Christmas baking and candy making.

The kitchen is where I feel most at home. I love following a recipe. And I adore tweaking them, experimenting until the result exactly pleases the palate. It's a strange kind of science. 

I've worked on one recipe a day in anticipation of Christmas. Grandmother's recipes, all of them. Three different kinds of spritz cookies and fudge. There's more to come over the next week. And I may need to work on more than one a day. 

Like so many, I feel my heart is strangely disconnected from the expected merriment of the holiday. I definitely feel like I am going through the motions. 

I think about the massacre of innocents in Connecticut, and know my nieces and nephew all attend elementary school, and nothing is safe. Nothing is off limits anymore when one person can choose to systematically end tiny, precious, innocent lives. 

I keep grasping for an explanation even though logic does not factor into the murderer's decision. I want answers, and justice, when those seem to be denied. Logic doesn't factor in there either. 

The world is a beautiful, twisted, ugly, evil, wonderful place. And it's hard to see the positives.

But I work in my kitchen because it's what I can do. Taking pages out of a hymnal to frame seems to help too. 

I'm going to keep looking for the light in a dark place. I hope you do too.