Office party today. It's snowing hard today too. I actually didn't have too much of a baking frenzy this year for the office cakes. I did my best to do mis en place and measured out all I could in advance on Mon, baked one cake on Tuesday, and two others on Wednesday. The details kept me up late again, but the stress level was less and the cakes turned out well.

Maybe I won't be doing it again, this is the first year I even considered not baking something for the lunch party. I don't really get much reward out of it, but it was gratifying in the past. I was reading another NYT article yesterday, this one was about gift giving. I have a long history of gift giving where I know it was to feel an emotion more than just a gift. A cigar is just a cigar territory...

Mr. W. would tell me not to give him things, that he felt badly about accepting; he always made a point to say thank you. But on the other hand, he'd talk and I could hear that he appreciated things very much. How could I not give at least a decent meal to someone who talked about how he'd eaten only canned ravioli that day, and him a big, strapping 6' 2" guy?

In retrospect, all those incidences of him telling me to not give were just messages to say "Don't care about me." "I don't want you to be close."