Yay! The Christmas tree is up! Now all we have to do is dig the box of decorations out of the far, far back of the cupboard underneath the stairs... (On the off chance that we're still in this house when MrD gets old enough to read the Harry Potter books, we'll definitely have to empty out the cupboard underneath the stairs. It would be too cruel not to let him crawl inside and pretend to be Harry oppressed by the evil Dursleys!)

The grayness yesterday (combined with a serious lack of sleep) was a real downer, but hooray for baking, which saved the day: I tried out this awesome oatmeal cookie recipe (vegan-ifying it with margarine and egg-replacement, and our-empty-kitchen-ifying it by only using the one kind of sugar we actually have on hand, rather than the 2 different kinds that the recipe asks for), and the cookies are delicious! I accidentally added too much cinnamon, but that worked out so well that I'm actually amending my copy of the recipe to do it again in the future, on purpose. You can never have too much cinnamon! (Well, hardly ever.)

Patrick has ordered me to eat several cookies today while he's at work, and I am happy to oblige. ;)

Right now I'm listening to Susan McKeown on last.fm, thanks to Maggie Stiefvater's recommendation. Thanks, Maggie! McKeown has such a gorgeous voice, and I'm being reminded of how much I love good Celtic music. I'd been in the mood for Celtic music, too, ever since I read Maggie's novel Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception, a really fun YA fantasy with a strong musical element. (Kind of like a War for the Oaks for teens. Yum!) As I read it, I really wished that I'd been able to read it as a teen - when I was 16, preparing for a career in music performance*, I would have been SO thrilled to read about characters I could directly identify with, getting to have fantasy adventures and romance. As it was, reading it at 31, I really enjoyed it and immediately wanted to start listening again to Celtic music after a long time off.

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*Wow, has my life turned out differently than I'd expected! In really good ways, actually, but still, at 16, I would never have guessed it. What about you guys? As adults, are you doing what your teen-selves expected you to do?