Holiday Meltdown

Christmas wouldn't be complete if I (or one of my sisters) didin't have a total emotional meltdown.

People do get whacky during the holidays, and we surmise it's a result of too much to eat and drink, not enough sleep, heaping doses of family, excess money spent and the generally uncontrollable Christmas frenzy.

But sometimes it's the little stuff that sends us over the edge. Yesterday on my way home from work, I stopped into our local market with a list of ingredients for Christmas desserts. Forget that I have family in town for a moment and there are still several dozen gifts to wrap under my bed, and forget that I have to work on Christmas (this being a Muslim country and all), and pay no mind to the fact that if I wanted, there are many lovely Lebanese bakeries around who could sell me perfectly arranged and delicious holiday dessert platters. But I am a glutton for punishment, and darn it, I've just got to have my family's favorite two-layer sour cream graham-cracker crumb cheesecake on the table on December 24.

But it all started deteriorating when I couldn't find the graham crackers. When I asked the smiley guy in produce for graham crackers, he escorted me to the 'rusk' section - Rusk, you might wonder, according to Webster, is Sweet raised bread dried and browned in an oven but it doesn't even come close to our expectations for a cracker. In fact, it's more like a teething buscuit, and for some reason, local shelves stock a dozen varieties and flavors. Something didn't feel right at that point, but I said to myself, this is not a reason to freak out, graham crackers or not, Christmas will be a warm and wonderful day. And so I asked another guy who repeated 'BRAN' when I said 'GRAHAM', and that's when I knew I was in trouble. By the time I got to the middle of the baking aisle, after visits through cereal, candy, nuts, and even 'seasonal', the flood gates had opened. You know the type, major uncontrollable waterworks, Niagara Falls style tears gushing out of my face, onto my blouse, into half-dozen tissues, all through the store, as I moved on to find the cream cheese (called puck), rocotta cheese (soft Italian) and butter required to make this ridiculous recipe - with or without graham crackers... I continued to mutter to myself.

But pats on the back are well-deserved here, as I managed to re-collect myself, put on my movie-star shades, find a substitute for graham crackers (nilla wafers and local coconut crackers) and then pay and return home to make luscious-looking two-layer sour cream graham-cracker crumb cheesecake.