Hello! My goodness there you are, lurking in the back of my mind like some hideous childhood monster! How lovely you are with your green eyes and boogers dripping from your nose! Is that a new hat? It’s delicious!

Thing is, now, I’m afraid I’m a little behind. Which, I realize, you’re well aware of. You, of all others! Of course you know. Sitting there tapping your toes, staring at the calendar, watching the days tick by as I move further and further into the horrifying abyss of christmasnonshop madness. You’ve been very patient with your gentle 4am reminders and the little alarms you send when I read or hear the actual date throughout my day.

December third?! Twenty two days til Christmas?! Heaven help me?!

I’ve seen you cavorting with my Household To Do List, I’ve seen you laughing at me together. I know you think you are so witty and amsuing with your mocking ways. I am an joke to you, I realize. A joke to all of my various and too many to mention lists.

I love you all equally even if I do nto mention you individually and that is to say I love you not at all. Aha! You are shocked by this! A declaration of anti-love! But it is so! You cannnot be loved for you do drown me with your constant neediness and cries for immediate attention. Do you not see how I try? Do you not see that I am only one person and sometimes I just want to sit down and eat chips until my pants don’t fit like I did when I was twenty? Do you not see this? ARE you blind?

But okay, alright, I get it. I need to buy presents because there are like fifteen minutes until Christmas morning and lo but my children will be sad when they get a gas station air freshener under the tree but it will be amusing, no? That their last minute sad gift smells like the tree under which it sits pathetically? That is some amusing, no? Ha? Ha?

It’s not that I mean to ignore you or the other eighty frillion things I have to do it’s just that things come up and things come down and things are often on fire and things just keep falling on my head while I am trying to eat those damned chips and would you believe that I canno get one single morsel into my mouth and yet the pants? They get tighter anytotheways? Madness, I know. We’ll call it a wonder of the world, will we? A mystery for all time?

So anyways, I have to wrap it up. One of those things that happen is happening and I must dash. But I swear, honest, I’m getting to it. To you. Totally. Like maybe tomorrow. But likely not. Picture next week. But you know what, either way? i cannot ignore you forever - the way I do other lists. You have a deadline and if I do not meet same I will have sad little children faces to contend with. and Dan’s. Which is worse. Sad Dan face on Christmas morning. To be avoided at all costs! It renders the heart broken to think of such a thing!