20 December

Finally made my mincemeat yesterday. Four days is plenty of steeping time, right?

Two editorial deadlines looming.

Trying to wrap up, or progress, or just keep straight, various workstreams, large and small, before everyone goes offline for the holidays.

End of the academic year for DP and Miss B: teacher presents, colleague presents, holiday and good-bye events.

Determined to write and stuff 10 cards per night during my nightly hour of TV time – which I haven’t had yet this week.

Four loads of clean laundry waiting to be folded.

How many days since I updated my blog?

Drawing up workplans for 2013.

Locating and digging out boxes of Christmas decorations from  the storage piles and making the house festive, little by little. (Must remember to put them all back in the same place.)

Must get to the post office and buy stamps, even if it’s already manifestly obvious that no one’s going to get their cards by Christmas.

I can’t keep using up the easy options on the Eight Days of Christmas Baking list, otherwise I’ll have nothing but complicated  things ieft at the end.

Have I paid the balance on the vacation cottage yet? And the Missouri year-end tax bills? And the quarterly utility bills which all came in at once?

Bought 12 gifts this morning – might be 75% of the way through the list now, if I can bring myself to count.

Strategizing how to get a Christmas ham home from the butcher without a car.

Wondering if Christmas cards are enough to make it up to the friends to whom I’ve owed emails for 6 months.

Uh-oh, I really need to make those apricots into jam. And those peaches. And those strawberries….

Etc., etc., etc. Until:

Reminding myself, when it all feels like too much and I can’t deal anymore, of the important thing: that everyone I love is safe and well. And that that’s all that really matters, in this or any other holiday season.

American Red Cross

Save the Children: Sandy Hook School Response