Considering that we don't celebrate Christmas, it was a really magical holiday. Rachel Jones left for the airport at 7 a.m.; Drew very kindly drove her and then crawled back into bed and slept until 10 or so. Rachel spend the time buried in some delightful books she received for Hanukkah from Aunties Jenn and Amanda about a Jewish family on the Lower East Side during the early 1900s called "All-of-a-Kind Family." I am so glad she has discovered them; they were my favorites as a child, and even Drew remembers reading them! Probably why he has a Jewish soul...
After we all woke up and had breakfast, Rachel and I boxed up the cookies I had baked and began delivering them to our neighbors. It was rainy but warm, and we had a lovely time leaving the cookies in various doorways. We finished up at her friend Ivy's house. Ivy's dad, Billy, is a Foreign Service Officer stationed in Afghanistan, home until Friday, and he was so happy to see us and the container of cookies. Jenny, his wife, made us tea, and we sat around and listened to him talk non-stop about the situation in Kabul which is, in short, a complete mess. "It's raw, it's crazy, it will never be fixed," he said, and his constant talking (and the fact that he is starting to have nightmares at night) made me glad that he will be back after 7 months because he clearly needs to get out of there. The family's next assignment is in Copenhagen; Afghanistan is the last hardship assignment he'll get for at least 8 years, by which time his kids will basically be out of school and he won't have to be separated from them when they're young.
We stayed long enough for me to worry about getting to work on time, but Drew and Rachel ended up driving me in to make it by 3:30. When I got home I baked a pistachio/chocolate cake with chocolate glaze fir our Christmas potluck at work the next day, and then I fell into bed around 1:40 a.m. Drew, who was sorting through all his old newspapers before I pitch them Jan. 1st, came to bed even later. It's a theme: Holidays are exhausting.
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