Scenic Routes: 5am

We stayed up too late last night. It's a curse. We sit down on the comfy red couch, me with a cup of tea, or my knitted boob (that will NEVER be finished, I swear!) and him with a cup of tea, also, and his laptop so he can keep track of streams of letters and numbers on his screen that look to me like horizontal versions of the Matrix code, keeping tabs on whatever is happening at New Hip Company that needs his attention, and the TV is on, and before you know it, it's after midnight, and we're saying "Why did we EVER start that second episode of Psych...? Oh, but wasn't it fun to find all the Twin Peaks references... let's just take a few minutes to look at imdb.com and see if we noticed all the cameos?" and then it's 12:30, and I'm crashing hard, and ouch, 7am is going to come soon, and just as we're drifting off, and I've had one panic attack when I realize that it's TOMORROW... which is TODAY... that the car insurance needs to be paid, but Ken reassures me that he'll do it online before he leaves for work...

I sit bolt upright in bed.

I've just realized that the same day that car insurance is due is the day that I signed up to bring in HOME MADE CHRISTMAS COOKIES for the Teacher Appreciation Week Teacher Cookie Exchange.

And how many home made Christmas Cookies have I made in the last year?

::crickets::

And not only did I sign up to bring cookies, I signed up to bring in my grandmother's Lebkuchen.

So, with the background sounds of the sweat squirting out of my armpits, I set my alarm, NOT for 655am, which is now 6 hours away, but for 555am. A colossal 5 hours of sleep, if I can fall asleep RIGHT NOW!

I'm not sure how long I stared, in a panic, at the ceiling before I fell asleep, but the next thing I knew, I was late for my International Bioethics final, even though I had *meant* to drop the course because it wasn't being taught in English, but if I didn't take the final now, I wouldn't get my degree, and what kind of an example would I be setting for the kids, and...

*bing*

I was wide awake.

And whew, it was 530, and I had nearly two more hours to sleep before my alarm went off...

Until I realized that it was Cookie Day, and I started to sweat again.

But at 530am, I was already 25 minutes ahead of the game, so let's get cracking.

The first thing I did after sneaking downstairs was pull out the recipe.

Can you see what it says at the top of the second column?

Why yes...

CHILL SEVERAL HOURS!

Oh well. we'll have to skip that step, seeing as the cookies need to be delivered to the teacher's lounge by 830am.

Then, panic at the disco, it calls for honey AND molasses!

Whew...

Thank you, impulse purchase at Costco this summer.

It's a freakishly stiff dough (even without the half-cup of peel, which was a rabbit that I couldn't pull out of the hat at 530am, oddly enough)... so I thought I'd take a chance on not chilling it.