Tonight Karen and I planned to put up our Christmas tree and decorations and so forth. Except, by the time I got home for the evening, we were rushing to get dinner down before she had to leave for her obligations for the evening (ultimately she didn’t even manage to eat a wonderful dinner she had prepared), and we hopefully talked of getting it done tomorrow. Except that tomorrow I’m tied up putting the finishing touches on the set for a Christmas drama I’m directing this weekend. Which I’m also rehearsing for Thursday, and…well, no tree until the weekend. If we’re lucky.
After she leaves, I realize that Thursday evening is my last chance to get Christmas cards to my drama friends at my faith community. So, I scrambled to run out and buy cards and sign them and then panicked when I realized that I haven’t sent cards to my family on the West Coast, and God only knows what time they’ll get there now.
So, in the interest of being productive, I took the opportunity to pull Karen’s gift out of hiding and wrap it while she’s gone. I can’t wrap worth anything, so I searched for a gift bag and tissue paper, my usual tactic. We didn’t have anything big enough to come close to fitting the box (why are things packaged in such big freakin’ boxes????). So, grumbling through the apartment using foul language, I went in search of wrapping paper, knowing the bleak future I had attempting to wrap the gift.
No wrapping paper. None. A scrap here and there, but nothing in the apartment with enough paper to wrap the gift.
So, it got stuffed back into hiding until the weekend, when I won’t get any of the other stuff I have to get done done because I’ll be dealing with all of the Christmas stuff that I didn’t get done tonight.
Then I had to talk to my less-than-techno-savvy parents about accessing my wish list on Amazon.
Then I had a small panic attack thinking about how we’re going to afford all of the people we have yet to buy for.
Why can’t we just celebrate the Christmas season without all of this? Why the materialism? Why all the stuff and the headaches? I just want to go be with family and enjoy the company of loved ones and forget all of this stress.
No wonder people hate the holidays. Sheesh.