TGIF

Somewhere in between the holiday decorations in the mall and the sale advertisements and catalogs in the ever-teetering mail pile I let Christmas sneak up on me. Oh, it's been coming. In fact, it's been coming all year. But suddenly, it's HERE. Since I have to ship almost all of my family's Christmas gifts (and I don't want to pay more in postage than I spent on gifts), I have to shop early to get gifts into the post on time. Now, I know that some folks shop in January for the following year's holiday. But for me, early qualifies as anything purchased prior to Christmas Eve day at 4:00 p.m.

This predicament is not a new thing for me - I have to ship gifts every year. But somehow this Monday it struck me like lightning - if I don't shop/wrap/mail this week - the gifts might not be on time. And telling my nephew that Auntie was too lazy to come through in a timely manner just won't fly. So amongst all the other things I scheduled this week (because it never occurred to me that oh, yeah, my entire shopping list is needing to get done by TODAY), I frantically pounded it out. Thankfully, although my physical shell of a being had not moved past thinking about buying gifts to actually acquiring them, my brain had at least been considering what to buy. After a few minor crises (out of stock items/colors/do you think they'll like its?) the perfect gift was found for each person on my list, wrapped, and shipped out this afternoon. Tonight - I'll raise a glass of wine at Cyclo in celebration of completing all of my holiday shopping on time. Now if that Christmas tree would just decorate itself.....