Page 7 of Single Dad's Christmas Cookie

“Crap! What am I supposed to do?” I asked rhetorically. If Emma and Sherry were gone, that meant I was out a cook and an afternoon babysitter. I hadn’t made any plans to fill in the vacancies while they were out of town. And I had been counting on Sherry, Emma’s teenage daughter who watched Amelia after school, to become more of a full-time nanny during the break.

“Are you sure it’s today and not next week?” I complained.

“Yes, Mr. Bryan, I told you we were leaving. You’ve known about this for a couple of months now.”

I could tell she was laughing at my pain.

She was right. I had completely screwed up my calendar on this one. I was going to be without a cook and without childcare.

“How long are you gone?”

“We’ll be back on the second. Sherry starts school on the fourth. When does Amelia go back to school?

Amelia’s private school had a slightly longer winter break than the public schools did, mostly because the families of those children tended to take extended vacations or go abroad during the break. Amelia hadn’t been in school long enough for us to have established a pattern of traveling over the breaks.

“She doesn’t start back until the next week. Crap. Crap. Crap.” Stronger words were needed. Emma didn’t like me cursing, and I was actively toning down my language around Amelia and Sherry.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“You could always take time off work.”

I laughed. I hadn’t taken time off work since… I don’t know when. Of course, I took a week off to take Amelia to the islands in the late spring, but that was for vacation and travel. I never took off work to manage household issues or to watch Amelia. The concept was foreign to me. That’s what I paid Sherry, and the nannies before her, for.

And I didn’t cook. That’s what I paid people for.

“What did you do last time we took a vacation?” Emma asked. “Didn’t you have your assistant? What was her name? Mandy. Didn’t she help out?”

Mandy had been a fabulous, super assistant until she decided to get married and abandoned me to have her own family. I still hadn’t managed to replace her properly.

Mandy helped out. She had organized and hired the temporary help I needed, but at that time, I had also had a full-time nanny for Amelia, whom Mandy had also hired.

Now that Amelia was in school, we no longer had a full-time child. Sherry, coming in after school, had really worked out to everyone’s benefit.

I missed Mandy. My current assistant only dealt with business issues and did not step into the realm of personal. It was one of her boundaries. I still had plans on finding someone to run the household, but it was just another line item on an already long list of shit I needed to take care of.

“You could always ask your mother for assistance,” Emma suggested.

“That’s not funny. You’ve met my mother.”

“I didn’t mean your mother would cook for you. I meant maybe she would be willing to share her cook with you.” Emma chuckled. She had met my mother. She knew Mother didn’t cook. She should have also been aware that my mother didn’t share. Mother certainly wasn’t going to send over her precious cook to make sure I had fresh coffee in the morning, a hot meal for dinner, and however many homemade cookies my daughter should or should not actually be eating.

“You’ll figure something out,” Emma said. “You always do.”

I didn’t want to figure this one out. I wanted to have easy solutions since this time of year always seemed to bring more trouble than it was worth.

“I’m gonna be late for school.” Amelia stumbled into the kitchen still wearing her pajamas, her dark, curly hair looked like a bird’s nest, and clutched in her hands was her beloved—much to my mother’s disapproval—Humphrey, a tattered old stuffed animal of a cat.

“Good morning, little Amelia,” Emma said as she crossed the kitchen and scooped my daughter up. “You don’t have school this morning. I’m surprised you are awake.”

“No school? Oh, it’s winter break. Did it snow?” She wiggled out of Emma’s hug and ran straight to the window to look outside. But it hadn’t snowed.

She complained, “How am I supposed to know it’s winter if it doesn’t snow?” As if the only requirement for winter was snow.

She climbed up onto one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

I got her a cup of orange juice while Emma scooped up two steaming bowls of freshly made oatmeal. Typically, Emma pre-made our breakfasts and I managed to heat everything up as needed.

“Do you want honey or do you want syrup?” Emma asked.

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