(Hmm, but another coincidence: Netflix blames Amazon for Christmas Eve outage -- "...the issue was the result of an outage at an Amazon Web Services' cloud computing center in Virginia" -- As someone who's now responsible for things like sufficient power supplies, this makes me shiver a little. Sure would like to know what -- or more likely, who -- failed in a major data center!)
OK, but those aren't the technical troubles I'm writing about.
I had grand intentions of starting out Christmas morning with homemade cinnamon rolls -- until my dough refused to rise. It did nothing more than an imitation of a giant hockey puck, no yeast action at all. Ick! I threw the whole mass away, it made a heavy thunk when it hit. What's wrong here? I've had nothing but rank failures in dough-rising lately, using the same recipe and ingredients I used as a "beginner," then with moderate success.
My Christmas pumpkin pie didn't work so well either. The top was crackled instead of smooth, and it didn't set right -- even Gabriel, who loves pumpkin pie, didn't finish his mushy, if tasty, slice (though Katrina was very complimentary). At least I was able to get these decorative dough leaves on there without sinking -- barely, because I didn't wait for the proper technical advice from my inspiring expert.
I didn't bother with a whole Christmas turkey, but did roast my usual lemon/onion chicken, filling the house with homey warm succulent smells. Happily, roast chicken is now one of the few things everyone agrees on.
After dinner, I had a very interesting conversation with Katrina about dreams -- as people close to me know, I have very intense and vivid dreams sometimes, that create feelings that follow me for days. Katrina showed me how she wakes herself up from dreams with her fingers on her eyes -- she said that makes the "pictures" go away, but she can still hear the "voices" for a while. I asked her about the feelings that dreams leave you with, and she said with certainty, "For that, you just have to go back to sleep, and the dream feeling will go away." She talked with remarkable insight and clarity about dreams and how they affect you, and appointed herself my "Dream Advisor." These were no childish ramblings, they were considered and thorough thoughts -- so much so that it actually ran chills down my back at one moment. It was almost like my father was trying to speak to me through her.
Christmas was another exercise in bounty and plenty -- er, perhaps plenty of excessiveness, but a fun success nonetheless. No one can complain about boredom for a long long time -- including the pampered kitties!
(photo courtesy of Gabriel and my iPhone -- not bad for either!)
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