holiday stress

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Six for Saturday: Panicky and Exclamation Pointy

Wow! It has been… a week. Nothing bad! Just – so much driving, so many commitments. I have once again been A Terrible Blogger Slash Blog Friend, and all I have to offer you today are some bullets.

Cookie Swap Extension: THANK YOU to everyone who has sent in photos and links for the cookie swap! I am so excited! I wish we could all be traveling to a central location to share the scrumptious cookies in person! If you want to participate in the cookie swap but missed the original deadline, well, you are in good company as I also missed the deadline. I am hoping that I will get to make SOME COOKIES today or tomorrow, but it’s not looking great. I am looking down the barrel of at least two hours in the car both today and tomorrow and while that doesn’t seem like a whole lot when a day is twenty-four hours long, I find it Very Difficult to get anything meaningful done in and around so much driving. If I get an extension, so do you. I will aim to have the cookie swap post up on Monday evening or Christmas Eve at the latest. And, in part because I feel guilty about how flaky I have become, I have a little cookie-related giveaway planned for those who are interested. 

Christmas Cactus: Ever since I read Nicole’s post about Noelle, her Christmas cactus, I have been enchanted by the idea of owning one myself. When lo, what to my wondering eyes should appear in the floral section of my grocery store, but a Christmas cactus in full bloom! I bought it, brought it home, put it in the one spot in my house that gets semi-direct sunlight, and gazed adoringly at it every time I passed through the kitchen. It seems to be actively rejecting my love and hospitality, though. The blooms have begun to crumple and this morning I found that one of the teeny pink buds had fallen onto the table. What am I doing wrong?! Perhaps it is simply horrified by the state of the kitchen table. 

Housekeeping Standards, or Lack Thereof: My Christmas cactus is not the only one who is appalled. Not only is my kitchen table full of Random Crap, it is also covered in crumbs. But that’s not the half of it. My normally mediocre housekeeping activities have apparently taken as big a hit as my blogging this week. When all you do in your home is eat and sleep and follow the child around urging her to hurry! we are late!, the crumbs tend to pile up. I have an enormous kitchen island in my kitchen, and normally it is PRISTINE. That is my preferred state. I do not like to pile things on the island; we have other counters for piles. I like the island to be a clean and welcoming expanse of granite awaiting the preparation of delicious and nutritious meals and/or cookies. NOT THIS WEEK. Mail has piled up on the counter, I have a row of holiday cards waiting for me to hang them on the wall, there’s some leftover cedar fronds from the cedar garland I bought to go above the mantle, crumbs everywhere. Let’s not even contemplate the state of the floor. How we are not overrun by mice and/or ants is a miracle. I cannot wait for my family to be done eating in the kitchen so I can restore order by way of cleaning fluid, Swedish dishcloths, and my zooper.

Favorite Flower: I may have gone a little overboard in terms of holiday flora this year. I bought a poinsettia. But then. I went to my mother’s house, where she had the most enormous, beautiful poinsettia I have ever seen. She got it at Costco, she said. So I braved Costco the week before Christmas to get my own giant poinsettia. For $15.99. It’s hard to see in the photo, but this thing is at least three feet tall. I am sure it will die any moment now. 

Last Minute Stocking Stuffers: As per usual, I have been panic-buying last minute stocking stuffers like it’s my job. You may remember I said I was going to buy a cooling towel for my husband? Well, then I didn’t get one because I was hemming and hawing about whether he would really use it, and then I couldn’t find him any other interesting stocking stuffers, so I returned to get the cooling towel and it was sold out so I ended up getting him this three-pack. So if he doesn’t end up using it, now it will be three times as wasteful! This is the power of procrastination, folks. It is supposed to arrive Monday, which is cutting it quite close. I also panic-ordered my dad this magnetic pickup light tool, which looks useful but may be something I already bought him for a previous gift occasion? Not sure. And while I was ordering things, I added this book to the cart because I felt guilty Carla only has one book under the tree. And then, because my husband mentioned that he may not have any stocking stuffers for me, I ordered myself a nice little stocking stuffer. Why yes, I do have a problem.

How Are We Doing This?! I am mainly howling into the parenting void, but honestly: how is anyone doing anything? It has taken me SEVEN HOURS to complete this blog post.  (I did take a pause to clean the kitchen and floors and take a shower.) This is my life lately. Yes, yes, there is Extra Holiday Stuff, but also this is just… how things seem to be? Everything takes seven times as long as it should. Interruptions abound. (Today’s interruption was having to take a 45-minute detour to the shoe store to buy snow boots for my child whose perfectly good snow boots are suddenly too small.) Minor but essential activities (cleaning the counters, doing my thrice-daily zoop, cutting my toenails, showering) are being shelved in favor of… something??? (Being in the car, probably.) Of course I am not getting enough sleep – my sleep is plagued with weird-ass nightmares that linger days after – and I’m tired all the time which I recognize is not helping. (But what is this stage of life if not Tired All the Time?) I am clenching my teeth. Somehow I am ten minutes late to everything. I am in the car all the time. Listen, I get that moving to this new house with the new, much longer commute was a big change to my routine. But it has been more than a year now, and I should be getting used to it, and GETTING IT TOGETHER. But I am not! Nothing is together! I only have the one child and the one husband! All the things are good! I have no real stress to speak of! AND YET. I continue flailing around, spluttering and splashing and dog paddling my way from tiny sinking island to tiny sinking island and NOTHING IS BEING ACCOMPLISHED. How are YOU doing this???? What am I doing wrong???? And how do I fix it?!?!?!?!

Okay. I am going to finally post this and go dry my hair and then pack my child for a night at her grandparents and try to get into a Staycation With My Hubby frame of mind instead of my current state of AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

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A Bit of Christmas Angst + Dinners This Week

I seem to have fallen off the blogging wagon entirely, after NaBloPoMo. Well. Writing is like that, isn’t it. Sometimes the words flow freely; sometimes the well is dry. As the prolific Louis L’Amour said, “The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on,” so I am sitting here at my computer with my fingers on the keys, hoping something will come out. 

Part of the problem, maybe, is Christmas in all its impending vastness. I feel like I have done NOTHING, nothing at all to prepare for the holiday which is nonetheless marching toward me at a steady pace. The only piece of Christmas décor I have up (still) is the wreath my mother sent me the day after Thanksgiving. I have also been receiving a few holiday cards, here and there, and have been arranging them on the molding above the doors and windows in the kitchen. I like the way this looks, but the cards keep falling down and the door frames are very tall so I am spending a lot more time on my tiptoes than I would otherwise prefer. My husband and I finally sat down and got presents squared away. I ordered the roast for Christmas dinner, and my mother and I figured out our plans for getting together (they will come to us for Christmas Day, but we get to go to their house for Christmas Eve! I am so excited!) and settled on a menu. So maybe I am in better shape than I feel like I am??? But I really feel like I am in very poor shape indeed. 

Well. Writing does not make any sort of dent in the Christmas chaos. But I can at least use a blog post to help me figure out what to eat this week. Because, of course, we need to eat despite the many other things that require attention. 

Dinners for the Week of December 11-17

  • Slow Cooker Chipotle Chicken Tacos: I feel like someone suggested this recipe to me; was it Birchie? In any event, this sounds delicious and simple and I plan to make extra so that we can have leftovers. 
  • Lemon Chicken (inspired by Elisabeth): YUM. Some sort of green vegetable will accompany this. Maybe some leftover latkes as well.
  • Short Ribs with Wine and Cream: My husband and I had a little getaway a few weekends ago, to celebrate our fifteenth wedding anniversary. (FIFTEEN YEARS OMG.) We went out to dinner and each ordered a dish that purported to be beef stroganoff. But it was unlike any beef stroganoff I’ve ever had – cream based, with a lot of rosemary flavor – and was so decadent and delicious that I have been thinking about it ever since. This recipe sounds like it could be similar? Although I’m not sure about the capers. Well. Maybe worth a try.
  • Ground Beef Tacos: Yes, this means two different kinds of tacos on the meal plan this week. But I could (and sometimes do) eat tacos every day, plus I am trying to plan a playdate for Carla and a friend this week and I think they will both eat tacos. I am TERRIBLE at planning playdates, but Carla assures me that “kids who are almost teenagers, like me,” do not need a mommy to plan some sort of activity for the kids to do. They will just “have a dance party or do a fashion show,” she informed me. Excellent. I am wildly in favor of that kind of playdate. 

That seems like enough meals to get us through. We can have Ham Sandwich for the other three nights I haven’t accounted for. (In my case, leftover tacos.)

Are you suffering any holiday angst, or do you feel like you’re in good shape? 

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Dinners This Week

As is usual in December, I feel as though I’m whizzing down a very long, very steep slide. Every now and again, if I concentrate very hard, I can jam my heels into the slippery sides and slow down a bit – complete with loud squeaking of sneaker on plastic and the fear that someone is going to ram into me from behind – but gravity inevitably pulls me forward again. 

My mind wants to be consumed by finalizing shopping (just a few things left), wrapping, mailing, card sending… but there is also the other normal day-to-day stuff required of a typical week. 

Dinners for the Week of December 5-11

  • Chicken and Wild Rice Soup: This is one of my favorite soups, and it is a crockpot meal, and I am pretty sure my mother-in-law will like it. Usually I make a loaf of Miracle No-Knead Bread to go along side it, but I may just buy a loaf at the store.
  • Shredded Beef Ragu: I saw this on Instagram and it sounds so warming and delicious. But it calls for a 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes, which I will not eat; I wonder if I could replace it with a 28 oz can of tomato puree?
  • Some Other Sort of Soup: We are still in the thick of after-school activities, which means that we eat dinner together very rarely. I am in the mood, lately, to make soup that we can eat for several days. I may be butternut-squash-souped out, and I know my husband doesn’t consider soup to be a meal unless it includes meat. This Creamy White Chicken Chili sounds delicious… as does this Cream of Mushroom Soup. (The mushroom soup would be only for me, since it is meat-free.) 

That’s it for today, Internet. Hope you have a happy Monday.