Cookies and Christmas

Not tonight, because tonight I'm veggin' on the blogosphere. Tomorrow morning, I will pay for my procrastination. I will haul my carcass outta bed at a decent hour so I can bake cookies. I will bake oatmeal raisin cookies and chocolate chip cookies. Then I will root through my Christmas stuff for festive plates to hold the cookies. Yeah, I know, I just ranted about Thanksgiving first (um, actually, it's still in edit. Crudcakes. I will publish it, I will!) but I have a very good reason.

Tomorrow, I will load a ladder and a staple gun ('cause you can always use a staple gun) into the Jeep with the cookies and I will go over to a coworker's house. And then, I and most of the rest of the plant personnel, will decorate his house, inside and out, for Christmas. We'll bring them a full Christmas dinner, and my sorta-Christmas cookies, and another coworker's church choir will come and sing carols on the lawn.

Then we'll go home. And he'll be alone with his wife, who is dying. She has cancer and she has fought valiently for years and years but she is tired, and she hurts, and she isn't winning this war. Hospice told him to do everything he could to make her last days enjoyable, and Christmas is her favorite time of year. She won't see the lights and the presents and the festivities this year so someone at my company decided to step up. She organized this whole thing - from planning the menu to printing out the personalized song booklets, and the turn-out is expected to be nearly everyone in the plant. If we can stay organized, we should have his house decorated in like ten minutes. (I was going to make Christmas cookies, but her favorites are oatmeal raisin. Her husband's favorites are chocolate chip so I'll do both and hope that I can make things just a touch less sucky right now.)

It's no secret that I don't like this place, this job, this company or these people. But today, I like the people more than I did yesterday. Hug the ones you love 'cause you just never know what tomorrow will bring.