Death by Gingerbread

Today was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, all due to the intense and relentless desire of our son to make a gingerbread house. We made one once, in the U.S., before we knew that you could preserve your sanity and use a kit. I vowed that I would never again make one from stratch. I would have used a kit here, but IKEA ran out before we got one, and the other places are too expensive.

And so here I am, so exhausted, frustrated, and stressed that I resorted to taking a few old potatoes and hurling them at my shower wall as hard as possible. I need more potatoes.

I thought that it might be hard to make a gingerbread house here because of the high humidity. That was the least of our issues. I thought it would help to use a box inside for reinforcement. Yeah, that wasn't much help. I could list out the problems, but let's say that in the end, we have a gingerbread house precariously held together with not just frosting but also tape, glue, staples, nails, and sewing pins. It is a house that any inspector would instantly condemn. I'm afraid to let the kids decorate it because I know the second someone touches it, it will collapse. So it will remain undecorated. In fact, when I get around to it, I'm pitching it. I'd like to pitch it against my shower wall too, but I still have to clean up the potatoes. And the nails might scratch the enamel.

Ethan has been informed that we are never ever going to attempt to make another gingerbread house from scratch. I think seeing the crazed look on my face convinced him not to argue. I told him that maybe we could just paint a box brown and decorate that. He said maybe we could just eat the decorations. Hey, even better! The biggest bummer is that I was at a Christmas luncheon on Thursday and part of the dessert was these really cute little figures made of sugar - trees and people. I asked everyone at our table to give me theirs so I have a virtual sugar forest and village. They will be homeless this Christmas.