Feeling A Day Late and a Dollar Short

My sister Theresa loves Christmas.  She bakes mounds of cookies, cakes and pies.  She spends hours shopping to find just the right gift at just the right price. She wraps hundreds of presents in pretty paper and delicate bows. 

She tramps the family miles into the woods to pick out a perfect tree. She makes apple cider and hot chocolate.

She decorates her house from top to bottom, inside and out.  She spends days planning and cooking elaborate meals and hosting holiday parties.

And, she gets most of this done before the Thanksgiving leftovers are gone (an eight course meal that she cooked from scratch).

I love Christmas too. That is, I love the day OF Christmas.  The twenty four days before, however, are a much different story. I’m not nearly as organized or energized as Theresa.  At the best of times, most of December is a blur of shopping, shipping worrying and fretting.

This year has been particularly bad.  I never did any pre-shopping.  Right now, there isn't a single gift set aside and ready.  I didn’t order Christmas cards yet, a task I normally complete in October.  I have no idea what the kids want from Santa.  I'm concerned if we don't mail one soon it won't arrive at the North Pole in time.  And, we are already into the first week of December and I have not even started my holiday decorating.  A process that usually takes me four days.

I know, what you are thinking, there are plenty of days left, right? Wrong. From now until the end of this decade, I don’t have a single unscheduled minute.  There are Christmas parties, Christmas pageants, and Christmas plays to attend.  And that is in addition to our normally busy schedule.

In the next twenty four days, I still need to make a list, shop for gifts, ship gifts to family back east, order Christmas cards, address cards, mail cards, wrap presents, pull out the decorations, put up the decorations, trim the tree, make cookies,……and on and on and on.   So don’t be surprised if you see me outside putting up lights at three a.m. on a Tuesday.

If I could afford it, I’d be pay someone to do all of this for me.  Then I could concentrate on more important things – like watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas for the 100^th time.  Or sleeping.

All of this is why today I’m feeling a day late and a dollar short.   

Is it just me?  Am I the only one feeling buried in holiday happenings? Cause it seems like the rest of the world is organized while I’m suffocating under the weight of my To Do list.

There has to be a better way. There has to be a secret to getting my holiday tasks in order.  Maybe the answer is adding an extra two hours to every day.  Or maybe the answer is moving Christmas to the second week in January so I have more time to prepare.  Or maybe the answer is winning the lottery. 

That’s where you come in my friends.  I need HELP and I need it NOW.  Please, if you have suggestions on how I can wrap up all of my holiday tasks (pun intended) without going crazy, I eagerly await your suggestions.  Send them to me on Facebook or leave a comment here.

And now, with a HO HO HO, off I go to get it all done before the setting of the sun.