipped to him at home, out west, where he has gone to be with his family for the holidays.
There are no other clients with whom I am dealing, currently.

Then there is my work as a personal assistant. Neither of my bosses needed me yesterday.

I made it to the gym.

And my work as Housespouse/Trophy Boy is all in order.

SOOOOOO.

I got up at four am and began baking. For the last 20 years I have given homemade baked goods to the people in my life, at Christmastime. There are cookies and brownies and muffins for anyone who comes in my home; cookies have been presented to the people who print my pictures, my lawyer's office (though I stopped doing that a few years ago because he told me not to bring him any more of "those Goddamned brownies--I hate them"), the girls at the bank, the Super, the Chiropractor's office, the post office workers, the girls at Food Emporium and Rite Aid and whatever office Pat is working for. So it's a big day for me--it has, in fact, usually been a week of baking. However--I am so busy these days that I had to crammmmmm it into a day. I started at four am and by the time Pat had arisen at seven, I had made:

--Chocolate break (dark chocolate, toasted almonds, dried cranberries and tangerine zest)
--Chocolate bark (semi sweet chocolate, white chocolate, peanut butter and broken Oreos)
--10 Dozen Holiday Nuggets (those powdered sugar cookies everyone loves)
--20 Dozen Chocolate chip oatmeal peanut butter cookies
--1 pan of Katharine Hepburn brownies without nuts
--1 pan of Katharine Hepburn brownies with nuts

And after he went to work I got started on:

--10 Dozen Oatmeal raisin cookies
--10 Dozen Holiday Fruit Drops (my mom's recipe and my favourite cookie...YUM!)
--3 Dozen Peanut Butter cookies (for certain people who don't like chocolate)

The kitchen being completely and totally like a sauna, I placed every freshly baked item into the living room, where the windows were opened and the Vornado filling every nook with cool air. They would be ready to pack by three pm. It looked like Amy's Bread or, better yet, La Guli! I had to stop, though, before I could do the Pumpkin Chocolate Chip muffins, the Oatmeal Lacies and the Chocolate dipped Hazelnut cookies. I simply ran out of time, ran out of steam and ran out of focus.

I packaged up the cookies in Chinese food containers, little tins, tupperware and ran around town like some demented Christmas Elf. Mind you, I had my Ipod on some good Christmas music (All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey--on repeat) and the day was bright and brisk and the lights twinkly and shiny. I made a lot of people happy and that is my favourite thing to do.

I managed to get away with only eating about five cookies, myself. That's my other favourite thing to do.

However.

I'm not sure I can do it again, next year. If I am going to be a health and fitness fanatic, I should probably eschew this kind of cooking and eating, altogether. I think that, next year, everyone will be given vegetable baskets or huge batches of Tilapia.

Merry Christmas to them...

And a healthy New Year.