First Loves and Post Season Gingerbread

Sarah has been going through some tough time the last several days. Her first love dumped her. At least he had the cajones to do it in person--Nowadays most people would probably text them a goodbye. What he probably didn't expect though, was the depth of emotions a female has pertaining to something like that. Evidently when he told her she got sick and threw up on the ground in front of him. Being a guy myself, if I were in his shoes when that happened I would have been totally without a clue. We tend to completely underestimate things and that's probably exactly what he did, because right after that he started backtracking and giving her the "doesn't want to lose her but needs some space" routine. Translation: He wants to keep her around for backup... "Plan B" if you will. They have been texting, calling, and everything else like crazy for the last several days since that happened.

Yesterday was the last day off for her before going back to school, so I decided it would be a good time to invite her over. I wanted to invite her for lasagna, allow us to put the gingerbread house together, and give her a little time away from her ma. You'd think Teresa was the one that got dumped because she has been just as emotional as Sarah has throughout the whole thing. She lives her life vicariously through Sarah as it is, and has always been one to go overboard, never allowing anyone to get the last word in. I figured Sarah could use a break.

Well, of course the dinner was flawless--How could it not be? It was a Caesar salad from a "salad-in-a-bag" kit, and Stouffer's lasagna. Both are great. I also had some open face oven browned rolls to go with it all. In other words, I didn't "make" any of it... I was the assembler.

Speaking of assembling, let's talk gingerbread house. Yeah, the gingerbread house that begged to be built, but for some reason or another had been forced to stay in it's box throughout the holidays. Every year the kits are different. They're probably always made by someone else, and if not, they might be make differently or have different stuff included in them. This kit actually seemed pretty good. It came with a huge pack of pre-made frosting (aka: cement), a couple of gingerbread snowmen, a gingerbread tree, and packs of gumdrops, gumballs, sweet tarts, and sprinkles. I supplemented the included candies with a couple packs of those color-coated Hershey's mini kisses and a roll of Necco wafers. It came with a plastic base that had a built-in recess to embed the walls of the house in, as well as a walkway and a couple spots to put the snowmen and tree into. I'm not going to go into much of any detail here, but let me just say that it was our first failure in all the years of gingerbread houses. As we were getting close to finishing, we noticed that the rooftop had slipped down on one side, allowing the row of candies across the peak to fall inside. While straightening that up, I broke the opposite roof panel right in two. Oh well. We didn't have a meltdown or anything about it. I sorta laughed and swore at the same time. We just took the roof panel off, set it on a piece of waxed cardboard that was in the kit, and glued the halves together with gingerbread house cement. While it was sitting there, we decorated it. Tonight when I come home from work I'll put that roof panel on the house (if I can get it off the cardboard) and call it good.

It wasn't too bad, but definitely not as nice as last year's house.

I didn't have much to offer her in the way of dealing with her first love problems, but I did insist that she remove him from her locker. He keeps a bunch of stuff in there I guess, but she doesn't want to put him out of it. She's being overly optimistic in my opinion, but I insisted that she needs to have that as her personal space. It needs to be a sanctuary, not a link. Personally, I don't see much of a future for them, but she's hanging on. Being a guy, I'm pretty sure that he'll go forth with his plans--He just backtracked after seeing her reaction when he told her. It's all a matter of time, but I wish her the best.

I sent her home with enough lasagna to feed the two of them tonight easily.