Work has some stresses (when doesn't it?), but nothing outrageous. I expect to have things tidied up with the major assistance of one staffer by the end of Tuesday's workday, so I'm not too worried.
Most of the last week has been taken up by the preparation for, and the running of our annual Cookie Exchange. My beloved spouse really loves the baking as a holiday activity following Thanksgiving, and she once again went overboard. At our Cookie Exchange, folks are asked to make one recipe of cookie, six dozen cookies, and bring them to our house. All the cookies are arranged around tables, and we tell stories (true tales of how the recipe was learned at grandma's feet, or contrariwise outright lies about traveling to the Amazon jungle to learn at the feet of a Zen master of Kung Fu how to prepare the ancient cookies of the Elder Gods. Like you do.) about the cookies presented. Then we shuffle around the table taking cookies from each basket to fill our own coffers with a wide variety of holiday cookie styles and tastes. From this, the attendees can either stock their homes with tasty treats, or they can make up tins of cookies to share as gifts. It works well either way. What is particularly wild is that my wife doesn't just stop at a couple of different cookies. This year she made ten different ones, several of which she decorated beautifully, several others of them were stunningly delicious. We served a hot dinner of Hungarian goulash, and folks brought drinks, and a very wonderful time was had...and it was all over much too quickly! Clean-up is nearly done, and now it's raining out but we got everything that we needed to under cover in time. It was a lovely evening, and we're so glad we could share it with everyone who could attend (speaking of which, two sets of cookies were dropped off or brought by folks because the bakers couldn't be here but really wanted the opportunity to exchange. We hope to see you both, next year!)