Things I Have Been Doing Instead of Blogging

• Digging through 17 months worth of disorganized digital photographs to compile the cutest possible collection of chronologically organized photographs ever to fill a photo album for all sets of Great Grandparents.  Luckily, they live in four different states and will never need to know they received identical gifts.  I'm applying the Henry Ford assembly line approach to Christmas gifting.  Great Grandparents get the basic photo album model, perfect size for pocketbook storage and easy retrieval.  Grandparents will receive the luxury model photo album with an extended cab of extra pages and premium upholstery with full leather trim by way of basic scrap-booking layouts and catchy photo captions. 
  
• Realizing that I have never scrap-booked in my life, and perhaps the time to learn isn't the week of Christmas itself, practicing on the only actual gifts I have planned for my parents and in-laws.  Shrugging about that unfortunate reality.  Continuing to allow time to pass with no new plan.  Imagining how cute my imaginary first scrap-books will be.  Remembering what a mediocre craftsman I really am.  Telling myself to shush, so I can go back to imagining my adorable scrap-books.  Making no moves whatsoever to actually create said scrap-books.  Staring out the window, drinking tea, waiting for scrumptious scrapbooks to create themselves.  Imagining incredulous and grateful expressions of love pouring forth from parents and in-laws when they behold the perfect specimens that are my first and only scrap-books ever.  Blocking all thoughts of actual effort involved in scrap-book creation in favor of wild fantasies about fabulous finished products.  Pouring a new cup of tea.  All this thinking is hard!  Mama needs caffeine!
  
• Refusing to stress about my total lack of preparation for Christmas.  After all, if I got Baby Jesus and Santa on a conference call (which I totally COULD if they saw how perfect my pretend scrap-books are!), I feel certain they would both support a stress free holiday season.  Well, Jesus would anyway.  He was a hippie, and hippies are chill.  On the other hand, Santa's probably stressed as a motherfucker right about now!  But I'm not Santa (well, okay, technically I AM Santa now, but I haven't mentioned Santa yet to my son, so I can keep my big, red suit in the closet for another year.  And eat even more snacks so it will fit better next year!  Yay!  Pass the cookies!), which seems to me another reason to celebrate the season in the de-stressed manner befitting the dignity of a first time scrap-booker suffering from a seasonally induced cookie coma.
• Enjoying a few beers with my sis and her boyfriend who are passing through on their way from Boston to my mom's house.  In our typical family fashion of unpreparedness and last-minute-itis, she called to let me know they were coming.....an hour before they got on the road.  In our typical family fashion of unpreparedness and last-minute-itis, I decided that cleaning the house for guests is an unnecessary contrivance and took a nap while they drove here.  In typical Irish fashion, the four of us split a twelver and ate a giant shepard's pie when they arrived, and no one gave a hoot about the fact that we had to eat sitting on the living room couches because the dining room table is currently acting as repository for any and all mail received in the past however many months, plus some bowls of fruit.  And three small pumpkins from Halloween.  Sorting through all that is on my to do list.  I shall get to it when I get to it, y'all.  These are the holidays and shall be enjoyed with a nice india pale ale and some lentil shepard's pie.  
• Digging?  Realizing?  Refusing?  Enjoying?  It must be the end of one year and the beginning of another; calendar years love to go out in a burst of togetherness, intensity and ritual, like the burning of a pyre, and new baby years love to waltz in on the wreckage and beauty of it all and sweep clean the slate for the start of another cycle.  Today was the solstice, the shortest day of the year.  It's all brighter from here on out, y'all.  Happy Winter.  Happy Holidays.