Well, it’s Christmas Eve, and I have achieved maximum capacity on cookie baking… However, I have also been handed/assumed control over the menu and will be cooking meals and several cakes including the postponed til Christmas Day… Buche de Noel.

My brother and his dog arrived last night…. Alluitious (sp?) Juniper a.k.a Ajax is a lovely staffie/pit mix that looks like the dog from the Little Rascals, spot over the eye and all.  He was a stray and is staying with my brother and girlfriend on probation; and I think my brother and his girlfriend are hoping that the post holiday neutering will solve some of his hijinks.  I haven’t the heart to tell them that it’s unlikely to calm him that much.

Ajax will spend most of the holiday on leash because we are trying to protect: the tree, the furniture, the food, and my parents’ antiques.  So far he has managed not to wipe anything out.  Whereas my calm, mellow, senior dog Verbal has managed to “do the bunny” (when he runs around like he is possessed and begins furiously digging to China on one of the rugs).  This morning Verbal did the bunny and went running around the living room and jumped on to the chair to bounce off it, but my father was sitting there.  So Verbal jumped onto my father, with morning paper, and proceeded to spring off my father onto the couch and then tear around the tree.  Fortunately the tree stayed up, a lamp was not quite so fortunate.

Took Ajax running this afternoon in an attempt to help take the edge off him.  He is now sleeping with my brother who is sort of watching football and sort of sleeping.  I’m sure Ajax is recharging just in time for dinner.

Dinner tonight is a total poseur affair… thanks in large part to me.  My menu includes appetizers and drinks, dinner and wine and then lots and lots of cookies.  There are only four of us here tonight, not including the dogs.  But I figured, it’s Christmas Eve – might as well get it right.

So I am off to make a fabulous smoked salmon creation (before my sister arrives in town and tells me how overfished they are… and let me just say, in my defense – I don’t eat salmon, smoked or otherwise, more than once or twice a year.  So I am hoping that my responsible limiting of salmon – is a legitimate defense… she’ll only find out about it when she reads this blog.  Sorry, Bree!)

Wishing my friends and family far and near a very merry Christmas!!!! Missing you all, and wishing you were here to eat contraband salmon and share in the festivities.

As ever,

K. Quinn