I am going to need elves

Knitters, things are bad over here. Try as I might, work the spreadsheet as I do… hours of my life keep evaporating in mountains of regular work, and I am starting to feel like Christmas is a big hairy beast with enormous pointed teeth, bearing down on me from behind.  I can practically feel it’s hot breath on the back of my neck, especially if I stop running for a single moment. I love Christmas, usually. Usually by this time of year (let’s not discuss the date. I’m already a little woozy) I have things sort of in hand.  This year?

treeup 2015-12-09

I like to get the tree up early – not early by some standards, but certainly in the first week of December. This December found Joe and I desperately comparing schedules, looking for the 90 minutes that we both had free to walk to the tree place, choose a tree, carry it back through the street, wrestle it into the house, move furniture around and then have the 20 minute conversation about whether or not it is straight in the stand, and what side is best. It took until this morning to find that time… and we had to get up a little earlier to make it happen, and we spent a lot less time on the task than we usually do, but by wool, we have a tree.  It is naked, it is possibly not straight, I have no idea if this is its best side, and the lights are still in the box (though we did collect the boxes from the basement.

ornaments 2015-12-09

Half knit items litter the house, the expected knit-rumpus happened this past weekend, but was not nearly enough, nothing is wrapped (holy cats someone better buy wrapping paper) the shopping list is completely out of control, and sometime between right now and Friday night, I need to seriously get a Christmas going on over here. A conversation happened a few weeks ago – where we all talked about how hard the parents are working right now, how busy we are – how much we all have on our plates….and we decided to only do the things we love this year. To let go of expectations, let go of traditions that nobody really cares about… we asked ourselves what really matters to us this time of year.

It turns out that the answer was that we want to be together, we want to see family and friends, we want to sing carols and make music, and we want to decorate gingerbread. We all agree that it’s not really Christmas without that, so, a few things got cancelled, a few others got moved around, and Friday night we’ll all gather for our traditional gingerbread party.  That means that we have just a little over 48 hours to go from zero (well, not technically zero, I do have a naked tree) to a house full of people, dinner for more than 20, a few hundred gingerbread cookies baked and ready for decorating, and (at least) five colours of royal icing made, put in piping bags, and ready for little (and big) hands to decorate them.  So far, I have… well. A naked tree and I’m leaving here in a few hours for another two bike rally meetings – though at least I can knit through those.

socksnot 2015-12-09

I have decided, after careful consideration, and establishing the minimums that must be a accomplished, that tomorrow morning I will get up, make a very large pot of coffee, delegate everything possible…. and then warp the time-space continuum.

It’s going to be fine. I think. Right?