On the first day of Christmas break, my true love gave to me

a mug of Splenda-sweetened milky tea.

Ah ... a morning where I don't have to get up. Or get my children up.

But guess what? I figured out that my children aren't freaks of nature. They're crazy because I'm crazy. It always drives me nuts that they oversleep on school days, but wake up at the crack of dawn on the weekend.

Guess who woke up at 6:00 this morning?

OK ... yesterday. And what I did and didn't do:


1. Order Amazon gift cards for all my kids' teachers.
2. Order Amazon gift cards for my relatives.
3. Order an Ikea gift card for my sister-in-law.
4. Order Christmas flowers for my mother and sister.
5. Order stocking stuffers for my kids.
6. Order a surprise for a friend who reads this blog, so shhhhhhh!
7. Go out and buy new bathrobes for everyone. One of them will be my husband's birthday present. Which was Wednesday.
8. Go out and buy my husband a GPS system for his birthday. Again, two days ago.
9. Make sure we have all the ingredients for Friday pizza night.
10. Send out some Christmas cards.
11. Mail a package to my brother-in-law.
12. Make my grocery list, and as I'm out and about, pick up items from it.
13. Do something about my dining room, which looks drab and colorless now that I've removed all the shit that doesn't belong there.
14. BUY BATTERIES because God knows the window candles won't last the season without reinforcements.
15. Write thank-you notes to people who have given me stuff or been amazingly kind.

This is pretty good progress, considering. A few spanners fell into the works as the day progressed. My shopping got a bit cramped when I received a phone call informing me that my credit card had been declined. That was a bit of a freak out, and progress was derailed until I discovered the reason. It wasn't the usual reason, because I wasn't using my card. When it's my card, I have to think very hard indeed--until my brains rattle around in my head--to remember if perhaps, but some amazing oversight, I had forgotten to pay the bill! For a couple of months. Again.

But this was a card my husband is in charge of, and he not only pays his bills on time, he likes to leave wide, generous, plush borders of available credit on his cards. Kind of like the matting in a print framed in the eighties.

Therefore, I suspected internet fraud of something just as bad.

Turns out the bitch forget to get the bank's safety code. So that was OK.

Still, bathrobes and GPS systems were not bought, because who needs the humiliation of being told her credit was declined? Not I.

But! I sent out 50 Christmas cards yesterday. And will send some more out today. And when That Stud Muffin I Married returns witih the concert tickets he left in Chicago* I'll be able to hit the mall and deal with the whole bathrobe situation.

We'll pick up the birthday cake I ordered for today on our way to the concert. And finally have Wednesday night's birthday cake and Friday night's pizza night tonight.

* See? He's not perfect, either.