Someone else knows how I feel about books...

 

http://sandboxworld.com/book-addiction/

Someone else knows how I feel about books...

 

http://sandboxworld.com/book-addiction/

Ten Levels of Christmas

Level One: It’s after Halloween and you’re out shopping, and after seeing the Christmas Tree and the “Santa Coming Soon” sign in the mall you think to yourself, “Well, as long as I’m out shopping maybe I’ll find a present for my mom. You find a nice present for her, stocking stuffer for your son, and think how marvelous you are for getting a head start on your shopping. You buy three boxes of “Happy Holidays” Greeting Cards and hope that’s enough and figure that if you make time to do a few every day, you will have it all done in no time and you won’t feel stressed about them. Look at you! You’re really on top of it this year.

Level Two: Thanksgiving is impending. You’ve done no further shopping for presents and have not written, let alone addressed a single Christmas Card. You’re reminded of your goals and think you’ll get right on over Thanksgiving because you won’t have to work and you’re not having all the family over this year. You’re enjoying the carols the radio, but there is some panic creeping in on your festive spirit. You start doing research about the Black Friday Sales, comparing sale items and stores against all the people on your list. You make more lists and schedule to follow in order to get the optimal deals out of Black Friday.

Level Three: Black Friday. You timed dinner on Thanksgiving so that after turkey, dessert, and clean up you would be tired and could go straight to bed at 6:30pm. You knew you would need your rest to get up at 2am to get in line so that you could get that great computer deal. You get the second best deal, because ten people were already in line when you got there at 3am and you curse yourself for spending those thirty extra minutes in bed after you didn’t sleep quite as well as you’d hoped. After shopping you spend most of the day dosing on the couch between screams of “Mom, he stole my Barbie!” and “Dad, tell her to stay out of my room!”

Level Four: It’s the weekend after Black Friday. You’ve got the tree set up in your living room and have found every box that says “decorations from your attic/garage. You had thought you were quite organized last year when you repacked everything, but you found that you wrote things on the boxes like “headband” and “kids ones from your mother” and since you weren’t sure what any of it means, you had to unpack all the boxes to find the lights in the process you find two unused boxes of last year’s Christmas Cards. You go through every string of lights to make sure none of the bulbs are burned out and then spend the rest of the day on ladders and step stools. You have saved the pièce de résistance to put up later so as to fool your neighbors three houses down into a false sense of security over whose house will be “most festive” this year.

Level Five: Two weekends before Christmas. You realize that you only have about half the presents that you actually need to get and you are in tense negotiations with your children over how you‘ll pay them to write and send out the Christmas Cards as you have yet to do anything more than print off the list of names and addresses. The neighbor’s three houses down really pulled out all the stops this year and had a secret weapon of their own. You, however, have not given up the fight yet.

Level Six: One week till Christmas. Your fingers are raw and sore from wrapping paper cuts and tape dispensing. You were late to work two days this week because you couldn’t remember where you’d hidden the key to your closet where you’ve hidden the gifts “from Santa” to your children. You suspect that one of them may have tried to get a peek in the closet but you think you hid them well enough behind clothes that your kids did not see what they will get. Every time you hear a Christmas Carol you tense up. You still have a few last minute gifts and you gave up on having your children write the Christmas Cards when you realized they were extortionists. Add a dry, weird tasting mouth from sealing envelopes and a cramp in your hand from writing addresses. In an attempt to save yourself, you cut the Christmas Card list in half.

Level Seven: Christmas Eve. The children are in their rooms pretending to be asleep. All the presents are under the tree. If you hear one.more.carol.you.will.scream. You down in a couple of swallows what you had originally thought were too many cookies to leave for “Santa” but even with the milk that doesn’t rinse out the taste from the envelopes. When you realize that an imaginary man is going to get credit for most the of hard work you’ve done and you’re suddenly very bitter and tempted to march upstairs to tell your children that there is no such thing as Santa. Instead, you drink the rum you had intended to put in the rum cake you never made and pass out on the couch too tired to enjoy the fact that you did upstage the neighbors after all.

Level Eight: Christmas Day. The children spend most of the day screaming. Mostly happy screams, thankfully, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference to your hang over. You got some stuff and kids art projects are actually recognizable this year which means you didn’t have to fake liking it while you figured out what it was. The carols are not nearly as bad as you thought they were, and actually it is kind of nice to listen to them while you all have dinner.

Level Nine: The Day after Christmas. Some of the kids’ new clothes don’t fit and they’ve got gift certificates from their aunts and uncles so the whole family goes out shopping. Everyone is mostly in a good mood the day goes nicely and you think well, what a lovely Christmas that was.

Level Ten: You’re taking down the tree and packing up the decorations. You try to do a better job this year organizing the decoration boxes, but because you keep getting distracted by kids yelling over new toys you’re not sure that you have. You put all the left over Christmas Cards in a box by themselves to use next year since no one will remember what card you sent them this year. And you swear to yourself that next year you’ll get organized early so that you can enjoy the holiday.

(Level Eleven is when the bills come due in January but, I think I’d rather not talk about that.)

Ten Levels of Christmas

Level One: It’s after Halloween and you’re out shopping, and after seeing the Christmas Tree and the “Santa Coming Soon” sign in the mall you think to yourself, “Well, as long as I’m out shopping maybe I’ll find a present for my mom. You find a nice present for her, stocking stuffer for your son, and think how marvelous you are for getting a head start on your shopping. You buy three boxes of “Happy Holidays” Greeting Cards and hope that’s enough and figure that if you make time to do a few every day, you will have it all done in no time and you won’t feel stressed about them. Look at you! You’re really on top of it this year.

Level Two: Thanksgiving is impending. You’ve done no further shopping for presents and have not written, let alone addressed a single Christmas Card. You’re reminded of your goals and think you’ll get right on over Thanksgiving because you won’t have to work and you’re not having all the family over this year. You’re enjoying the carols the radio, but there is some panic creeping in on your festive spirit. You start doing research about the Black Friday Sales, comparing sale items and stores against all the people on your list. You make more lists and schedule to follow in order to get the optimal deals out of Black Friday.

Level Three: Black Friday. You timed dinner on Thanksgiving so that after turkey, dessert, and clean up you would be tired and could go straight to bed at 6:30pm. You knew you would need your rest to get up at 2am to get in line so that you could get that great computer deal. You get the second best deal, because ten people were already in line when you got there at 3am and you curse yourself for spending those thirty extra minutes in bed after you didn’t sleep quite as well as you’d hoped. After shopping you spend most of the day dosing on the couch between screams of “Mom, he stole my Barbie!” and “Dad, tell her to stay out of my room!”

Level Four: It’s the weekend after Black Friday. You’ve got the tree set up in your living room and have found every box that says “decorations from your attic/garage. You had thought you were quite organized last year when you repacked everything, but you found that you wrote things on the boxes like “headband” and “kids ones from your mother” and since you weren’t sure what any of it means, you had to unpack all the boxes to find the lights in the process you find two unused boxes of last year’s Christmas Cards. You go through every string of lights to make sure none of the bulbs are burned out and then spend the rest of the day on ladders and step stools. You have saved the pièce de résistance to put up later so as to fool your neighbors three houses down into a false sense of security over whose house will be “most festive” this year.

Level Five: Two weekends before Christmas. You realize that you only have about half the presents that you actually need to get and you are in tense negotiations with your children over how you‘ll pay them to write and send out the Christmas Cards as you have yet to do anything more than print off the list of names and addresses. The neighbor’s three houses down really pulled out all the stops this year and had a secret weapon of their own. You, however, have not given up the fight yet.

Level Six: One week till Christmas. Your fingers are raw and sore from wrapping paper cuts and tape dispensing. You were late to work two days this week because you couldn’t remember where you’d hidden the key to your closet where you’ve hidden the gifts “from Santa” to your children. You suspect that one of them may have tried to get a peek in the closet but you think you hid them well enough behind clothes that your kids did not see what they will get. Every time you hear a Christmas Carol you tense up. You still have a few last minute gifts and you gave up on having your children write the Christmas Cards when you realized they were extortionists. Add a dry, weird tasting mouth from sealing envelopes and a cramp in your hand from writing addresses. In an attempt to save yourself, you cut the Christmas Card list in half.

Level Seven: Christmas Eve. The children are in their rooms pretending to be asleep. All the presents are under the tree. If you hear one.more.carol.you.will.scream. You down in a couple of swallows what you had originally thought were too many cookies to leave for “Santa” but even with the milk that doesn’t rinse out the taste from the envelopes. When you realize that an imaginary man is going to get credit for most the of hard work you’ve done and you’re suddenly very bitter and tempted to march upstairs to tell your children that there is no such thing as Santa. Instead, you drink the rum you had intended to put in the rum cake you never made and pass out on the couch too tired to enjoy the fact that you did upstage the neighbors after all.

Level Eight: Christmas Day. The children spend most of the day screaming. Mostly happy screams, thankfully, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference to your hang over. You got some stuff and kids art projects are actually recognizable this year which means you didn’t have to fake liking it while you figured out what it was. The carols are not nearly as bad as you thought they were, and actually it is kind of nice to listen to them while you all have dinner.

Level Nine: The Day after Christmas. Some of the kids’ new clothes don’t fit and they’ve got gift certificates from their aunts and uncles so the whole family goes out shopping. Everyone is mostly in a good mood the day goes nicely and you think well, what a lovely Christmas that was.

Level Ten: You’re taking down the tree and packing up the decorations. You try to do a better job this year organizing the decoration boxes, but because you keep getting distracted by kids yelling over new toys you’re not sure that you have. You put all the left over Christmas Cards in a box by themselves to use next year since no one will remember what card you sent them this year. And you swear to yourself that next year you’ll get organized early so that you can enjoy the holiday.

(Level Eleven is when the bills come due in January but, I think I’d rather not talk about that.)