I just love December

I realize everyone says, “December is crazy!” Well, I decided to not let the month get to me. Sean and I planned ahead to have a shopping day early in the month; I thought this would help me avoid being caught in the last-minute, "Where the heck did the month go?" frenzy. All went as planned until December 3 when Sean and I had a threesome. It was actually more like a twenty-some.

It was more Popular Mechanics than Sex and the City. Sean was supposed to come home early to go to the dentist and then we would be able go to dinner and to do some Christmas shopping together. Sean called around noon and the tone of his voice told me our date was off. Something happened to a skid and there was a horrific breakdown and he wasn’t sure he’d ever get home again.

Thankfully what was broken got fixed and Sean was able to get home around 6. We decided to head out and attempt to tackle at least some of the items on the kids’ lists. We weren’t gone more than ten minutes before Sean’s phone started ringing. Whatever was broken before was broken again and apparently everyone at the plant thought Sean was the man to call. What the heck was he going to do? He wasn’t even there!

Every few minutes Sean’s phone would ring and he’d motion to me to go ahead without him. I could hear him as he trailed behind me, talking in a hushed voice about skillets and skids and ball joints. I finally just left him in an aisle and went about our shopping. He’d catch up but the phone would ring again and I’d lose him once more.

We were out for an hour and a half and I think I only had Sean’s undivided attention for 12 of those 90 minutes. Even after we got home the phone kept ringing. It didn’t stop until 11 that night. I felt like I had just spent the evening with my husband and 15 other GM employees. Not exactly the best night of my life.

Despite the ringing phone I was able to pick up almost everything we’d decided to get for the kids, so I was feeling like I was on top of Christmas. But yesterday I woke up to realize I was completely behind the eight ball: I hadn’t mailed out the invitations to Sean’s office party which we are hosting next weekend. Saying I hadn’t mailed them makes it sound like I had them ready to go; that is an incorrect assumption.

So yesterday I spent the majority of my day printing and assembling the invitations. Last year I found these adorable invitations and best of all they were half price. I now know they were half price not just because it was the day after Christmas; it was because they are the most complicated invitations ever invented.

I couldn’t just feed them through the printer because the invitation was an odd size, so I had to tape each invitation (I was printing 35) to a regular piece of computer paper and feed them through one at a time. This took nearly an hour.

Then the arts and crafts began. The invitations came with glitter and fuzzy balls and glue dots. I had to take the top of the chimney, smear it with white glue and sprinkle it with the glitter. Of course I had to wait for that to dry before I could take the chimney bottom, put the glue dots on it and put the chimney tops on the chimney bottoms. Then I should have been able to slip the invitation down the chimney, stick it into the envelope and be done. However, the invitation was too long for the chimney so I had to trim an inch off the bottom of each invitation.

The entire time all I could think was, “I’m a week late sending these out so no one’s going to come so I’m doing all this for nothing!”

I did finally get them finished but I will be living with a reminder of the mess because I cannot get up all the glitter. I still have some in my hair even after washing it twice.

And today I was trying to help Michael with his algebra because Sean’s schedule has been so busy that he hasn't had time to do it – I’ve been about as successful at that as I was at feeding the invitations through the printer.

Despite my best attempts to be ahead of the December game I realize I am horribly, horribly behind. I will have to claw my way out from the hole I’ve dug for myself, but I’m not sure that will happen any time soon.