Two weeks before departure

I had a dream last night, no, not that kind of dream, more like a nightmare.

Wait, is that what Anne Hathaway looks like? I thought she was always so pretty… 

Basically, it ran something like flash- forward through MA exam that I barely wake up in time for and have to take in boxer-short pajamas and without having washed my face, and then realizing that the flight I booked for Germany was actually the day of the exam, not the day after, and that I also had nothing packed, nothing prepared.

Well, the not being prepared part is probably the most real part of that dream. I am kinda prepared, kinda packed, but for all I am prepared, I might as well be leaving tomorrow–that’s how validated my stress is right now.

I haven’t even progressed to the get-everything-out-on-the-bed stage yet. (photo not mine)

Part of this sudden wake-up call comes from the fact that it’s the 15th of September, the middle of the month, and that I only have two weeks left. It seems like it may be a really long time, but it’s only 14 days. That’s not even halfway decent 5K training time!

So I dealt with my anxiety in one of the best ways possible, I made pumpkin cookies.

Inspired by one of the blogs I follow, that of 2write4health, I made some pumpkin oatmeal. While it didn’t come out quit as well as hers looked (too much milk, too much clove spice), I was glad I did it. I also made some pumpkin pie creamer. Basically, I took two cups of unsweetened vanilla almond milk, a table spoon of pumpkin puree (imagine the accent over the “e”), a tablespoon of pumpkin pie spice (which I recently discovered is made of cinnamon, cardamon, all-spice, and nutmeg… sometimes with cloves), and mixed it all together. Comes out fairly smooth and pretty tasty. It at least made my cups of coffee extra enjoyable this morning.

But, after these two recipes with such small amounts of pumpkin puree, I still had a lot of the can left. Clearly, when life gives you leftovers, you make cookies.

This is what they look like coming out of the oven. Because of their poofiness, I decided to cut them in half and put the glaze inside rather than on-top. Beat this, Nabisco!

I followed this recipe for “Old-Fashioned Pumpkin Cookies.” I took

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), softened
• 1 cup pure pumpkin puree
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

and mixed the bowl up (please, please be a reader who gets the reference. 😉

Anyway, the recipe called for sugar, but I made the cookies without sugar. Instead, I made the spontaneous decision to take the cream cheese out of the fridge that was almost expired (mine is the kind of house where we never have food in the house, but always randomly have the ingredients to put something together) and then mixed it with about 1.5 cups of sugar. I probably should have used powdered sugar, but I decided not to open the bag and leave it unused through what will likely be Christmas. Then, I patiently cut the 25 cookies in half and spread some of that sugary goop on the cookies (sounds appetizing, huh?) while resisting the temptation to lick the bowl, knife, or just eat the cookies.

Look at all that frosting remaining! I probably could have made a third of the amount I did. Oh well.

While I can’t vouch for how these taste (other than the cookie part itself, which was pretty good, I had two men in the house who tried one, and then had two or three more to take up to their desks with them. I call that a success.

Meanwhile, after I abated some of my anxiety with baking, I used the rest of my nervous energy to clean the house, something I would have had to do Wednesday anyway, and then settled down reading a bit for my exam. I didn’t actually do anything to relieve the travel fever just yet, but I’m going to start packing on Thursday. That gives me enough time, definitely.

Can’t believe it’s only two more weeks!