Following My Own Advice

Hello Monday. A day to loathe for some, a day to start off running for others. Grrr...The best laid plans of mice and men oft times go astray and they are for me today. Got my holiday plans organized on paper but it is already 2:00 and I have no more than thrown a load of clothes in the wash and showered. Tried to fit some sweaters in drawers and decided to pack away the summer stuff. Can't pack that stuff up too tightly as we are spending Christmas in Naples. Florida, that is. Son number 2 is a golf pro down there for the season and couldn't get the time off so we are going to him. It is sort of a relief as we now don't have to make the frenetic rounds of family visiting and socializing. Bah humbug you might say of me, but as much as I would like to say that I'm cool as a cucumber with all the entertaining, gift buying, wrapping, cooking, baking, yada yada...I'm not. I get weird. I want to start shopping in August, but no, I'm a mall rat starting the second week of December. I do a little shopping downtown, but then it's just getting caught up in the merriment of the season; the beautiful decorations and lights on State Street, the gorgeous window decorations, the carolers and corner musicians, even the Salvation Army volunteers with their bells and pails bring a tear to my eye. But oh then, to pop into a warm, dark wooded pub and have something warm and fuzzy and alcoholic. Bliss! Let's stay awhile and take a late train home! That said, the husband and I are going to buy the children small gifts to bring to Naples. By small I mean something that can hide in a suitcase. Once there we can do more shopping. We are staying in a little resort on the ocean and we have the whole set up, kitchen, dining room, living room, bedrooms. So we are going to get a real tree and lights and hang some type of adornments on it. Coconuts? And I will make the traditional dinner. Not everyone is taking this whole change of tradition well. Emily is worried about the dogs being boarded, Abby thinks our Christmas tree at home will get lonely, Jeff is worried that we won't have a big screen television to watch sports on and Kevin...well he's just looking forward to an enormous turkey dinner with all the trimmings.
Well I went a little astray with what I started out on. My To Do List goes on and on and I have 3 more days to get this house in shape. I wonder what I have been doing the past couple of weeks knowing that company would be coming now. Curtains to be washed, book shelves organized, just so much clutter everywhere. I'm a clutter person, but I thought I did it in an organized way. Wrongo. And all the magazines advise against stressing yourself out over the small details. Well if your not going to stress out over them now, when will you?? These are things to be addressed sooner or later and why was I lying about reading this useless advice instead of DOING something??? Well, I'm going to started. Oh, FYI. Martha Stewart advises to take the turkey out of the freezer today to defrost in the fridge by Thursday. Goes to show you I do glean a little info from my magazines. Then again all Martha has to do is go out into her yard for a fresh bird. See ya!