2024, Food, Gatherings, holidays, Mysteries

In a Tizzy

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I’m having a mental disconnect this week.  It’s like my internal clock knows that Thanksgiving is WAY late this year.  I’m itching to bring out my holiday movies and ask Alexa to play some of my silly holiday tunes.

Normally I do a lot of my holiday stuff early but the Friday after Thanksgiving is my official “get going” day.  That’s when cookies start, that’s when I assemble the cards for mailing and wrap anything that has to get shipped.  This year, because Thanksgiving is so late, I’m doing some of my tasks ahead of time.  Cards are all done and got assembled for mailing last night.  Eggs are all packed into their cartons.  All gifts that have to shipped are wrapped.  Today I will sort out boxes for each address I have to ship to.

Although I know what cookies I’m making this year and have a list of ingredients I need, I haven’t started baking yet.  That just seems sacrosanct before Thanksgiving.  But I will be doing the shopping run for those ingredients today so I’m ready to go early on Friday morning.  My goal this year is to get all the cookies done in 7 days.  Fingers crossed.

But all this normally-after-Thanksgiving frenzy is messing with me.  I’m dreaming about my spreadsheets and what order I should do the cookies.  And I’m spending a lot of time going through things in my head. The dreams aren’t bad by any means, but it is a little weird.  Assuming by next weekend, my disconnect will be re-connected!

Thanksgiving doesn’t engender any of this for me.  We go elsewhere and I only have to do two things which can be done that morning.  YA has one dish to make as well.  So no spreadsheets, no lists and no dreams.  Guess I can be grateful that I only have big prep for one holiday at this time of year!

What holiday prep needs to be done at your place but you’d prefer if brownies came in at night and did it for you?

21 thoughts on “In a Tizzy”

  1. i have thanksgiving stuff to do but its all plotted. birthdays and christmas abound. work is busy. life is busy. i dont do tv much and my social media and screen time are side jobs to figure out. maybe ill be productive someday right now i have to settle for booked

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  2. In our home, it seems to be “The First Sunday of Advent”. Sadly, that involves the annual “Advent housecleaning”. Once that’s done, however, we try to keep it Advent for as long as possible, putting off “Christmas stuff” until later. Some years, the tree is a Christmas Eve thing.

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  3. The lefse is done, and there are 8 loaves of stollen in the freezer. I start cookies Saturday. My husband and children have suggested 14 different kinds of cookies. I mail the stollen and cookies to friends and family out of state. We aren’t having g a big dinner Thursday as it is just the two of us, and we go to Brookings for Christmas so we aren’t putting up a tree.

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  4. We are hosting Thanksgiving, as we have for the last 50+ years. The crowd has gotten smaller, with extended family off in their own nuclear groups. Our house doesn’t accommodate a crowd well anyway. Even though our T-day guests number only about 10, we still have housecleaning to do (no sense in doing it too early—it would just revert). Most of the cooking also can’t be done too early.

    Some housecleaning Brownies would be nice.

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  7. My holiday baking strategy is to get the messiest things done first. Stollen is even messier than lefse. I love it, but I am glad the loaves are in the freezer. I will start the cookies on Saturday, and hope to have them all done by the close of next weekend.

    Our church is doing a service of 9 Lessons and Carols, like the one at Kings College in Cambridge, and that means extra rehearsals for the choir and bell choir. I get to read the Bidding Prayer again. The bell choir is rehearsing on Thanksgiving evening since none of us are having big dinners.

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  8. Oh, I’d really like the brownies to do the Christmas cards – although more and more of those have been going out in emails the past few years.

    And since my sis is here, a lot of the housecleaning already got done. Of course, by end of December, a lot of it will need to be done again. I love the FB meme where she says “I dusted once. It came back – I’m not falling for that again!”

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  9. I will be making one pie and cranberry sauce to take to my sister’s house for Thanksgiving (actually Friday since her daughters are spending Thursday with their in-laws). Because I stopped having a Holiday Open House back in 2007, I don’t do any cookie baking anymore. My sister makes about 8 or 9 kinds and she shares them with me. And since Christmas is never celebrated at my place, I haven’t put up a tree for over a decade. I do some decorating to get me in the spirit of the season. My cards are almost ready to send out. Gift shopping is minimal – my great nephews and nieces mainly want gift cards, except for the youngest (10 months -she will get “real” gifts). I don’t have a need for brownies to come and help.

    The busiest part of the holiday season is rehearsing for and performing winter (holiday) choir concerts at 2 middle schools (14 songs need piano accompaniment), and for church choir.

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    1. One of the theaters I work with is trying to do a pie auction. They haven’t got many pie bakers to respond and have resorted to calling me. I told them I’ve never baked a pie in my life. They said it could be store-bought, so I’m debating if I should buy a chicken pot pie or just the cheapest pie I can find at like,Kwik Trip, and then try to get people to bid to keep it off the market. 😉

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  10. I’m a little verklempt right now. I just came home from doing the cookie ingredient shopping and YA is taking her lunch break on the sofa and is watching The Princess Bride. Of her own free will. I’m tearing up.

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  12. That stack of papers in the header photo made me think of Georgine, the alumni relations coordinator for Peat Marwick. She had stacks like that all over the credenza behind her desk.

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  13. OT. Blevins Update

    January 12, 2025
    2 p.m.
    Occasional Caroline’s

    Virgil Wander by Leif Enger
    See Jane Run by Jolene Stratton Philo

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