Completed: <\/strong>Vanilla Sugar (10x), Chocolate Sugar (4x), Brown Sugar Spice Cookies (2x), Chocolate Chip (4x) Mixed: <\/strong>Coffee Chocolate Kringles (4x), Mint Chocolate swirls (4x), Oatmeal Raisin (6x), Peanut Butter (4x) It’s been a hard day. My kitchen was in minor shambles this morning when I got up to start working at 9:30.\u00a0 Also, today was the, “Worst storm in decades” for the San Francisco Bay Area.\u00a0 Ok, not to be a hater, but seriously, it was not as bad as people make it out to be.\u00a0 I’ve had worse flooding in Pacifica, and we have had the electricity go down for a few days because of high winds.\u00a0 It seriously wasn’t raining Ebola like the news said it was.\u00a0 It was actually kind of soothing.\u00a0 Unless you’re Peanut.\u00a0 Who refused to go to the bathroom because it was wet out.<\/p>\n So I feel like I’m off to a good start.\u00a0 Despite my mixer being in it’s death throes and choosing to go out like a champ– a total temperamental bitch,which I can #respect — I feel like I got a lot done.\u00a0 But it’s been a hard day.\u00a0 And not in the way you might think it was hard.<\/p>\n I’m about to get a little real here.\u00a0 In early October, one of our dogs passed away.\u00a0 Not just any dog, but my girl; my daemon<\/a>, Azuki.\u00a0 She was my furry soul-mate, the one being on the planet that was in tune with me in ways I didn’t know I needed to be understood.\u00a0 And she… is… Gone.<\/p>\n I won’t get into all the feels too deeply here, because lord knows I could.\u00a0 I will not rehash how she died or the whole messy devastation I felt.\u00a0 I will simply say that I never knew pain like this before, and it still hurts.\u00a0 She was the one person in my life that waited up for me and met me at the door no matter what, and always wanted to hear about my day and tell me all about hers.\u00a0 And this time of year is one of the hardest to deal with that.<\/p>\n Azuki loved cookie madness.\u00a0 The crap on the floor, the raw dough flying all over the room, the dropped cookies– all of it was the most exciting thing she’s EVER been through.\u00a0 She was so much of my process and my kitchen that it’s hard not to feel the void as I start up the baking frenzy this year.\u00a0 What is usually a fun, holiday-spirit building event turned out to be something I had a really hard time kicking off this morning.\u00a0 Every time I dropped something, or spilled something — I had a batch of dough fall apart and land on the floor– Peanut didn’t even lift her head to see it.\u00a0 It made me think of Azuki and how she’s not at my heels today.\u00a0 I actually had to clean up my floor myself…<\/p>\n
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