Talked to my mother a couple days ago. She's manic. She asked if I wanted any christmas cookies, I told her I hated them all deeply. She laughed, because she's manic. I mentioned that I had gone to the trouble of ordering Lebkuchen clear from Nuremberg just to see what the fuss was about; she said "oh I threw that recipe away last year they were so horrible." They were. They were horrible. They are always horrible. Lebkuchen is a failcookie that has to be baked on a communion wafer(we didn't) or it will stick and burn (ours always did). Then anybody reasonable dips them in chocolate (my mother hates chocolate). They're still underwhelming when done by dedicated bakers, and fucking terrible when done by a bipolar alcoholic who ruins every Christmas of everyone she can because her big brother sucked a tailpipe Dec 26 and shattered her family for generations.

So the recipe should be thrown away. I'm glad it's gone. But considering the grief I went through baking those fucking cookies every goddamn year, and the strife they caused, and the preposterous pressure to put the fucking blanched almonds on just so, and the hours spent cutting candied cherries in half only to slap them on a three-day cookie that tastes for all the world like nyquil-flavored gingerbread?

Why couldn't we have thrown the goddamn recipe away in 1979?

My daughter adores Christmas. Today is her birthday. She derives a warmly fulfilling amount of pleasure from gift-giving, decorating, singing, and tradition.

There are two wolves and one of them gets hungry at Thanksgiving.