I have Real Work to do this morning, but I am in a mini panic and sometimes it helps to get that out first. Like blowing the nose, it helps with breathing.
That rather disturbing image reminded me of something: the last time I went to Costco, there was no Kirkland Brand toilet paper, so I was forced (“forced”) to buy Charmin, which I would never normally buy because it is expensive. We just recently started using the Charmin and a) it is very thick and very soft and b) it disappears in an instant. I have replaced THREE ROLLS this week already, which is ABSURD, especially when I am the only person home for most of the day and there is nothing driving additional toilet paper usage. You know. Like an influx of squishable/flushable bugs. WHY is it disappearing at such a frantic rate?
Since I have already meandered off the path, I will further note that I grew up in a house where toilet paper was also used as facial tissue. You had to blow your nose, you used not-Charmin. This was one of the Inherited Differences my husband and I had to battle out when we married; he had a Kleenex childhood. We do HAVE Kleenex in our home, now. But it’s mainly for guests. (My husband does not blow his nose unless he has a cold, which is something I cannot fathom; I need to clear the nasal passages every morning but old toilet-tissue habits die hard.)
Goodness, this post has gotten off to a rather unpleasant start.
Onward, to my holiday mini panic.
Perhaps I need some of the CBD products Another Me has been ordering, using my email address instead of her own. CBD oil is supposed to have a soothing effect, right? I’ve never tried it. I do not understand why she does not know her own email address, but it does look like her actual mailing address is hers and not mine. If she didn’t live in the UK, I might consider sending her a letter about all the times I’ve gotten work emails and product confirmations that she might not like a stranger seeing.
She’s not the only person who is using my contact info as her own: someone named Joann (which I find amusing because of this post) has missed several recent updates about a FedEx delivery because she used my phone number instead of her own. I wonder if I have ever done this, inadvertently?
Oh right, right. The topic at hand.
I have been trying so hard to be on top of Holiday Stuff. And yet it has all fallen completely apart. Despite my best intentions – and considerable nagging – the holiday cards are still sitting in my office, un-enveloped, un-addressed, un-stamped. I don’t even HAVE stamps, which is really on me. Worse, we still have SO MANY Christmas gifts to buy, and then wrap and mail. It is giving me the vapors. THE VAPORS.
(Lest you think we wasted a wonderful five-day holiday during which we could have accomplished most of this stuff: yes, yes we did waste it. But my husband wanted a BREAK, and to do things he never gets to do, like sleep in, and work on his music, and play video games. He really does work very hard, and so I didn’t want to deny him a few days off from bothering him about All the Stuff We Need to Accomplish. To be fair: we did plan a Big Upcoming Trip, which required a lot of comparing of airline schedules and researching hotels and rental cars and coordinating with family who will join us. So that was at least something we took care of.)
Listen, I realize I am lucky that my husband wants to be an Active Participant in the holiday stuff. He likes to have a say in what the holiday card looks like, for instance. He is also the Keeper of the Addresses, which is a good thing, because they are uniform and neat and always print out on labels exactly the way they should, and I no longer have to hand-address 80+ envelopes. He helps determine what to get his parents, who are very difficult to shop for. He is very good at keeping us within the confines of a budget.
But he does not share my sense of urgency.
Obviously, he works 10-12 hour days helping patients, which is undeniably Important Work. So he has less time than I do to fret about this kind of thing. (He is also not really the fretting type.) Plus, he seems to have an aversion to doing things earlier than absolutely necessary. (Although I would argue we passed “absolutely necessary” when the calendar shifted to December.) I started the Christmas gift talk months ago, and his brain just doesn’t process it that far in advance. Even last month, when I was starting to build up a real froth, he was reluctant to get going – and it took several forwarded articles from reliable news sources about shipping delays and supply chain issues for him to finally relent to ordering a few things. He also likes to do lots of research before making a purchase. And, listen, I appreciate how meticulous he is about price comparisons and finding the exact best version of a product. Really, I do. I don’t have the patience for that myself, and so I’m glad he does it.
But all of this adds up to VERY SLOW. A turtle riding a sloth could get things done more quickly. Sometimes I just want to be able to take decisive action: This holiday card is good enough: order! This would make a good gift for my mother-in-law: purchase!
Of course, if that were the case, I would then feel aggrieved and frustrated about being solely responsible for gift giving. Sigh.
As it is, I feel aggrieved and frustrated about being The One Who Decorates. Christmas décor doesn’t matter to my husband, so it’s up to me. At least Carla (currently) finds it fun to help. We haven’t started decorating yet; I think we will wait until after Hanukkah, although I have hung up the Christmas Reading Countdown Calendar already and have brought up Carla’s holiday dishes at her request.
I also feel aggrieved and frustrated about being The Gift Nag. Every conversation with my husband lately includes me prodding him about gift ideas or asking him to send me the holiday addresses so I can update them. Every conversation includes an increasingly strident warning about shipping times (and his retort that we haven’t experienced any of those shipping delays in any of our orders) (and my unvoiced response: NOT YET).
(And also: we have experienced some product delays. We ordered caramels for everyone on our list weeks ago and those have yet to arrive. Hurry, hurry little caramels! One of you needs to be on its way across the continent!)
I am also feeling aggrieved and frustrated that my office has become Box Central. All the gifts we’ve ordered and have yet to wrap are in my office. All the beautiful boxes that I’ve collected over the past few months and have saved for gift-sending purposes are in my office. Our brand-new artificial Christmas tree (sob) is waiting just outside my office door to be unboxed and set up. I cannot USE my office currently, and that’s deeply irritating and makes me feel extra buzzy-in-the-blood about getting all those boxes OUT.
What can I do but fret and panic?
Well. I suppose I can take a deep breath. I can go for a walk outside in the 50(!) degree sunshine. I can remind myself of all the things I have completed: I do have my husband and Carla (mostly) covered. I do have most of the gifts for my own parents. I do have my sister-in-law and niece’s gifts – I just need to wrap them and send them. My brother requested no gifts this year, so he and my sister-in-law are taken care of. I do have stocking stuffers sorted. I can go buy stamps. I can update the holiday addresses. I can make a nice tidy list of things we have yet to complete:
- Address and mail holiday cards
- Finalize purchases for Carla’s “rilly big box full of all craft stuf”
- Wrap and mail gifts for sister-in-law and niece
- Mail caramels to my brother and sister-in-law whenever they get here
- Buy the final gift for my mother
- Buy the final gift for my father
- Buy all gifts for my mother-in-law
- Buy all gifts for my father-in-law (including birthday gifts)
- Buy all gifts for my aunt-in-law
Okay, listing it out made me MORE panicky. Have I done ANYTHING to prepare for Christmas?! THERE IS SO MUCH STILL TO DO.
We’ll just have to buckle down and finalize everything this weekend. We must we must WE MUST.
(Is this making you feel better about your own holiday state of affairs? What do you have left to accomplish?)
life of a doctor's wife 
That line about the turtle riding the sloth getting things done faster…… Describes my children getting ready for school every morning.
Thank you for the reminder that it is, actually, time to address the Christmas cards and purchase the stamps.
You sound further along in the preparations than I am!
This actually *did* make me feel much better (sorry!). I am also so glad I have so few people to buy presents for (we really don’t exchange with anyone other than immediate family (husband + two kiddos) or whoever might be visiting us over the holiday). Our photocards are the “gift” to most other family and friends.
I am feeling a bit panicked that I haven’t made homemade cookies for various sets of neighbours and local friends. They’re lovely, but I really don’t feel like making cookies for them…but also really do? We shall see. We don’t have our main tree up and won’t for at least another week. I’m trying to cut corners where I can.
Also your comment: “when I was starting to build up a real froth” made me think of a description my father often used for my mother that she “had smoke coming out of both ears.” I have inherited a similar propensity for frothing and smoking (not with tobacco, but the mental health variety of building steam until it’s almost visible to the naked eye).
I don’t know if it will help—but I got all my cards done and was absolutely FROTHING to send them out December 1st, and then December 1st arrived and I felt positively silly sending them out so early. Really ridiculous. EVEN THOUGH last year I got some cards AFTER CHRISTMAS that had been mailed the first week of December! So! It’s NOT silly! (But it feels silly.)
I DO feel good about mailing the two sine qua non UPS packages, one to my parents and one to Paul’s sister. Those really HAD to arrive on time, and they have. I am panicking a little about some of the other presents, but not as much as I was panicking about those.
I refuse to panic this year. It will happen on time or it won’t. That is my mantra and I think it works for me because I have ceased caring about being a responsible person. If holiday cards go out in February, that’s cool. If my mom gets her present after the 25th, that’s cool, too. I am officially out of cares about dates on the calendar anymore. (This is obviously due to the fact that there is a global pandemic and I never leave my house and time has become increasingly irrelevant. I may need therapy.)
I think I’m probably in more of a panic than you. I did get the tree decorated – but that’s about it. Usually, November – December are the quietest months of the year at work. This year, after being “volunteered” to cover someone else’s job until a replacement was found (she starts next week! Yay!); I have been too busy to even think about Christmas. I NEED to send my mother-in-law’s gifts but, I need to purchase one more thing for her and I wanted to make some almond bark for her – maybe this weekend? (Doubtful. Man-Child and his girlfriend are coming to celebrate Thanksgiving). For The Husband I have bought exactly ONE (boring) gift. Christmas cards? Forget it – we have no recent pictures to choose from.
Argh! And I wonder why I’ve been unable to sleep lately.
Ohhh, the stress! I have to wrap and pick and ship some presents! That I haven’t finished buying! And my office/craft room is such a mess, which will be a problem in three weeks when it has to become a guest room. And cards, wasn’t I going to do cards? Gah.
Ahhhhhh! That is stressful. The mail/ delivery situation is so weird right now. I frantically sent out parcels on Nov 16, thinking it could take forever – plus I was sending to BC, which is devastated by flooding – and then like a week later I got a text from my MIL thanking me for the package. Then again, I sent something to the States on that same day and who knowwwwwwssss when that will get there. The lady at Canada Post was like, you could spend $30 extra to get tracking, and I didn’t want to do that for the small gift that it was, but also I have no idea when it will get there. Oh well. It will happen when it happens I guess.
I buy Scott toilet paper. It is NOT thick or soft but it works. 😉 When I have bought Charmin, we go through it faster than you can say WHY WON’T THE TOILET FLUSH? We, meaning mostly the kids, cannot get the concept that we do not need to pull off as much from the roll for each use and we end up practically backing up the toilets. I also think Charmin has less on each roll. Thus the need to replace every time you turn around.
I am not panicked about Christmas but I am also not ahead of the game. I’m hoping supply chain issues are not a problem for the things I order . . . just as buying a turkey was not an issue despite the warnings.
Coach buys nothing. Licks no envelopes. Makes zero lists. Does not ponder gift ideas for anyone. This year he did not even carry the boxes of decor and lights up from the crawlspace. Lad did that for me and since I do a lot for HIS dog that was only fair.
I am drafting a post for Monday about my great Christmas gift idea and how that may or may not work out.
Presents mostly bought, only a few wrapped, nothing mailed, but I’m going to the post office today. A wreath on the door but no other decorations up. We’re getting a Christmas tree this weekend, much earlier than usual (we tend to get one just days before Christmas) because Beth heard they may run out of them.
BTW, I think my son might grow up to be your husband. He is careful, meticulous, and SLOW.
I, too, have found that my husband rarely shares my sense of urgency about anything. When it comes to Christmas decorating and the sending of cards it’s all up to me. Not bad exactly, just a thing. Your office reminds me of mine. When in doubt all random items end up here, for me to figure out what to do with them next.
I was feeling the holiday stress last weekend when my walk-in closet kept filling up with gifts to wrap! And I just really wanted to get my shopping DONE so I didn’t have to think about it anymore. And I got a lot done last weekend so I’m feeling a bit less crazed about it all. I mean, it helps that there is a lot of the Christmas season that I don’t participate in (no holiday cards here!) but I hope you are able to check some things off your list this week so you can feel a bit less stressed. It’s the worst feeling!