The flour had dried out her hands. It had worked its way deep into the shallow lines that ran across her palms, and up through her fingers. She loved the texture of the flour embedded into her skin. It was part of the reason she always made the dough the day before and left it to refrigerate when doing her sugar cookies. Today she was pulling out chunks, flouring the table, flouring the dough ball, rolling out the dough, flouring the cookie cutters, and then cutting out the festive shapes. Fifteen gingerbread men, fifteen snowmen, fifteen stockings, fifteen candy canes, and fifteen stars. All politely waiting on the floured parameter of the table for the batch ahead to be taken out from the oven. Then each group would be placed on the cookie sheet and put in the oven for nine minutes. And so the pattern continued: sticky dough, flour, flour, flour, sticky dough, flour, flour, flour, oven mit, repeat.
