December Projects

We had a lovely Thanksgiving! It was nice to have Z home for four days, the kiddos absolutely ate it up. It was a loud four days! At one point when my head was pounding and my eyesight was starting to shimmer, I told K, "You know you don't have to scream and shriek while you're playing, right?" She stopped abruptly and looked at me, puzzled. "But mommy....yes, I do!" Ol' Santa needs to bring me a year's supply of ear plugs, or at least a supply that will last until K learns what an "inside voice" is. We're working on it.

At K's request, our Christmas tree is already up...I was planning to wait until the first weekend in December, but I looked into my 3-yr-old's beseeching eyes on Friday and folded like lawn furniture. (Actually, her dad was in on the caving, too, so I had company). Whatever, she won't be three forever. The tree does look rather nice and festive, complete with colorful clumps where the kids hung their own ornaments. Why space them out when you can hang six on one branch, right?

So...the tree is done, but there are still some things I'd like to do this month. I figure if I list them here where other people can see (some of whom visit my house), I'll be more motivated to actually get them done.

December list, 2009:
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1) Finish decorating house. I have to find new homes for my Christmas decor, mostly because I don't like to do the same thing two years in a row, but also because I don't have a lot of the furniture that I used to (got rid of a lot moving twice in 6 months) so flat surfaces are few this year. We put up extra strings of lights in the kids' rooms, and A and K are soooo much fun to watch when we turn them on. Childlike wonder and awe are so breathtakingly beautiful to see, especially when they're your own urchins.

2) Figure out the "sweet spots" with the woodstove's flue damper and air intake. See the previous post.

3) Create a December Daily album, like this one. I like the idea of jotting down a little something of each day until Christmas, starting December first, and pair it with a picture or two. There is no way I have time to sit down every day to complete that day's section, though, so what I'll probably do is take a picture every day and write down something in a notebook, and get to the project later after the holidays are over. For me, this will probably be, like, June. I like the eclectic, collage style of this particular project and look forward to coming up with my own unique ways to create pages out of unusual materials (envelopes, part of a partially eaten winter hat (thanks dogs), etc). And it's a neat way to look back at that year's holiday since I know my kiddos won't be little forever.

4) Take time to enjoy the season, and chill. I don't typically get caught up in the hectic busy-ness that seems to plague a lot of people this time of year. That isn't to say that I don't stress over some things, perfectionist wench that I am, but we don't host Christmas parties at our house (A doesn't handle large noisy crowds well), we live too far away from family to have their presence a regular occurance (last year was the exception, we had family from both sides stay with us) and we don't gear up for mall warfare and commando shopping 1) because we like to keep it simple, 2) again, A can't handle crowds like that, and 3) because we don't have the funds to do so anyway.

This is not to disparage those that engage in those activities, I love parties, and I love shopping. The Lord knows if we had funding I'd be getting something for everyone I know, I always see things for other people on the rare occasion I actually enter that shrine to shopping, the mall. The thrill of the hunt! The adrenaline rush of having something new! The sound of the cash register ri-- Confession time: OK, so, I'm not a shopaholic, but I can see myself doing that easily, given the opportunity. God? Please??

I do have a tendency to get caught up in the minutia of daily life, though, and really do need to just relax sometimes.

5) Try something(s) new for Christmas dinner. We always do the things traditional to our family backgrounds: turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, etc. The menu for Thanksgiving and Christmas are actually identical most years, and I want to change that this year. Shake things up. It doesn't have to be flamboyant or fancy, it can be a simple thing -- but I do want it to be a special addition because Christmas is a celebration. I don't know if that means making a different dessert than pumpkin pie (I'm thinking either my great-great-aunt's coconut pie or a pear-cherry crumble), or if I need to shake up the side dishes a bit. Turnip gratin? Corn souffle? I've got nearly a month to figure that out. So I guess that means I should start now so it's done by Christmas.

6) Keeping tidy. For those of you that know me and have been to my house, you know that I have clung to a certain Victorian ideal in the past. Victorian homes were clean, but they had clutter. Many families passed down houses full of furniture and knickknacks for generations -- and each generation added its own knick knacks to make the home "theirs". More is more, right? Packrats of the world, unite! And all that. So, in an unprecedented assault on my treasures (do I really need this? Have I used it in the last year? Five years?) I've killed (most of) the clutter, although the mail does tend to congregate by the front door. The usual dumping ground is on the rolling dishwasher, the flat surface that's the closest. There's usually one day during the week when I do a double-take at the pile...I swear, sometimes I think the mail reproduces on my dishwasher. Most unsanitary. I have heard the "handle once" philosophy, wherein you get the mail out of the mailbox, immediately throw out the junk mail, and sort the bills to be paid. *snort* That hasn't worked out in my favor, yet, but I'll keep trying.

But I digress. We are clean, for the most part (a pair of my son's socks discovered under the bed recently notwithstanding), just largely untidy. I tend to pick up an item to put it away, go into the next room, see something else that needs done, drift into yet another room. By the end of the day, I haven't sat down except to eat, but nothing is actually completed. I have tried the "basket technique", where you gather everything that doesn't belong in a room and tote it all at once to the next room, but the basket fills up in each subsequent room and it never quite gets emptied. My three-year-old loves to help me, so it takes a bit longer. More than twice as long. It's good that she's learning to be a good steward of her stuff, but there are some days my patience stretches thin. That's usually when my husband arrives home, the house is in shambles, and I get the urge for a drink (even though I don't do that any more).

A Domestic Goddess, I ain't. I really do feel awkward about the chaos in my home, and want to get a handle on it. Somewhere, there is a book (possibly more than one) that states something to the effect of, it takes a month to build a habit. I'd really like to batten down the hatches, ready arms, rattle the spears, and [insert battle phrase here] this month in an effort to beat this. That way, if someone shows up unexpectedly, Blitzkrieg cleaning of the few random toys is so much easier to achieve and I don't stress out. In theory.
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So, that's this year's list. Not overly ambitious, but it will take work nevertheless. And it's now posted in cyberspace for the two people who read this to see, so now I have to do it. Right?