This is what I feel like doing today.
Instead, I am having one of those exquisitely Mondayish days. And Monday is winning. Damn you, Monday! The hours are cruising past while I blither away at apparently endless and infinitely finicky odds and ends that must be done somehow by someone and soon. I'm telling you, spreadsheets are involved.
"This is the most disappointing advent we've ever had," said one of the children this morning.
And I'll admit, I have not found a good way to fill those little slots with daily seasonal activities, despite having an envelope full of ideas in my office. We had the "candy cane meltdown" last week, wherein a slip of paper promised candy canes we proved not to have. We've had way too much hot chocolate for breakfast. The Christmas decorations never got made. The snowflakes for the front window did, but remain as clutter on the dining-room table. And for the past two mornings, the children have found nothing in their advent calendar. Nothing. Serious seasonal fail.
I should at least write on a slip of paper, "Make toast!" or "Pet the dogs!" I think the kids would prefer that over nothing. They might even prefer to imagine that we're going to do activities that I know in advance we won't have time for, such as "Bake cookies!" or "Go skating!"
All of which is to say that this Monday finds me quite entirely overwhelmed by the details of the season. Who has bought gifts for whom? What's our budget? What's happening when? Can we split childcare over the holidays? Is everyone happy? Will everyone be happy? I know, I do, that it will all come together, and that the time I've spent today will help make it so, but oh, this is tedious.
Meanwhile, the novel waits patiently (or maybe not so patiently; I'm pretty sure the novel has the bit in its 210-pages-of-teeth and is begging me to gallop for the finish line. But listen, novel, we'll just have to go back to the beginning and start the race all over again, so, really, what's your hurry?). I hear, from a novelist much more experienced than I am, that I should look into Scrivener, a program that helps keep track of all the book's bits and pieces. Unlike Word, which makes me feel like I'm composing one insanely long drawn-out thought that may have completely gone off the rails way back when and is missing several dozen terribly important pieces but I can't stop now and must simply forge ahead til I reach the end. Writers out there -- thoughts? (Also, it occurs to me that I could really use a Scrivener-like-program to organize my entire life. Talk about bits and pieces.)Labels: Christmas, gifts, holidays, lists, organizing, work, writing