Christmas, games, cookies, and time

In know, it's a strange title. But, it summarizes my lack of focus the past few days and how everything has become serverely jumbled.

I am happy to announce that I essentially completed my Christmas shopping in 2 days - Dec 7th and 8th, which has been great. But, then it was the cookies. Shop for the ingredients and slot out time to mix, bake, and decorate 5 different kinds of cookies. It took me 3 days and I feel like that is all I did all weekend. But, they are done and will be shipped or delivered tomorrow. Now, it is putting together menus and a shopping list for Christmas Eve Eve, Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. I never do a big Christmas dinner, so most of my time is spent on a family meal for Christmas Eve. Jambalaya, Spinach Artichoke Dip, Pumpkin Pie (all 12/24), Tea Ring (12/25), Peanut Butter Ice Box Cake (12/23), and a sauce for the crab cakes (12/24) I bought from Costco. I plan on shopping and cooking some of this over the weekend, the items that I can anyway.

This is my last week of work before 2 weeks of vacation and 15 days of traveling in January. Which means that I am busting my butt to try to close out the year and organize myself for next year. Because when it comes to January I will be spending any office time just catching up in between trips. However, I am looking forward to the trips and am happy to make the sacrifice. As with everybody else it is trying to find the balance of work and preparing for the holildays.

Plus, the additional stress from the holidays. The stress to me is wrapped up in one family and it happens to be the one that is not my family and takes time to remind me (and my son) that we are not family anytime they are around us (or even when they are not around us). Always nice around the holidays. So, I haven't invited them over for the holidays and yet, I know they will show up Christmas morning to my house because their grandkids will be here. Just do me a favor - stay home. If you want to coninuously leave Jason and I out of your lives then please just stay out of mine and quit pretending that everything is fine when it obviously is not.

On top of that, the dinner (see Monthly Review blog) that I have been looking forward to has been postponed. To when, I don't know, since it was the last night we had for a few days. Easy I guess since Ira didn't have a place picked yet anyway. I am not mad, his work schedule changed, but I am still disappointed.

My highlight...Jason has been wanting to spend time with both of us more lately. He even went out and started shoveling on Sunday without any prodding. He has been asking to play board games just to have some time together. He also asked if I was going to have any free days for us to just hang out. I said, "Honey, I am available every day from December 26th to January 6th. Is that enough time for you?" He was happy with that.

God grant me the patience to get through the next week and not strangle anyone. It will all be better December 26th.