Blizzards and Baking

One of the many, many plates of baked goodies I put together.

Cellophane jungle.

As you may have heard, the Mid-Atlantic all the way up to New England got slammed with a blizzard. We got about 18 inches of snow on Saturday—in one day. Ironically, had my doctor not strongly urged us to avoid flying this late in the pregnancy, we would have traveled to Lake Tahoe on very day of the snow storm. Obviously, no flights took off or landed at any of DC’s three airports, so we dodged a major bullet by not even trying to travel this Christmas. We ventured outside once to hit the grocery store (it’s across the street), and it was so windy that the swirling snow felt like little ice pellets pricking your face and visibility was pretty crappy. Was it smart for a girl in her eighth month of pregnancy to trek through the snow? Perhaps not, but I was very careful—and I had 18 inches of snow-padding to fall into if I lost my balance. With the exception of the hike to the store, I spent the entire day—from morning until evening—baking. And Sunday I did the same thing—from about 7:30 a.m. to until dinnertime. It’s an annual GEICO tradition for me to bake—extensively—for Chris’s coworkers. Of course, this year he has more analysts due to him taking on the other teams, so I had my work cut out for me. Anyway, the gifts of baked goodies are now all finished and packaged up. I went through: 16 sticks of butter 4 pounds of white chocolate 5 boxes of candy canes 1 canister of cocoa powder 5 pounds of flour 2 packages of dried cranberries One mega-roll of cellophane wrap Countless yards of wired ribbon I crapped out by Sunday afternoon and decided to nix the green cornflake-marshmallow holly treats, which are my very favorite. I already have the ingredients, though, so maybe I’ll convince my mom to make them when she’s here in February. She makes them better than I do anyway. Chris spent a good deal of Sunday digging out the car with a small plastic snow shovel we snatched up at the grocery store for a mere $5.99—money very well spent. I would have taken a picture of the buried car and Chris’s valiant efforts to free it, but a) it was freezing outside and b) I had baking to do. By Sunday evening, I was pooped from baking, cleaning up after baking, and putting together all the packages. As I fell onto the couch, I realized that I never really got to just sit back with a book or rot my brain with TV the whole snowy weekend, which was sort of disappointing. Then I received the delightful news that the federal government would be closed the following day, and my office follows the feds as far as its inclement weather guidelines—which means a three-day weekend for me!