Author name: Sandra Tayler

Every Christmas Eve I have a moment when I’ve arranged all the surprises, wrapped all the presents, stuffed all the stockings, then I stand back and look at the array and wonder “will they be happy?” As a parent I really want Christmas to be a joyful, magical day where dreams come true. Some years I’ve stood back and wondered if I’d gotten too much, thus causing overload. This year I fear disapointment. There are simply some items that my kids would love to have and I can’t afford to buy for them. Tonight during our Christmas Eve ritual we talked carefully about finding joy in giving and mentioned the fact that we won’t all get everything we want.

I hope that if there are tears tomorrow I know what to say to mend them.

I do not think I have ever seen Gleek as wired as she was this evening. She quite literally could not sit still during dinner. She was running laps across the kitchen. Then when I made her stay in her chair she stood on it bouncing up and down flapping her arms while I spooned bites of food into her mouth. Attempting reverse psychology I said “I bet you can’t sit still for three minutes.” As expected she said “Yes I can!” Then she sat down motionless for two seconds then started drumming her feet against the table.

Christmas is exciting.

I took my name off the Freecycle mailing list today. I got some useful things from it and unloaded some stuff that I thought I’d never get rid of. But the local list moves too fast for me. Lately anything I might be interested in gets taken within minutes. If I want to get an item I have to notice it within minutes of it posting and I have to be willing to jump in my car and go get it right away. I’m not willing to put that much effort into monitoring the list and so the result is that I’m getting spammed with notices about items being offered and then taken.

I’ll probably sign up for it again when I’m actively seeking stuff, but for right now there isn’t anything I don’t have and really need.

Link has begun a running tally of Days Until Christmas. This is very exciting to him since we’ve reached single digits. And even more so now that we’ve rounded the corner of the weekend and Christmas is THIS WEEK! Kiki is excited as well, but much more quietly. Gleek has absolutely no sense of time at all. For her if it isn’t Right Now, it is too far away. Patches is clueless, but enjoys the general excitment in the air.

Yesterday Howard tried to introduce Link to the intricasies of Holiday Counting. 6 days to Christmas, but christmas day doesn’t actually count, so it’s only 5 days. And today is half over, so we don’t need to count it. So that’s only 4 days. Oh, but school gets out on Wednesday, so it is really like Christmas begins then, so it is only TWO days.

Link looked at him like he was nuts. Link knows how to count, and that was just silly.

I wear a watch. It isn’t a particularly nice watch, I’ve had it for years. I’ve replaced the band and the battery at least once. Just recently it became obvious that I’d have to do so again. In the spirit of thrift I decided that this could be a Christmas present to me from Gleek. So today I sent Howard and Gleek to the mall to get a new band and battery. The bill for this service came to $45. I had no idea that it would be so expensive. Had I gone to do this service myself I would have walked out of the store and gone to Walmart and bought myself a cheap $7 watch. Instead Howard was in a store with a three-year-old Buying a Present for Mommy. The battery and the band were already on the watch before he saw the bill. There really wasn’t any way for him to back out of the deal.

Now I’m just sick to my stomach. We just spent $45 on a watch that I don’t care that much about. That much money could have bought hours of fun for everyone in the form of a game. For $45 I could have bought a DDR rig for the xbox which I’d much rather have than a stupid watch.

Now I’m stuck. If I don’t wear the watch the money is a complete waste, but if I wear it I’ll be reiminded every day of how stupid I am for actually believing that repair would be cheaper than replacement. I just want to cry.

addendum: Things which seem awful after a night of too little sleep, seem much much better after a nap.

Last night Howard and I were both self-indulgent. Howard had rented the xbox game Fable which had to go back this morning, so he wanted to play as much as he could. I had a book (The Golden Key by Melanie Rawn et al) and was luxuriating in being able to disappear into the story without cries of “Mooo-ooom!” dragging me back. We both stayed up until 2 am. There is something really wonderfully fun about staying up way too late doing something you enjoy. For parents it is a guilty pleasure though, because you know you’ll pay for it big time the next day and so will the kids.

Patches was cheerfully awake at his usual hour (7:30 am). Gleek started hollering for me at 8am and that was the end of sleep. I dragged myself out of bed and into the kitchen where I found a kitchen full of dirty dishes and no counterspace anywhere. I shoved dishes aside, making teetering stacks in the sink, trying to create enough space to make french toast. Before anyone oohs or ahhs over the fact that I made french toast for kids on 6 hours of sleep, I should point out that making breakfast is just self defense. If I don’t fill up the noisy holes with food, they will continue to be noisy at me. Like fledgling birds, my children are capable of foraging for themselves, but they find it much simpler to flutter helplessly and holler until I put something in their mouths.

After breakfast my body switched into one of those high-energy not-enough-sleep-so-I’m-hyper modes. The kids’ work is mostly done. My work is mostly done. In theory I can enjoy a peaceful afternoon. But I suspect that if things get too peaceful, I’ll crash into a nap.

I had plans for today. I was going to go to bed on time. I was going to get all kinds of stuff done.

I didn’t get to bed on time, then Patches woke up sick and kept me up for a significant portion of the rest of the night. Right now I can’t even remember all the things I wanted to be efficient enough to get done.