Little Susie Homemaker

I've been Martha friggin' Stewart tonight. I made these yummy (and easy) chocolate croissants and some iced sugar cookies. Plus I made a card basket and a treat basket. And in my spare time, finished a DVD.

All for a surprise party tomorrow. So excited! Should be a good time.

'Tis the Season

I'm not quite sure why, but this holiday has been the most stressful one of my life. Planning out of town trips every weekend since Halloween probably wasn't a smart move, especially when you consider that there are only so many shopping days before Christmas, and lack of sleep equals a very cranky Lori. My gift list keeps expanding with people I forgot I needed to buy for. My credit card balance keeps growing. And so does my waistline as workouts fall lower and lower on my priority list.

In my quest to become the consummate Renaissance woman, I decided this week to balance my work budget during the day and bake like Martha Stewart by night. I've slept ten hours during the past 72, spending the rest of the time catching up on work and working on cookies. And trust me, I'd rather stare at spreadsheets all day than cut and ice cookies.

This morning I delivered dozens and dozens of treats to folks at work (after icing them at 3 a.m.), then decided to stop at McDonald's for breakfast, where the lady behind me obviously didn't understand the double drive-thru concept of taking turns, and proceeded to honk her horn repeatedly before rolling down her window to yell at me. Merry Christmas to you too, lady.

It seems that I'm not the only one cranky this month. I've had line cutters at Williams Sonoma, cranky operators at XM, and lots and lots of traffic. It's enough to make you not appreciate the season, and the reason we celebrate.

Not just because of the birth of our Lord and Savior, which is of course the most important, but the time spent with family and friends. So what if I don't have time to pack... I get to spend two whole weeks with people I seldom see, doing things I want to do, and not going any meetings. Sleeping in and eating and making small talk. Getting on each others' nerves.

This morning on TV they were discussing the end of the decade, and it occurred to me for the first time that, in a mere two weeks, we'll be ushering in the '10s.

So I started thinking about all that's happened in my life in the past 10 years and, instead of focusing on the tremendous loss we've had in our family, I started feeling grateful for all of the love.

Every year I make resolutions I don't keep. But on this New Year's Day, I commit to stop living my life in pursuit of the ideal, and start enjoying the interim. Because life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. It's the little things like obsessing over boys with your girlfriends whether you're 13 or 33. Snuggling with the kids in your life. Waiting for Santa. The cool people you meet that you may never see again.

And yeah, we'll all have broken hearts and credit card bills and love and loss, but that's the amazingly wonderful thing about living.

Even when you have jury duty and presents to buy and people to see.

Flattery will get you everywhere

Thanks for all of the sweet comments on here and on Facebook yesterday and today. You guys are too nice, and you totally motivated me to get off my lazy butt and drag out the yoga mat tonight. Granted, I ate chips right afterward, but still...

I think I'm still recovering from my wild weekend, because I was totally dragging this morning. I was up late baking cookies last night and I showed the house to someone at 9:30 p.m. (they loved it but are not ready to buy). I had a ton of excess energy that seemed to dissipate by this morning, when I was awakened by the 4 a.m. storm and not able to go back to sleep until nearly 6.

I worked from home most of today which is great in theory, but always means I spend more than 8 hours at my laptop. I finally stopped writing around 7, when I unrolled the yoga mat and took out my frustrations on downward facing dog. Thankfully tomorrow's a (relatively) short day, and with a late meeting on campus, I'll be at home early enough to work out and catch up on my DVR a bit. This commute is going to kill me when fall TV starts.

Obviously my creative juices are dry after writing web content all day, so you'll have to excuse my lame attempt at blogging. However, if you'd like me to espouse the merits of college enrollment, I can write about that all day.

All for now. I'm crashing for the night.

Liar, liar

Conventional wisdom tells us that it's not good to start off a relationship on a lie. Perhaps it's time to confess the truth to LB about something important.

I did not make the cookies.

Oh, he's dazzled by my culinary skills, so I haven't exactly come clean. Granted, I never said I made them. He just thinks I did and I haven't told him otherwise. Thank goodness for the Pillsbury dough boy.

A few weeks ago we had a lunch non-date and I happened to have some no bakes and chocolate chip cookies in the car that I sent home with him, both of which I made from scratch. They were a bit too dry, but he was sweet and said they were good.

Last week I made brownies (from a box but I did add the egg and oil) and peanut butter cup cookies and took them to him for our weekly lunch non-date. Two days later he went on and on about the peanut butter ones, calling them the best cookies he's ever tasted. Oops! So today I braved the ice and cold to head back to the world's largest retailer and buy some more cookie dough to perpetuate the lie that I am the world's best cookie maker.

If they came out of my oven I made them, right?

Tomorrow I'm having lunch with LB and will present him with two dozen of those scrumptious peanut butter cup cookies. Maybe he'll think my hair color's natural, too.

When the going gets tough, the tough get... cooking?

I'm not quite sure why I'm wired this way, but whenever I get stressed, I have the need to bake. Perhaps it's the chance to beat something with a whisk, or maybe I just like being able to control something when everything else in my life seems so uncontrollable, but for whatever reason, when I feel stress, the chocolate chips come out of the pantry. Eggs are cracked. There's flour on my shirt.

Why can't I be predisposed to run when I'm stressed? Or clean? But no, I have to bake.

I have baked about 20 dozen cookies in the past month or so. But the good news is, if the way to a man's heart is truly through his stomach, perhaps I found a relationship shortcut.

Letting go, moving on

I hate feeling out of control. Unfortunately, today was one of those days when I had to rely on others to get things done. And I had to resort to my womanly wiles to get my way. And by that I mean baking cookies. So it's no bakes and chocolate chips for the nice web guy who got my pages updated way ahead of schedule. HTML=cookies.

The other thing that's out of my control? Running into exes. Especially exes who were jerks. Yeah, it's been 10 years and I'm still bitter, bitter, BITTER. But I've managed to avoid him for a decade and we live hours apart, so what are the chances of running into him anytime soon?

Turns out pretty good. As in he's on the agenda for a meeting I have to attend on Thursday. Blast.

If only I weighed 50 pounds less. Had a successful husband. Weren't still holding on to being angry. Perhaps he'd find me well adjusted, hotness personified, and letting go of it all.

I know that God's trying to teach me forgiveness here. Yeah, he doesn't deserve it. But sometimes we have to forgive for ourselves, right?

Being the bigger person is so overrated.

The only redeeming feature of this twisted little rendezvous is that I'm the only one of us who knows it's coming. He'll be surprised to see me. He tried to apologize eight years ago, but perhaps this time I'll listen.

Stay tuned.