Cruising through the holidays

So here it is December 18th and I'm not stressed out. Well, I'm a little bit stressed, because the floor guys come tomorrow to put in our new kitchen floor and we won't be able to use our kitchen for a couple of days and something will probably go wrong and it's going to be expensive (though we've already paid, I think, 2/3 of the cost, something like that, more than half anyway). 

But aside from that. Christmas is in one week and I'm actually ready. This is what I've done:

• I wrote all the cards and mailed them. Rocket Boy still has to write the German cards (with my help), but that's only three cards. We'll probably do them today. Oh, and I still want to send an apology to my Nebraska cousins for saying that they live in Grand Island (in my holiday newsletter). But this is all very manageable.
• I have baked 12 batches of cookies. I can't believe I did this, but I did. We still have to decide what we're having for Christmas dinner and all that, but it's not stressful. Either we'll get a ham or we'll have some sort of fish. It's not anything to worry about.
• The tree is up, lights are on, and I finally put the ornaments on yesterday. I keep thinking I want to get a wreath or spray for the front door, but it doesn't matter if I don't. I need to get Rocket Boy to turn on the lights on the house.
  
• We're 3 Sundays through Advent, this is the 4th, and Hanukkah starts tonight. I have all the candles and everything. We'll do some Hanukkah meals later on, but not until after the kitchen is done. There are latkes in the freezer.
• I've done all my shopping (except for maybe one more small present, which Rocket Boy can help with), and all the presents are wrapped. This is unheard of, but true.
• I made our personalized calendar, ordered 2 copies, they've arrived, and I've wrapped one up for Rocket Boy.
• Oh, and I coaxed the twins through their first set of high school finals. And made dinner every night. And did the laundry regularly. And kept the house reasonably clean.
   

The only thing I didn't get done wasn't actually a Christmas thing: cleaning up the desk room so that Teen B could have his own desk away from Teen A. That's a really big project and it was too hard to combine it with Christmas. I'll just have to work on it in the new year.

So now I'm thinking, what the heck do I do for the next week? No, not really. I'm basking in the joy of being "done" so early. It really is a nice feeling. And I owe it all to the FlyLady. She's been sending out "Christmas Cruise Missions" every weekday since the middle of October. (My email program started blocking her around the middle of November, so now I have to read her messages on her website.) I haven't done them all, but I've done a lot of them. Also, because I've been organizing my life around her routines since June, it was easy to come up with schedules for the last couple of weeks that enabled me to get all my baking and shopping done.

I still won't watch her YouTube channel. The last one I watched, she was all excited about Elon Musk "bringing free speech back to Twitter." I've been tempted to watch a few times since, to see whether she's eating her words on that, but I haven't done it. MAGA Republicans always have a way of twisting things around to suit themselves.

With the FlyLady, I take what I need and let the political and religious stuff rest.

I still can't believe I baked 12 batches of cookies. I almost didn't make it. 

This week I started with date crunch (top left), then Norwegian holiday cookies (bottom middle), and then the peppermint meltaways (top middle). And then I felt like I was done. I could have stopped there. But Teen B REALLY wanted me to make sugar cookies, so that he could help decorate. So on Thursday morning, while the twins were taking their last final, I made the dough. That night, on the spur of the moment, I whipped up the meringue cookies and put them in the oven to bake/dry overnight. Then on Friday morning, the kids (mostly Teen B) and I cut out and decorated and baked the sugar cookies (bottom left). Then I rebaked the meringues, because they were still soft from the day before. Probably overbaked them, but anyway, they're edible (bottom right). And then I went ahead and made the fudge (top left), because I wanted to have all day Saturday to get ready for Rocket Boy's arrival that night. So there you are, 12 batches.

Next year I am not going to make 12 batches! Skip the meringues, skip the gingerbread cookie bars, skip the spritz which were impossible. So no more than 9. Preferably 6. We'll see.

The aspect of Christmas that gave me the most trouble this year was the stupid tree. It's the only thing that made me truly angry. I am so done with this old tree!

I told Rocket Boy, if he's not around to put up the tree next December, I am going to go out and buy a new one. No ifs, ands, or buts. We'll see if I remember this next December.

Anyway, I struggled and struggled and managed to put up half the tree. More or less. (By myself. The twins would not help.) If you look at it closely you can see that I did something wrong, or a couple of somethings wrong. There are gaps in the trunk that shouldn't be there. I got the branches stuck in, but in retrospect I didn't arrange them properly, which also has to do with the way I put the trunk together. And then the branches started falling out, and I couldn't remember how to fix them with hose clamps. Or it may be that I didn't WANT to remember how to fix them with hose clamps. I found some hose clamps and the tool that you use, but I stopped there. Rocket Boy can fix them if he wants to, thought I, crossly.

I read somewhere that the best way to put lights on a tree is to go from top to bottom, moving all around the tree. Maybe for some trees that is best, but not this tree. I ended up with very strange bunches of lights in weird places. Also, I ran out of lights, so the back of the tree (and one strange section of the front) is not lit. Also, clumps of lights keep suddenly falling down.

I hate this tree. Merry Christmas to you too.

After I put the lights on, I didn't do anything else for a day or two. Too angry. Finally, yesterday, with Rocket Boy known to be driving across Kansas, I made a schedule for the hours of the day. The first hour looked something like this:

• Kitchen (15 mins)
• Living room (15 mins)
• Tree (15 mins)
• 15 min break
  

I made enough little schedules like that to fill seven hours of the day, and I started following them at 9 am, so I got a lot done. For almost every hour, the third 15-minute segment was "Tree." So the tree got done. 

I was careful to leave off ornaments that I know Baby Kitty likes to eat, such as anything made of a teasle or a pinecone, and anything that looks like a little stuffed animal. No straw stars either. I still have the remains of a couple of teasle ornaments he destroyed last year. That fat red Santa ornament on the upper half of the tree is possibly in danger, but I decided to risk it. So far this year Baby Kitty has not climbed the tree to take down higher-level ornaments, but they've only been up there one day so far, so I must be watchful.

I still don't have a real creche (my old one was destroyed in the 2013 flood). We have that circular one with levels, but I don't like it much. I look in stores every year, but I've never seen another that I like the way I liked my old one. So instead I set up my little Playmobil Christmas scene. That made me happy.

I still haven't gotten my Barbies into their Christmas outfits, so that remains on my (very short) to-do list. But come on, that's just fun.

I don't know what we're going to do this week, other than get our floor replaced and do some last-minute Christmas prep (like figuring out dinner). We'll go for walks, maybe go swimming. Maybe we'll go to a museum. There are a few people we want to get together with.

My book group is actually scheduled to come here on December 27th, so I have to plan for that. We're reading Dreaming the Beatles by Rob Sheffield, kind of an unusual choice. (I read it with my phone in one hand, constantly searching up and playing the songs he writes about.) I suppose I should serve English food, but I don't know. Maybe Indian food, because of George Harrison's interests? Something with apples, because of Apple Records. Or, let's see, oh, I could reference food mentioned in songs, such as "Savoy Truffle," but those are all desserts. I don't think anyone's going to be in the mood for an all-dessert menu, two days after Christmas. Mustard potato salad for "Mean Mr. Mustard." Strawberries for "Strawberry Fields Forever." Submarine sandwiches for "Yellow Submarine."

Hmm. I think Indian food sounds like the best option, actually. Or I could get submarine sandwiches from the grocery store. For either of those, I could do them at the last minute, next Tuesday. So I'm not going to worry about this anymore. It will be fine.

That will also be the 2nd day of Kwanzaa, which I also like to celebrate. The 2nd day is Self-Determination Day. OK, I'm not going to worry about that for the book group. Don't make things more complicated than necessary.

It feels strange not to have anything to worry about, a week before Christmas. Strange, and somehow empty. But in a good way.

OK, I'm going to finish this up and go get some things done. I want to take a quick walk and then I have to wash all the breakfast and lunch dishes by hand because we don't want to use the dishwasher again until after the new floor is installed, and then we're going to start moving things. Rocket Boy thinks we can take the dining table apart and put it against the wall and then move the stove, dishwasher, and fridge into the dining area. 

I'm sure it will be no problem at all.