...and breathe.

[desperance]

Verily I have shopped mightily this day, and laboured much. I have marzipan'd and iced the cake (which really ought to be done on separate days and before this, but hey). I have magnificently forgotten the same thing I magnificently forget every year, which is a part of my cake process, apparently: I unwrap the cake and mix the marzipan and take out the jam (guava jam, this year!) with which to adhere the marzipan to the cake, and then I roll out the marzipan and measure it against the cake and get excited because it looks about the right size and lay it on and smooth it over and get halfway around the sides before I remember that I have forgotten actually to apply the jam to the cake, and it's way too late now. So when people eat it, the marzipan/icing congruence will defect from the body of the cake, in an attractive process of disassembly. Every year.

I have wrapped presents and mixed a sourdough also, for baking tomorrow early. It needs kneading, but it can wait; my back aches, and I am going to open a bottle of wine and swallow some pills and sit down with a book for a bit. We went to see The Hobbit last week, and consequently I felt moved to reread the book, for the first time in a long while; and somehow that seems to have segued without my quite noticing, so that I am now five chapters into The Lord of the Rings. Which, hey. It must be at least five years since I read that. At least. It might actually be significantly longer. And it's Christmas, and if Christmas isn't about comforts, I dunno what is.