A cold rain continued through most of the morning and I smiled to myself as I imagined that we of the kitchen staff were like the Keebler elves, safe and warm inside our giant oak, baking away and humming a happy work song. What a silly woman I am, really. Anyway, one would think that the inclement weather would keep shoppers and hungry folk at home, but no. In they came, in cold, wet, starved masses. Each one fussier and needier than the one before, very like minding toddlers it was. So by four o'clock I was happy to throw my flour covered apron in the laundry bin, and I dashed (as well as a woman carrying 80 extra pounds can) through my errands to collapse in a shivering, wet heap inside my door afterward.

Yes, this called for something beyond the standard ritual. I put on the kettle and ran a hot bath while assembling a tray of my favorite Ceylon tea, and an orange-cranberry scone with clotted cream, diet be damned. I was a woman near her death of cold and exhaustion, this was no time to be counting carbohydrates! With these treats and a new book club catalogue, I locked myself in the bath and refused to budge for just under an hour. Oh what decadence it was! Tea cup perched on the edge of the bath, a catalogue filled with all manner of dazzling literary possibilities, and me up to my neck in lavender scented bubbles! Afterwards I wrapped in a towel warmed over the hot air register and dressed in my favorite pale blue and white flannel jimjams-also warmed over the register!

It was all worth it. The whole rain chilled day was worth enduring just for that forty five minutes of self indulgence. That's not to say I want another day just like it tomorrow, but if it should happen I suppose I'll have to do this all over again. Hell's bells, I think I will anyway!