Gingerbread is a Christmas treat and there is a good reason for that. It’s time-consuming and potentially injurious to the baker due to the endless kneading of dough.

I am not blessed with a fluid ambidextrous nature. I am predominantly right-handed with a few specific left hand only functions. Dough kneading just doesn’t work with my left hand and my right wrist is prone to tendonitis due to a repetitive strain injury I acquired working salad prep back in my university kitchen wench days. So today, I am blessed with a stiff and sore wrist that is going to set back my cookie making schedule a wee bit. Or a lot bit. Depends on how much tendon and muscle kneading my dearest husband can stand performing and whether or not my massage therapist can work a slight miracle this coming Wednesday.

The right wrist is my bane. It was broken during a freak accident in grade 7 and rendered weaker by my insanely bad pencil grip and years of scribbling in spiral notebooks. Typing came along later but had I a computer before I was 25, things might not be so bad now. And it’s kind of bad. Not carpal tunnel bad but enough that it makes bearing weight on the wrist – which is somewhat to intensely important in a yoga practice – to just writing a blog post, a chore that requires ibuprofen and icing in the aftermath.

Don’t cry for me though Argentinians. There are worse things in life than a game wrist. It’s inconvenient, however, for someone whose left hand is limited in function.

I was reading recently that scientists really don’t know why most people are so handicapped by extreme right-handedness. The reason we favor our right over our left isn’t even clear. We are the only animals in the kingdom with use of both hands that limit ourselves to just one or the other. Ambidextrousness is common among other primates with “hands”.

Rob’s like “Just switch your mouse to the left for a while” in terms of making the computer easier to cope with during my convalescence. But I might as well use my left foot as my hand where mousing is concerned because they are equally awkward.

On the upside, we have tasty gingerbread despite the fact that I had to google to salvage the dough, which was very dry and crumbly. Need to tweak the recipe me thinks.

The frosting set well despite my lack of meringue powder. Is there a substitute for that? Powdered egg white maybe?

But the day is dawning, bum wrist or no, and there is Christmas shopping to attend to. Dee asked for one thing. Just one.

“Santa will know what else to bring me,” she said. “He does a good job guessing.”

Indeed. But if this one thing isn’t secured, the whole charade goes down the toilet this year.

Sure is Monday.