Bah Humbug

I feel a little bit bad about even broaching this topic since it doesn't seem to be in the proper spirit of things, but I am really sick of Christmas. I fully recognize that I do this to myself and do it almost every year, but this year it seems a bit worse. My problem is that I take on too much, start too early, and by the time the actual holiday is here I want it and everyone else to go away. This year we packed in birthday parties, a boat parade, a dog parade, dinner with friends, our anniversary, a trip to NY, a holiday open house, a cookie swap, and soon, a visit from my in-laws all before the 25th.

It seems that we add on some more to this crazy list every year and every year Ryan seems to disappear a little bit more from the holiday planning part of the whole thing. He'll claim this is totally unfair (and it probably is since I am so stressed out and tired right now that I want to crawl under my desk, have a good cry, and then fall asleep), but I think my breaking point happened last week when he sat around complaining about my liberal use of bookmarks on my bookmark bar while reading a Sherlock Holmes website while I sat in a giant pile of gifts that needed to be wrapped. Sound familiar to anyone? To make matters worse, it seems that few people around me think of themselves as organizationally challenged at best and at worst think that I am insanely anal. I have tried the Schroeder method of waiting til the absolutely last minute to get anything done and, in it's own way, the Schroeder method has driven me to the brink. I am one of those people who compile a list of gift ideas, scout the Internet and my favorite stores for the best deals, order the Christmas cards before Thanksgiving, and hopefully have everything in place with a few weeks to spare. Needless to say, I have been having dark thoughts lately about being surrounded by procrastinators. I do believe I sounded quite shrill at 11 PM the other night as Ryan agonized over getting his grandparents another food basket for Christmas. My response was that it didn't matter anyway since they would never get it in time unless he was willing to pay $40 to ship the damn thing.

Oh the holidays. If it wasn't for the girls, I would be on the first cruise ship to Bermuda right now. And poor Izzy is sooo into it this year. She keeps running around saying "this is going to be the best holiday ever." Meanwhile I am in the kitchen pouring myself an increasingly large glass of scotch.