I am exceedingly happy to report that Thing 1 (organizing my latest contract) and Thing 2 (finding a place to live in the Philly 'burbs) have, by all appearances, been tied up. This leaves, of course, Things 3 through 7 to be dealt with and forthis reason there is very little stress reduction being experienced by yours truly but, well, progress is progress, right?

So it appears that the Hot Water Bath family is relocating - for the sixth time in 13 years - back to the Philadelphia area. Brainiac is in the final lap ("You're graduating soon, right honey? Right? RIGHT?!") of his program here but I need to start work before he'll be ready to move so we're going to be back-and-forthing it for, I dunno, four to six weeks or so. Piece of cake.

The house we've rented is owned by a township and is located in the midst of 76 acres of farmland that the town has found itself managing and trying to turn into a park. In the meantime the parks office has this house, now nestled around these 200 year old barns and brand new community garden plots, which it's restoring and leasing. Enter us. I'm heading up this week to pick up keys, do the basic clean up and get a few necessities in place to make future runs more comfortable. Oh, and of course we'll hit Ikea because it's the law to do so when one moves to within 30 miles of one of the blue and yellow motherships.

So. There we have it. I'm super excited about setting up a new kitchen. I've been very disatisfied with my current cooking space and although the new kitchen is somewhat under-equipped to be sure in terms of outlets and cabinetry, it's a blank slate in terms of what can be done. Basically a large square room with a sink and range on one wall and a fridge on another and a (possibly) working fireplace on a third, the kitchen is certainly spare and altogether an exciting proposition. I've been doing googling "freestanding kitchen furniture" and finding any number of European outlets where this kind of thing is much more common, but not much more than bakers' racks here in the US. No problem, just more thrill to the hunt, right?

On the canning front, I may have to carve some time out to dust off the kettle sooner than I expected. The Boy Wonder is reminding me with mind exploding frequency ("Sweetpea, don't nag me so, I know!") that we're out of mango jam and he is also expressing an interest in not only having access to some pineapple jam but..wait for it...helping me make it. That's right, the Boy Wonder wants to try his hand at canning. Sigh. If that's not a warming thought on a blustery fall day I don't know what is.

It's the annual Hot Water Bath Self-Serving Plug Fest!

For delicious cranberry chutney that will satisfy everyone but the most die-hard commercial jelly fan, click here.

For chocolate sauce to enhance any number of delicious holiday desserts, click here.

If you're wondering what to do with all that pumpkin puree you either bought or made, click here.

None of these recipes must be canned. The pumpkin butter does well with a little mellowing but will still be delicious eaten right out of the pan on the day it's made. Even better, none of the recipes is cast-in-stone in terms of amounts or even ratios so don't be afraid to just make enough to last a week or so, being sure to keep covered bowls or jars refrigerated. If you've got the time for canning, though, nothing beats facing the coming winter with a shelf full of delicious and festive condiments.

This is also the time of year when I direct any sane person who will listen to Susie J's Christmas Baking. If you try nothing else, make the gingerbread cookies. Hands down, it's the single best gingerbread recipe I have ever made. Oh, and make the mokka. There really are not words for the mokka, it must be tried to be believed. Christmas Baking is nothing short of a public service and I can't speak highly enough of either it or it's founder (hi Sue!).

I know I've written about her before - Sue is a college friend. I knew her and I knew the man who would become her husband, and she knew me and she knew the man who would become my husband but none of us knew that we all knew each other. I don't remember when or how all the relationships were made clear but there you have it. Sue's baby is almost a year old now (born a year and one day after Entropy Girl) and since she has always been very indulgent with the carryings-on my children (primarily the Boy Wonder) have delivered upon her I hope that he grows into the mellowest of toddlers. She deserves it.

We ventured out this morning to Foods of All Nations to procure the fixings for the Boy Wonder's Chinese Feast. He keeps correcting me to say "Ancient Chinese Feast", which prompts me to joke about actual Thousand Year-Old Eggs. He never laughs.

Ahem. Anyway, we've got the dumpling wrappers, the hoisin sauce, the green tea and adzuki bean ice creams and other sundry necessities. The menu as it stands now includes dumplings, rice, stir-fried vegetables, "bbq" chicken legs and the ice creams. I offered to buy a box of fortune cookies, but he declined by admonishing me, "Mom, they're not really Chinese, you know. Fortune cookies are from from somewhere else. I don't know where. Not China, though!" I'm so proud. He's already got his own set of child-sized chopsticks, festooned with Power Rangers, so we're all set, aside from one strategic phone call designed to finalize the guest list.

I'm starting a new project in a couple weeks which brings my run of high-pressure holiday seasons to four. I know that many companies leave stuff until the end of the year because it's all just too much to deal with, bringing in outside people and overseeing them and all the explaining you have to do. And then there's all the stuff that consultants want one to do - analyze this, present that, report on the other. So the needs go unfilled because it's easier that way until the end of the fiscal year comes and someone say, "Crap! We need to spend that money. You know, to do that thing. Better call someone."

As always, I'm grateful for the work and pleased to have a good reputation. Really, it's awesome to know people who advocate for me joining their teams - for however short a time - and really invest in me and value what I can bring to them. I'm not a strategic-type consultant who sits around and thinks big thoughts, I'm more of a tactical kind of girl - the kind who can, you know, get stuff done. My end of the consulting world is by far the less glamourous and so when the phone rings it's a big day. For some reason, December has proven to be my busy season. The work will get done - of that I have no doubt - and my personal life will remain un-neglected, I insist upon that. Come January, I'm going to be shredded.

Who knew? December is my busy season. Wal-Mart, the Post Office, parking lot tree salesmen, and me.

I am most exceedingly happy to report that we seem to have some progress on what will now be termed Thing 1. Nothing's definite yet but we're at about 87% and rising so with some luck we'll be able to put that one to bed and get moving on whatever will bubble to the surface and become Thing 2. There are a few candidates at this point, but I certainly have a favorite.

I've got Thanksgiving on my mind today. My in-laws have announced that they are coming so now that I've got Company-with-a-capital-C coming I'm switching the plans up a bit. I don't have quite the involved thought process that Julia has expressed, but in my own special way I'm a little...let's just say "consumed". There will be turkey, of course, and my own cranberry chutney (I don't care how much that commercial jelly stuff is liked, I simply won't allow it). I'm branching out from my usual pierogies and going with actual mashed potatoes this time, likely with roasted garlic or wasabi or something, and some kind of sausage and sourdough stuffing (without prunes or apples because I don't like them and without nuts because Brainiac doesn't like them). Veggies are green bean casserole (Brainiac's choice), braised carrots with olives (my choice), a relish dish, and possibly something else - a green salad, maybe (out of season here, and my reluctant concession to tradition). Oh, and some kind of rolls - probably bought. Dessert will be a chocolate cheese cake and pumpkin ice cream pie. Coffee and tea to finish, quite possibly liberally augmented by scotch, brandy or Frangelico, depending upon how dinner itself went.

I'm planning another meal for the time of my in-law's visit, one that needs to be handled a little sneakily. The Boy Wonder goes through these crazes, as many kids do, where he wants to talk all about, say, Ancient Egypt. We check out tons of books, watch videos, do activities, all kinds of things and then one day he announces that the time of Ancient Egypt is coming to a close and he wants to have a "feast" to celebrate. So I found online a few recipes somewhat approximating stuff that we could pass off as typical of the Ancient Egyptian table, served them with yogurt, honey, nuts and apples and there you have it, one Egyptian feast.

So lately we've been all about China - I think this was brought on by that new panda cub in Washington. We've determined our horoscopes (he's a dragon, the rest of us are monkeys), made lanterns, read all kind of folk tales and are now fully versed in the history of Shi Huangdi and those terracotta soldiers. And it is time for a Chinese feast. Now, a reasonable kid might allow us to head out to the nearest buffet place and be done with it, but the Boy Wonder requires that we head out to Foods of All Nations and purchase the provisions to make the meal at home. Luckily I already have a wok - he's already inspected it and found it satisfactory.

O.K., so the challenge comes in that my in-laws aren't really adventurous eaters, nor do they feel any call to fake it for the Boy. The Boy really, really wants to share this experience with his grandparents and his grandparents are equally determined to avoid it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to snow all parties and 1) promise the in-laws that the Chinese Feast will go on, with the addition of Lipton rice and meatloaf and 2) somehow convince the Boy that Lipton Rice and meatloaf were not unknown accompanyments to rice balls and crispy noodles with duck. Alternately, perhaps I can persuade them to come to dinner and sit with us, nibbling at the plain rice and then go out somewhere later. This is actually stressing me out more than Thanksgiving. Go figure.

Oh, internet lovelies...anyone see a solution that I'm missing? Something that avoids five-year-old meltdown and encourages grandparental attendance?

First things first: My sincere apologies to you lovely people who send me such nice e-mails, only to wait eons for me to respond. Really, I'm sorry. No elaborate excuses, just sorry and, well, you know.

Second, the Things are becoming ever murkier. Kind of like yarn or embroidery floss that gets all knotted up and you pull a strand thinking that you might be able to discern a way to detangle the mess but you only succeed in pulling it ever tighter and more relentlessly knotted. Yeah, just like that. And, just last night, I received an e-mail that while lovely and fun and really, really good news and from someone who I admire deeply, served only to murkify the already murky situation.

So I've decided to distract myself by jumping headlong into a lot of really domestic-y stuff. I'm braiding and beading hemp bookmarks for Christmas gifts, making count-down-the-day chains out of green and red construction paper with the Boy Wonder, sewing patchwork pillows out of old Laura Ashley fabric squares pilfered from the store where I worked back in 1997 when those patterns were discontinued (we were supposed to have thrown them out but I just couldn't - not only were they perfectly good 4 X 4 inch squares, they were so pretty and I've carrying them around with me ever since....that would be three moves ago for those of you keeping track), making bean bag stocking stuffers, planning a Thanksgiving menu, waiting for boxes to arrive from various online purveyors of toys, books, clothes, CDs, DVDs, tools and other sundry acquisitions that then end up being hidden where no one will ever look for them (with the cleaning supplies), wrapping presents in preparation for sending to parts far and wide and forgetting to order stamps from the Postal Service. It's a busy life.

Here is where I would love to post a Halloween pic of my handsome little pirate and adorable dalmation, all suited up and ready for trick-or-treating. Alas, I cannot because here is instead where I confess to having forgotten to take pictures, thereby neglecting to memorialize Entropy Girl's first door-to-door candy extortion. I can tell you, however, that she did beautifully rushing up to the door with the other kids in our party (three of the four of whom were pirates - I kind of wished I'd had her a parrot instead of a dog, but oh well). When she got to the door, though, she'd inevitably turn around and look at me as if to say, "Well then, now what?" and come back down empty handed. Didn't seem to bother her a bit to be walking up and down peoples' front steps for no apparent reason. In fact, I'd say she got kind of a chuckle out of it.