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.
