Christmas Crunch Time

When my beloved came to bed at 1:30 a.m. last night after I had been asleep since 9:30 p.m., I felt relatively wide awake for a spell. This may have something to do with sleep patterns—I've always heard that waking after four hours makes it hard to fall back asleep—but probably has more to do with my high level of anxiety at the moment.

I found myself spinning my wheels thinking about the Christmas cards I needed to write, the Christmas cookies I needed to bake, the Chex Mix I wanted to prepare, the shopping still left to do, and the story I have due on Monday that's about 30 percent complete. As all this was rolling around in my head, I asked him what he'd been up to. He went for a run, he told me, shortly after I went to bed. And then he caught up on some websites he likes to read, watched part of a movie, and basically bummed around for four hours.

Despite the fact that this is completely just—I spent a couple of hours after school visiting with two friends while our kids played with their sons—I found myself wishing I'd given him a list. Perhaps he could have baked some cookies or started addressing envelopes since the cards aren't ready yet.

It seems that any hard feelings I harbored ran pretty deep, because I had a dream after I went back to sleep.

I dreamed I was rushing into a store to get some last-minute Christmas-related thing I needed. And there was an elf with a giant jingle bell at the entrance. And he was ringing that bell and hopping around in front of me and wasn't going to let me by until I turned jolly. And that wasn't going to happen.

I don't know who got aggressive first, but the elf and I wound up tussling, with me eventually pushing him to the floor. Once I had extracted myself from his limbs, I stood up to see Santa standing on a platform some distance away. He was looking at me and was obviously poised to take up the elf's cause of spreading good cheer.

But I was not taking the bait. While he Ho-ho-hoed away, I shouted at him, "Now I know why you can enjoy Christmas!"

And this next part I said aloud—and loudly—as I sat up in bed awake: "Because you're a MAN!"

I think I need to lighten up.

'Tis the Season...

...for letting a cup of tea steep for more than an hour before remembering that you made it...and then doing it again a second time.

...for putting the lights on the Christmas tree with "help" from a 4-year-old who follows you on 15 to 20 circuits around the tree as if clinging to your tail.

...for brilliantly buying your mother-in-law a wine bottle evacuator...the exact same gift you bought her last year.

...for a firefighter-like drill to throw on coats and boots before dashing out the door to see Santa (who is actually an off-duty firefighter himself) go past your house on a flatbed trailer, complete with holiday tunes and eight pressboard reindeer.

...for discovering the day before you plan to bake six dozen cookies to exchange with friends that your oven element has given up the ghost.

...for an industrial-size tub of Hershey's Cocoa Powder going up in a giant sandstorm-like poof when you drop it on your kitchen floor while baking.

(That last one happened to a friend of mine...the rest are ALL me.)

Decking the Halls

Chip, chip, chip.

Hear that?

Tap, tap, chip, chip, chip.

That's the sound of me chipping away at my Christmas decorating. For my mom and siblings, decorating is an Event, one that requires entire rooms to stage and entire days to complete. For me, it's something that fills in the nonexistent nooks and crannies of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Granted, I don't have a whole lot of stuff to put up. Three boxes, tops, and they fit tidily in the space beneath the basement stairs, living a life from January to November very similar to that of Harry Potter. But even that seems a chore to me.

I seem to be missing the X-linked chromosome that makes me interested in this kind of thing. But my daughter isn't. After 20 minutes of hauling things up the stairs (and cleaning up after one glass ornament that never saw the light of day on the main level of our home), I was about done for last night. But she begged me to get more stuff out, to lift her up to the nails from which I'd removed "ordinary time" photos and tchochkes so she could place a wreath, a snowman, an Oriental Trading Christmas tree that our boy made in Sunday school two years ago. So I did.

After we'd washed the decorative towels, I asked my girl to hang them in the bathrooms. Then I sent her in to tell me what they said.

"What's the first letter?" I asked her.

"J!" she shouted triumphantly back.

I listened as she worked it out in her head.

"Juh...juh...joe...joe-eee...joe..."

Then she popped out the door and said, "Joy!"

And she was right.