That's my jam

When life gives you fancy jams--make thumbprint cookies. Especially if life is demanding that you pack up every single item in the fridge and move it across the state a few days after Christmas so you're motivated to empty as many bottles as possible.

And if life gives you a few blessedly free hours before the arrival of the son and the holiday services, why not do some online training for the new course management system, even if it is Christmas Eve? Because I'm an academic and that's how we roll.

This won't be my most memorable Christmas ever--that would be the one when I had to cancel a massive Christmas Eve party to deliver my daughter a month early via emergency C-section--but it's certainly unusual. Because of the timing of this move, I will have to take down the Christmas tree and pack up all the decorations in the next couple of days, maybe even tomorrow evening. 

On that fateful Christmas of 1986, when I went into the hospital not expecting to deliver my daughter for another month, we weren't able to take down the Christmas tree for a full six weeks, by which point the seven-foot-tall had dried up and dropped every needle. This year's tree is small and artificial and won't take long to undecorate, but it seems wrong to pack away Christmas so quickly.

But we'll be happy to pack on the pounds, thanks to three kinds of Christmas cookies, lots of lovely fruit, and a great big ham in the fridge. Because that's how we roll, that's our jam, that's my kind of Christmas.