My oh my. What was I thinking? I guess I was thinking I'd like to have my own business. Now I do have my own business and it's going so well. I'm a little embarrassed about Thanksgiving. I didn't do such a great job. I mean my bread was really good, but I worked so hard and was so unorganized and so stressed that I didn't enjoy anything. It was just stressful.
But, I guess work is stressful when you're under pressure of a holiday deadline.
Fortunately my daughter Martha was able to help be all week! We've had such a great time. She's gotten here early and left late in the afternoons. We've carefully planned our strategies each day according to the orders we've gotten. She knows how to do that stuff. I'm just really not designed for the organizational part. I do love baking bread and as the week has gone on I've gotten better and better. We've learned how to get the kitchen just the right temperature. We've learned how to get the bread to rise just right. We've learned to make the roll dough early and let it rise then start of the bread and get it finished while the roll dough is rising.
She's been taking care of the books and the orders, the labeling, the packaging. There's a lot of work from start to finish and baking the bread and taking it out of the oven is really just the first half of the process. I'm much more sympathetic toward anyone in business. I see people driving a truck with their company's name on it and I think, "Wow, they make enough profit on their business to actually make payments on a truck." I imagine how many rolls I'd have to bake to buy a truck.
Last night at about 6 o'clock I baked my last batch of cinnamon rolls. Whew! I immediatly turned to cleaning up the mess I'd made. This has been one downside of the whole process. For the last 4 days I've baked bread in my own kitchen which means I've had a messy kitchen and a messy dinning room filled with bakery boxes, ribbon, scissors, zip lock bags, wax paper and other junk needed to package bread. So as I quietly cleaned,
Billy went to the grocery store to get some fish for supper; fish and a baked potato and asparagus.
I turned on Garisson Keiller and Prairie Home Companion and got busy locating my counter tops beneath all the clutter that had mounted up on top of them over the last week. It didn't take long. By the time he got back everything was the way I like it. I immediately felt better.
I'm tired. Sometimes I don't realize that I'm older than I used to be. Although, I remember when I did this bakery thing when my children were little. I was tired then. Martha was a baby. There's a picture somewhere of me with Martha on my hip standing in front of the Christmas tree in the old house. It was the Christmas I'd baked bread to pay for my Bosch mixer. Martha is bright eyed and a happy, chubby little cherub. I was wan. Dull looking. Not enough strength to get a smile to come across my face. My sister and I have laughed about that picture. Isn't it somehow strange that now, 25 years later Martha and I are together again at Christmas with the same mixer, the same baking bread, the same frenzied me and the same happy bright eyed Martha, my baby.  We had such a great week together. 
I have a feeling if someone had taken a picture of me yesterday afternoon I'd have had to track them down, wrestle them to the ground, steal the camera and smash it. I was not a pretty sight.
But I'm ready now to get to the business at hand. I'm ready to get the house ready for my daughter Mamie and her husband Sam who'll be arriving on Monday.
Friday afternoon I realized that Christmas was less than a week away. I also realized that I hadn't mailed Sarah's Christmas present. I'm not used to having to get packages in the mail because the children are almost always at home for the holidays.
I was so tired Friday night. Billy and I went to Pete and Sam's for supper and had the best time. We got home and I headed straight to bed. Then WHAM! I thought about Sarah's Christmas present.
Now, I don't know about you, but my experiences at the Memphis Post Offices are less than stellar. Our nearest PO is on Prescott near the Laurelwood shopping center. As with all post offices it's a dumpy, plain building and I've never been in it when there weren't people waiting in line.
I set my alarm for 7:30am so I could jump up and run over to the PO and be the first in line. I got there at about 8 and saw there were no cars. They don't open until 10am on Saturday.
I came home and got on line and ordered Sam's present from Macy's and paid a ridiculous amount for shipping because I'd not ordered it sooner. I ran back to the PO and got there at 15 minutes before 10. I was about the 5th person in a line that gradually grew to 20 or 30 just in the short time I was there.
When the door was finally unlocked and we snaked along the dingy narrow passage way with a mailing desk on one side and mailing junk on the other side, it was clear to see that only two clerks were available. 2? 2?2? Don't you think they could have hired an extra person to come in on the busiest day of the year?
The first guy in line was a musician/guitar sales person who was mailing about 3 guitars and about 10 little boxes of something else and needed to insure each item for a different amount and everything had to be weighed. His order alone probably took 30 minutes. I bet some of those people are still there waiting! arrrgh.
It took an hour to get my package in the mail.
Then I came home and started baking again. We had to do 10 orders of cinnamon rolls.
My paper whites are beginning to push up toward the light. I bet they'll be ready to bloom by Christmas or at least I hope they will.

On the front porch we have a chimnea. I haven't even turned it on this winter. It's propane and puts out a lot of heat. I'd told Billy that I'd grill the fish but when I went out to put charcoal on my cheap little Walmart grill I saw that alas, it's little legs were broken. To the trash heap with you little Cheap Chinese piece of tin!
Ah, I'd heard people cooked on their chimneas. I lit it and let it get good and hot. I came inside and put the potatoes in the oven and did a few things in the kitchen then Blue and I went out to the porch to grill the fish.
The air was crisp and cold and my porch was cool and fresh and quite comfortable near the chimnea. I removed the chimney and set a small grill on top above the fire then lay the fish on it. I sat and watched the fire and listened to the fish sizzle and pop, fat dripping into the flames. Blue put his head in my lap until the fish was done and it was time to come in. And I must say that was just about the tastiest piece of Salmon I ever ate.