the procrastinating girl

Holiday Time?

I just noticed two things.  One, I got 86 catalogs in yesterday's mail.  Two, this morning we had frost on the ground.  It doesn't take my favorite Belgian detective to deduce that the holidays are indeed coming.  Which is so fascinating considering my kids' Halloween costumes are still in a ball on my kitchen floor.  As usual, I am already behind.  What's worse, I don't even know how behind I am.  With Christmas, you are furnished with a set date.  There's no mystery.  No motion in the ocean.  The Jews like to keep it interesting.  When is the first night of Chanukah?  No idea.  I think it's like mid-ish-second-week-pre-teen-ish of December.  If that's clear.  So while the majority of the world is casually logging on Amazon.com and comfortably clicking on standard shipping, I still need to Google "Jewish holiday calendar 2009."  And see what my fate holds.  If it is one of those unfortunate years when the first candle overlaps with the night we carve the turkey, my kids may be unwrapping leftover KitKat bars as present number one.

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Hi there.  Remember me?  Yes, it's been an embarrassingly long time between posts.  SInce then we've seen both blinding snowstorms and radiant sunshine.  Gotta love March.  Actually, in my house we do as it's the month of my husband's birthday.  His lot of gifts is usually so fantastic I can't recall a single one from years past as I type.  For number 38, in the worst economy since the Great Depression, I decided to make a statement.  Against much of my better judgment, I bought him the Wii.  Now I realize I am quite late to this party.  But that's fine.  I was never the kid who had something first.  Guess jeans.  Pierced ears.  A full-time job with benefits.  Not that this was about me.  At all.  I was raised on PBS and dominoes.  The closest thing we had to video games was an abacus.  So when we fired up our Wii, I was happy to just sit back and watch.  Yes, that lasted five seconds.  Now all I can do is think about the next time I can sing with Blondie.  I AM a Guitar Hero.  Or is it Heroine?

New Year, Nothing New

Happy New Year to everyone.  I realize that some of you may have been expecting a kind of year-end round-up here at TPG.  You'd want to look back on the great, intoxicating highs:  How I located that missing safety deposit box key.  Or how those Cascade bottles finally got out from under the kitchen sink.  And of course the terrible lows:  How I let my family and my constituents down by soliciting a ring of high-class call girls.  But after about three minutes of thought, I decided I would just go blogging on as usual.  Oh, resolutions?  I'm sorry, my brain just exploded.  No.  Instead, my first order of business for the new year was to hang my totally brilliant Stendig calendar, the one that has been waiting for such attention for months, rolled up in its long skinny box in the corner of my dining room (um, yes).  But even 'the first order of business' in my universe can be a relative term.  So on the third day of the new year, I am happy to say that the calendar has made it out of the box and is now lying unfurled on my dining room table beneath heavy books to flatten its shape.  But sadly for me, THIS position has a real shelf-life.  We're having a dinner party two weeks from tonight.

Zapped!

I didn't think I would need to apologize again for such a lapse between posts, but here I am.  It could be the sweets.  Or the starch.   Whatever it is, I fear it's going to get worse before it gets better.  I am always going against my grain here, and, now that we are in the thickest part of the holiday season, my grain is at its most detrimental.   Gift-buying inertia for me is nothing new, but this year it is also a reflection of what's happening in the world.  Even though they don't ask for anything, I feel my kids already have everything, when there are so many who have nothing.  But I did need to make magic happen.  Fast.  Luckily, there are services to help with eleventh-hour needs.  Their evolution could likely be traced to the first caveman who needed to quickly send arrowheads to his eldest son who had the nerve to move across the plain (probably to be closer to HER family).  Voila FedEx.  Last week, I received an email from Zappos, one of the most efficient online shopping sites, reading "Free Holiday Shopping for Procrastinators."  Clearly, it got my attention.  Upon further scrolling, it was revealed that the timing applied to Christmas shoppers only.  I realize that as a Chanukah-only household, we are in the minority in this universe, but I ask Zappos and its brethren, to please give us the heads-up as well. It would help this cavewoman more than you know. 

Thanks

So, it being Sunday night at 8:28pm, you probably thought you were safe from a trite post about Thanksgiving and all the emotion it stirs.  In any normal universe you would be correct, but not in one where everything happens on a slightly delayed time frame.  You're just lucky you're reading this while it's still November (I still have about three hours to make that cut).  With the international stage in turmoil, I am glad to take a moment to reflect before getting swept up in the trivialities that come with the next slew of holidays.  I am not just thankful for American Girl's overnight FedEx service.  And while I have dear family, friends and readers here at TPG who I all want to thank right now, fortunately, I am not the editors at Time Magazine who must feign suspense over an obvious choice for their year-ending 'Person of the Year' issue.  I don't sell magazines (sidebar: do they?).  So it will come as no surprise to anyone who has come within three miles of my aura that this year I am thankful for Barack Obama.  Regardless of what he does or doesn't do (and, oh, he'll do it), just watching someone other than yet another white male being sworn into that office, should make us all, to plagiarize Gary David Goldberg of Family Ties fame, shappy.  It's a cross between shocked and happy.  I'm sure you won't see a trace of it on Barack's face, but you will on mine.