crossing items off lists is so satisfying

Look! It's a blurry Christmas tree all decorated and lit and stuff! We did it last night while watching Emmett Otter's Jugband Christmas which was slightly different from last year's decorating extravaganza involving dirty Rimbaud poems. It's nice. And homey. And it smells good. We decided to put it in the front room as it was, uh, a little bigger than I thought when I bought it. Plus we've been spending alot of time in there with all the crafting I've been doing as of late. Last night, though I was so tired I thought I wouldn't make it down the stairs, we did the obligatory walk outside and stare up at the lit tree thing. We tried to take pictures with a cellphone but they ended up looking like our house was on fire and we didn't want to alarm anyone as it is indeed entirely possible our house could be on fire.

I'm starting to feel a little more in control of Christmas. Things are coming together and once again I find myself a little in awe at my ability to not know how to do something, completely stress out about it and be paralyzed with uncertainty and to just end up doing it and having it all work out. Action. Action. Action. I forget sometimes that I'm pretty good at figuring out how to do things.

Tomorrow is the Christmas party here at work. Instead of freaking out over having mayonnaise-laden artichoke toasties sitting out for 5 hours (let alone the stress of having to go home tonight at 9 and assemble said toasties) I'm bringing some triple cream, crusty bread, and fruit. It'll go great with the provided pizza, pigs in a blanket, and wide variety of jello salads. One less thing to worry about, I say.

Friday Molly and I might be hosting Gleis and Son for lunch if we can convince Daddy we're all adults capable of handling a baby and eating at the same time. Honestly. I even offered to HOLD the BABY. Friday after work I'm going out with Molly and another coworker to celebrate the end of their semester and Molly being finished with her MLS! Yay! Thankfully she has no plans to desert me here and, in fact, they might be creating a librarian position for her which would mean her fulltimefulltime job would be open. And I'd be all about that.

Oh and just a fun little story about our cursed DVD Release Party series. Molly and I managed to set off the fire alarm yesterday afternoon due to some burning popcorn. Everyone evacuated into the freezing cold rain and the fire department had to come. One. more. movie. The Simpsons next Tuesday without popcorn with pink frosted doughnuts and we're officially DONE with it all. We were approached by a new employee who is still really optimistic and positive (sigh. I remember those days) about helping her with a family game night. What a great idea! In fact, I think we had that idea about 3 years ago! She wants to buy a Wii and maybe Guitar Hero and some board games and would we like to help her with that? I was pretty enthusiastic until Molly reminded me that we weren't doing DVD Release Parties anymore for a reason which is we no longer want to do the job of other departments and not get paid for it. Blast! She's right!

Talk to me in February. I'll bet I'm deep into organizing gaming tournaments.