Getting Ready to Get Ready

I am deep into Christmas planning mode, which, of course, starts with Thanksgiving planning mode, now that I’ve gotten myself into some fairly sustainable traditions with both sides of the family.  Thursday will be at my mom’s house with my side of the family, and Saturday, we will host Hub’s side of the family at our house.  This works out because we no longer have to find a way to get to both sides on the same day, as it was in the early years of our marriage.  This does not work out because now I will have 20+ people in my house eating and drinking.  It’s torture on my little OCD psyche.

But. I do it because 1) of the aforementioned reason it works, and 2) Christmas is not my responsibility, and frankly, that takes more effort.  I can handle a day of marathon eating with no other major activities going on.  Plus, I think Thanksgiving pretty much gets the shaft between Halloween and Christmas, and I adore a day that’s devoted to getting together and eating, period.  I probably wrote this in the past, but it bears repeating.

So, the week leading up to the Thanksgivings, the very same week I have both children off school yippee, there must be a massive housecleaning followed by Christmas decorating.  While I prefer to draw a definitive line between the 2 holidays, it make sense to go ahead with the decorating because I lose the weekend I’d be doing it by hosting the big meal and then the far-flung family members can see our house all gussied up.  And by Saturday night, I can sit on my couch with a glass of wine and know the worst is behind me.

In addition to that, I’ve been shopping (oh, don’t look at me like that, I’m not bragging), trying to get ahead of that chore as I do every year and not quite succeeding to my liking.  One major problem is that I’ve hidden all the gifts I’ve bought so far, and despite my diligent (or not so) effort to record all purchases, I do not have a completely list and therefore will forget or lose some of the things I already have done.  This is especially true for the kids, as I’ve been trying to help Santa get a jump on things.  But the little buggers have developed opinions (who said that could do that?) and now have specific requests and both wreak havoc on Santa’s budget and are impossible to find, or rather have the elves build, due to high demand.  Great, I have those kids.  I demand a reboot.

Which all is to say the next week is all about making lists.  In fact, I’ll probably start with a list if lists.  Or maybe I’ll just start with that glass of wine…