STILL Not the Big Catch-Up Post

Please ignore the fact that periodically, my computer just up and publishes some half-written, incoherent post without me even so much at LOOKING at the publish button. It's a busy little computer, what with trying to drive me SMACK OUT OF MY MIND and all.  My husband and Ana gave me a new keyboard for my wine-drenched Mac and it works just perfectly.  The real problem is that the laptop keyboard works intermittently, but only when Satan feels like messing with me.  So suddenly my computer will start (I am so not joking) typing random sixes (as in: 666) and then I know other buttons will be pushed.  Posts will be published. Advil will be required.

It's sort of been the holidays of Things Not Working. The coffee pot appears to be on its way out, as does the dryer.  The worst is my Mac, though, because I so LURVE it and also, because it's entirely my own fault.  I took it to the Genius Bar so the (snarky, teenage-ish) geniuses could have a little looksy and they said, "Well, it will be $755 for us to replace the keyboard.  But that might not fix it."

So, now I have a loaner laptop from my friend Sherry but you know how it is when you're trying to get used to a new computer and nothing is personalized the way you are accustomed and then you keep remembering that it's a loaner and you become afraid to exploit your friend's goodwill by customizing her computer to YOUR needs by importing all sorts of files and bookmarks, etc.? So, you import your photos on some other computer, which isn't linked to the one you're using and therefore...

Well.  Anyway. 

Why, yes, that's a big hole in my ceiling, thanks for asking.

But nothing, no, NOTHING, can daunt my holiday cheer because this week, my girls and I made the  three-tiered cookies that are traditional in my family.  See?

I have been waiting for eleven years to make them with my daughters.  It's a dream come true!

 

The 3-tiered cookies are special because they require teamwork and counting and also, because they were my dad's favorite cookies.  They are simple butter cookies, cut out in three sizes and "glued" together with red current jam.  (Seedless current jam, which I forgot but hey, they turned out fine anyway.) And then they are iced with a lemon juice and confectioner's sugar mixture.

I will tell you that, had I had the patience and energy in the past few years, I might been able to make  them with the girls.  But you know how it takes a lot of energy and patience to do Team Cooking?  I didn't have those things.  I have them this year, though and you're going to laugh when I tell you why.

I don't know if I've ever told you but I don't take vitamins.  They make me sick, whether I take them at night or in the morning and I can never seem to remember to take them when I'm eating.  I have tried them ALL.  No, seriously, I have tried them ALL.  My husband is just a fearsome and relentless vitamin pusher and he's brought me home vitamins disguised as CHOCOLATE.  Nothing doing.  I could manage a kids' vitamin so for years, I took these ones shaped like astronauts, eventually graduating to Flintstone's gummis.

But a few weeks ago when I posted about battling a depressive episode, one of my lovely readers, Joanna, sent me an e-mail about a vitamin she takes called Levity.  (You have to get past the name.) It bills itself as a mood enhancer but seems to primarily be sort of a b-complex vitamin. I figured, "Well, what could it hurt?"  I mean, they're CHEAP at about $7.50 a month, and the worst thing I could think of is that they'd end up stacked next to the bazillion dollars worth of vitamins I have in my cabinet already.

Except, y'all?

I think they changed my life.

Seriously.  Suddenly I have the energy to do things I haven't done in YEARS.  Like, um, COOKING. The vitamins taste sort of disgusting and I HAVE to take them with food but I am actually making that happen because I feel so much better.

Now if I could figure out how to give my Mac a dose of Levity, I could finally finish and post all of these posts I have stacked up.  Once I delete all the sixes and eat a cookie, I mean.