Weeknight movie night.

Weeknight movie night is just asking for it. Asking for what, you say? I'll tell you: weeknight movie night is asking for

• fat traffic all the way down the freeway spine of the valley, from south to north.
• once you get downtown, no place to park WHY.
• people waving their leisurely online ticket printouts at the ticket taker, all please scan this in a leisurely fashion while I am waiting with my fuming IRL ticket that I just bought with money at the booth LET ME IN, dammit!

Okay, weeknight movie night, maybe I was a tiny bit too stressed for your action packed lifestyle.

On the other hand, I did get to see Spotlight for the second time with one of my favorite work friends, and she did wear pink velvet shoes, which I totally coveted and simultaneously renounced in my mind because you can't really buy pink velvet shoes when your friend bought them first, it just wouldn't be right. AND the movie was just as brill as I remember it being, maybe even more so, AND I totally recognized the voice of an actor who only did voice work in the movie (he was talking to a reporter, in several scenes, on the phone), even though he was uncredited! 

When I got home, I had to collapse in front of my laptop and do the following:

• respond to panicky student emails
• send my manuscript to a competition
• send a packet of poems to an illustrious journal that's just going to reject them anyway, and probably after a freaking leisurely period of time 
• make several lists
• etc.

"I shouldn't have gone to the movie," I said to the historian, as I was getting on my take-the-dog-for-a-walk-in-the-wintertime boots (they are so choice, but they are NOT pink velvet). "I actually knew I shouldn't go before I even went. But I went anyway, so."

"Well," he said, without drawing a conclusion, at least not explicitly. But, you know. I kind of got his gist. 

And then we went for a walk in the wintertime. And now I shall complete the remainder of my agenda, deferred because of weeknight movie going shenanigans, but hey, it was worth it! Probably! Draw your own conclusions!

Surprise shoes.

I'm taking things a little at a time. For instance, yesterday, it seemed to me that one way to make a little headway in my study would be to organize some stuff. Okay, organize my shoes. And it did help. Approximately fifty percent of my study is sorted, organized, possibly tidy, and I can visualize and then put my hands on any pair of the shoes in that closet.

Today, I started in on the shoes in my regular closet (as opposed to those in my auxiliary closet, see above). Which yielded an unexpected benefit--two pairs of shoes I had totally forgotten I owned.

One pair I wore today down to my sister's house for a big family gathering--a pair of open toed pumps with a stiletto heel and some kind of fake jewel ornamentation. They are probably black, but to me they look a little bit navy, so that's what I call them. They are swell. I bought them at T.J. Maxx for the kind of price that makes you buy stiletto heels with fake jewels on them--cheap. I figured I could easily get $20 of pleasure out of them, and I was right, even before I forgot I had them. Now I'll probably get twice the value out of them. Thrice the value, even.

Finding the other pair made me feel a little chagrined. I bought them in the U.K. the last time I was there. They are very cute, blue, with a reasonably not-too-high heel, a strap and a big button. They are Mary Janes, in effect. With a big button. Just this week, I saw a young woman wearing a pair of shoes like these with jeans, and I thought, Cute! then, I wish I had shoes like that! and then again: I wonder where I could find some?

Megabaking.

As is generally the case at the conclusion of the fall semester, the grading dragged on and the baking languished. Nevertheless, I have made: regular caramels, chocolate caramels, and icebox cookies (from the failed cookie press experiment). At the moment, a rather gorgeous panettone dough is rising.

I still intend to make at least two and hopefully more types of shortbread, the roll-'em-out kind of sugar cookies (I have a bunch of excellent, fancy new cookie cutters), and almond bread. The day before Christmas is when I bake these butterscotch crescent rolls--they were a Pillsbury Bake-Off recipe from days of yore--at least, my family has been baking them since I can remember, so they won sometime from before I can remember. The basis of that dough is actually butterscotch pudding, which I think is hilarious, but sneer not! This dough is silky and fantastic.

As college daughter and I were wrapping the giant pile of chocolate caramels, which, by the way, taste like the very best Tootsie Roll imaginable--which is kind of good and also a little, well, disappointing, actually--she said, "Who're you going to give all of these to, Mom?"

Everyone I can think of, I guess. And if you're very good, and if you live at least a little bit near me, I might be thinking of you.