I am avoiding my kitchen at the moment.

This is my first Christmas in my own house in a December where I have misplaced my house keys, contracted a virus, hired men to bring pallets into my garage and re-stack boxes and furniture to keep them from flood damage from what someone dubbed “the Godzilla of atmospheric rivers,” and then hired them again to bring over sandbags when I noticed puddling on my driveway. I have wondered why the curbs are not higher and why there is no drain in the driveway. Also, my oven seems to be running low after performing well at Thanksgiving, just in time for baking season.

This morning I began mixing up Christmas cookie doughs, softening sticks of unsalted butter in the microwave, measuring granulated sugar and cocoa powder, sifting flour, adding espresso powder and vanilla. The aromas made me happy. I didn’t make Christmas cookies in 2023 when I was taking care of my mother and I didn’t make them in 2024 when I was living in a rental without my kitchen equipment. Now I am back in production.

Cocoa shortbread dough made, I popped it into a Ziploc and into the fridge to chill. I wanted to make pfefferneusse next, but I couldn’t find a paper recipe copy and I didn’t want to stop to go upstairs for my laptop, so I made up maple and nutmeg sugar cookies next. More wonderful smells arose: maple syrup and freshly grated nutmeg, butter. The maple dough went into another bag (I used to chill doughs in metal bowls, but I bought a small refrigerator to fit my kitchen and I don’t have shelf space for four or five metal bowls if I want to keep eating regular meals before Christmas; plus, I don’t buy plastic wrap anymore).

I turned to ginger cookie dough. The first step is to heat butter, shortening, molasses and brown sugar together. Microwaves and Pyrex bowls are handy for this. I was nuking and stirring, nuking and stirring by turns to melt the butter when my neighbor texted me that it was a good time to bring her some muffins I had promised her.

My late mother taught me to clean as I go in the kitchen. It is unlike me to leave a baking project half-finished, but if I stayed long enough to finish the ginger dough Eileen and Harry would not get their muffins. I hastily screwed the top onto the flour jar, but left everything else as it was.

When I got home, I had minutes to assemble a lunch of leftovers and to practice a guitar part I wanted to play at a musical Zoom — no time to finish the dough or clean the kitchen. I saw swirls of congealed shortening on top of the dark brown mass. Fragrant with molasses and brown sugar, but unattractive at this stage.

My genuine happiness at working again with sugar and butter as primary ingredients collides with a shudder as I picture the flour-strewn counter, the glass bowl of glop, not to mention the floor. And so, for now, I delay by writing about the clean-up I am avoiding.