Twas the day before Christmas

The day's activities...

1. Clean up hairball on the floor.

2. Wrap stocking stuffers.

3. Discuss Christmas dinner - when should prep cooking be done?

4. Get dressed.

5. Ignore headache.

5. Drive away in my santa hat with the top down.

6. Go home and find turkey roaster and gifts that I couldn't find yesterday.

7. Hope that the neighbor didn't notice my wreck of a house when she dropped off goodies

8. Remember after neighbor leaves that I didn't drop off their gift.

9. Run over with gift bag of cookies.

10. Buy scratch off lottery tickets for stockings.

11. Pick up rolls at bakery.

12. Get phone call to add rice to grocery list

13. Stand in really long line at borders to buy gift cards.

14. Start this post while in line. .

15. Pick up key for cat sitting.

16. Go to grocery store and try to maintain christmas spirit.

17. Wonder why entire families decide to (almost aimlessly) wander the grocery store together on Christmas eve. Decide its nice but completely against my "strategic strike" approach to grocery shopping.

18. Have two conversations with mom to discuss the color of greek olives.

19. Consider olive section again.

20. Play eeny, meeny, miney, mo and pick a jar of olives and another relish-type thing.

21. Find express checkout line and dash off to car.

22. Realize there is probably a package from amazon on my front step and head home.

23. Find amazon package, my fiber of the month from spunky eclectic (yay!), AND my mail sitting on my doorstep. Sigh, glad I went by, and grab my wheel. Then head to the post office on the way back to mom and dad's.

24. Reflect that this holiday season has been particularly disorganized for me.

24. Swear to do better next year.

25. Try not to laugh at this thought.

26. Take ibuprofin for headache and start cookin'.

27. Cooking is done.

28. Silver is cleaned.

29. Table is set.

30. Last minute knitting is done.

31. Wrapping is done.

32. Time for sleep.

Merry Christmas to all!

heading in to the final stretch

Work deadlines are starting to ease and I'm getting ready to take some leave, first to celebrate my mother's birthday, then xmas with the family. I work two days between xmas and the new year, largely to finish transitioning the files for projects that no longer belong to me and begin working on new assignments.

Mom and I did a massive bakefest yesterday, I'm estimating about a thousand cookies for our friends and family and just under two dozen muffins for a work event today were made. I was so tired by the time I started making the muffins, I actually left an ingredient out (which is how I ended up with 23 instead of 24 muffins). Luckily the muffins turned out well (thank goodness!), and they tasted even better this morning! I am really not a group breakfast fixing person - my idea of a big breakfast is an omelet or eggs over medium with bacon and maybe cinnamon toast. So I've been trying to figure out what to cook for a week! There was a huge spread of all sorts of things this morning and it was quite wonderful. Lots of food, lots of laughter.

The knitting front is pretty quiet. I've taken on a few commission-type projects that are christmas gifts. One is complete, the other is almost there, in that I need to do about 4 more incheas of garter stitch and then figure out how the heck to crochet on a border. Crochet is so not my thing, but I think this one will need it. Knitting "want to dos" still surround me, but I've managed to keep my hands away from starting anything new.

While I'm off, I hope to at least finish organizing my studio. Not sure how much progress I will actually make, but I remain hopeful. A part of the organization process includes a review of what I had hoped to accomplish in 2007 and set some plans for 2008.

I can't believe that 2008 is basically two weeks away! A friend and I are talking about going away to celebrate somewhere, but nothing's been firmed up. Things have just been too crazy for me to do much of any research. So we shall see what happens!