Makin' a list, Checkin' it Twice

I was standing in line at the post office the other day watching my two year old systematically pull every single item off the display shelf a few feet away and toss it on the floor. "Come here sweetie," I called to her in that high pitched voice that means my head is about to explode. Just then the postal work called me over to the counter. "Oh, you're going to need to fill out one of those international customs forms if you're sending the package overseas," he said as he checked the address. "It's a pretty detailed form, so do you mind stepping to the side so I can help other customers?" It was pretty much a green light for my toddler to trash the place.

Enjoy the journey, or so the saying goes. I'm pretty sure that sage advice wasn't given by someone who had to go to the grocery store three times in one day because they forgot diapers, then milk, then the one, crucial dinner ingredient. And just to be clear, I did have my shopping list in hand. But I was trying to swat the curious toddler's hand away from it every two seconds, and meanwhile, my five year old was loading up the cart with six containers of over priced blueberries.

Every time I start to feel a little nuts I immediately begin thinking of ways to simplify. But all of my projects feel like good projects. I love giving and receiving Christmas cards. I love finding the perfect Christmas gift. I love baking homemade goodies and delivering them to friends and neighbors. And real life, like buying milk and helping kids with homework has to fit in somewhere. So when you start to squeeze all these wonderfully good activities into a nice little box, you end up terrorizing the local post office, and visiting the grocery store three times in one day.

I just want to get all this stuff over with, I muttered the other day. So I can do what? Lounge in my bathrobe and thumb through catelogues until I begin second guessing my gift purchases? This is Christmas. Not necessarily the long list, and all of the voluntary activities, but the way that you go about it. I guess what I'm trying to say is the doing part is life, but the feeling part, what I think and say and how I behave, that's the Christmas part.