I KEEP TRYING TO SING THAT SONG TO MYSELF because it helps me -if only a little bit - to squelch my inner Grinch. It just doesn't feel like Christmas is less than two weeks away.
We've put up our Christmas tree and decorated the house. Much of the shopping is done. Tacky Christmas ties and jewelry have been donned. We've attended a couple of holiday parties.
And we've baked cookies. Which should really get me in the spirit, right? This year, we went from this
to this
in 48 short hours! And there are what, 12 more days until Christmas? At this pace, I'll need to make like six more batches of Sand Tarts! But everyone loves 'em. And we don't bake them so we can look at them, do we? (Visit my other blog, My Grandmas' Recipes, to get the recipe.)
Meanwhile, Peezer has begun a martial arts class, which he looooves, but which has me scrambling to get home early enough from work to take him on Tuesdays. Then Seth finally admitted he felt yucky enough yesterday to allow me to take him to the doctor, so I scheduled a telecommuting day around that. Not to mention, December is the busiest time for an HR professional, and I'm busy TIMES FIVE CLIENTS right now. But it sure beats unemployment!
It's a juggling act around here, people. It's all about time management. Though sometimes I wonder if I unintentionally sabotage myself.
Last week, I picked up the Suburban from the repair shop, returned the service loaner, and had enough time to make it to pick up Peezer on time without rushing. However, I encountered a patch of stop and go traffic, and unfortunately, the guy in front of me stopped and I.... go-ed. Right into the big metal bracket on the back of his vehicle where the spare tire should have been. Normally, if it's Suburban versus Honda CRV, you'd put your money on the Burb. Not so this time:
Ugh. Well, no air bags deployed, no one was injured, the other driver was pretty nice about it, both vehicles were driveable, and the insurance process has been fine. But it's just one more thing to have to deal with at an already-busy time of year.
At least I didn't wreck the service loaner!
So now I'm zipping around town in a rented Nissan Altima. Which is actually cool, because, unlike my land yacht giant SUV, I can park an Altima in a DC garage, so I'm going to take a break from Metro and drive downtown this week. Which will probably make me appreciate my Metro commute.
Still. I've loaded Christmas music onto my smart phone so I can listen to it. I have a stack of greeting cards and four books of stamps and I'm kinda looking forward to that project. Curt's talking about cranking out another issue of our famous annual newsletter, "The Leek."
And amid all the hustle and fuss, I've received a few reality checks. A beloved teacher at our middle school just died after a two-year battle with cancer. An older cousin went out to cut down a tree by himself and was struck and killed when it fell. Blog-friends are facing challenges: One's facing her first Christmas without her husband, who died earlier this year. Another is in the midst of an ongoing struggle to overcome cancer. The list goes on.
My challenges seem like pure fluff when you consider all of that.
So, Deck the Halls and all that stuff. THIS is what I need right now:
THAT's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown. The rest is just... fluff.
