‘Tis the season of over-commitment.  At least it is for me.  There’s decorating, baking, shopping, wrapping, the dreaded Christmas Letter, Christmas Cards, hosting Christmas Eve dinner for 45, my daughter’s Nutcracker practices and performances, nagging my husband to do a few things that I usually end up doing when I get tired of waiting on his happy butt to get into gear (for example – did he swing by to get the stands from the caterer so I can set-up the buffet?  Nope, he painted the front walkway that no one will see on Christmas Eve because it will be dark when they arrive), parties to attend and the last minute stuff that just slipped through my normally over-organized lists.

One of said last minute things is holiday tipping.  Thank God for Holidaytipping.com, a great site to figure out how much to tip the pool guy, and the gardener, hair stylists, nail techs, and the maid, etc.  I’ve made several trips to the ATM in the last few days since I forgot that very few of these folks will be working next week because of the holidays.

Another opps moment – school party.  It’s now called the winter party because we don’t want to offend anyone.  I’m getting used to the new name just as I got used to the fact that we have to tell the children to sit crisscross applesauce instead of Indian style.  Hey – I can be retrained.  I received a note on Monday that I was responsible for sending in 2 dozen cookies on Thursday for said winter party.  And again, unlike the old days when I was in school (many, many moons ago), all baked goods must come from a store, be sealed and have an ingredient list affixed to the packaging.  This is for the nut allergy kids.  Some other parent was assigned the lactose-free milk – that’s for the lactose intolerant kids.  Another parent was assigned hand sanitizer – I guess that’s for all the kids.  I don’t ever remember hand sanitizer being part of a holiday party but then again I don’t remember kids having the plethora of allergies and dietary intolerances either. 

I also donated 2 hours of my life on the annual mall Santa photo.  That’s changed too.  Gone is the quickie Polaroid.  Now you have two options – the candid shots or the posed portraits.  That means they take roughly 20 pictures of each child, then you got to a separate counter where you can purchase anything from a set of wallet-sized prints to a full CD of all the photos.  For an additional $25.00, they’ll send the CD overnight to your home so you don’t have to return to the mall 3 days later to pick up said CD.  What you can’t do is get a single picture.  Nope – packages only.  Luckily, I went with a friend and we took turns standing in line with our daughters.  I did get a bit of last minute shopping in during the long wait.  Props to the DS people – the girls played their handheld games for almost the entire waiting period. 

On Monday, all the prep stuff that seemed so important was put into perspective when we received word that our friend John Colucco died.  John was a great, gregarious guy who’d been battling cancer for a long time.  He played Santa at our annual Christmas Eve party for the last few years.  While his death wasn’t unexpected, it was a sobering reminder that all the stuff I’d been stressing over wasn’t really that important.  So, as you race around trying to get everything done, don’t forget to give the most important gift of all – tell the people in your life how much you love and value them.

Happy Holidays, Rhon

nicely said, Rhonda - as usual :) people are much more important than the darn list I have a hard time letting go of

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