She has no leg to stand on

Tonight was my PTO board meeting. Due to the holiday we had it at Stephanie's house and had wine and appetizers with a Yankee Swap gift exchange. We also had a fairly spirited discussion about one of the agenda items (possibly due to the wine consumption). There was a lot of teasing and ribbing each other going on back on forth - some of it with language not appropriate around children (luckily there were none present).

Denise: Uh!....The vulgar language!

Diane: Oh please! I went to New Orleans with you. You can drop the virgin maiden act!

I love these girls!

How Prophetic

Last year after my hellish winter season at work I got a Zen garden for my desk. It has a little fountain, a candle, and a sand area that you can rake. Very relaxing. My friend Melissa came in the office earlier and asked me where it was. I pointed to the pile of folders on my filing cabinet and said "Under there."

I've buried my zen under my stress.

Beautiful Sunrise

It's gorgeous outside my office window. Yes, sadly I'm watching the sunrise from work. I've been here since 5:45 a.m. this morning. Ick.

I love my husband.

As previously stated my "to do" list is a little overwhelming right now. Last night Lincoln stuffed and stamped almost all of our Christmas cards while I wrote out all the addresses. Today he ordered Jake's birthday cake and went back to Staples to order more holiday card pictures for the rest of our Christmas card mailing list. He is also coordinating the family birthday party for Jake on Saturday night. This is in addition to the fact that he does at least 80% of the household chores (and that is being quite generous to myself). He is truly perfect. I don't know how women who don't have a Lincoln do it.

I love you honey!

Panic attack to commence right about......NOW!

108. That is how many items are on my "to do" list for the next few days/weeks. Most of those are work related. A handful are personal. Not included on there is anything having to do with Jake's birthday or either of his parties. It doesn't include mailing out my Christmas cards or wrapping any gifts. It doesn't include the food items I need to make for various holiday parties this month. It doesn't include a lot. I take it back....I thought I was going to have a panic attack before but now that I think about it I'm too busy for a panic attack.

December is my worst month at work. It looks like this week is the week I'll start with the 13 hour days and the 5:00 a.m. arrival time at the office. Lunch? What is lunch? If I'm lucky I'll remember to eat at my desk. Daylight? I won't be seeing it anymore except possibly on the weekends or if I remember to look out my office window during the day. Of course I can't come in early tomorrow morning because Hannah has a dentist appointment. And I can't stay late the next night because I have a PTO Board Meeting. Ugh!!!

I just have to keep telling myself that I have two weeks off coming up......I will survive.

I think.

Where does the time go?

Every spring I say to myself "If we can just get through spring everything will settle down". Then summer comes along and we're super busy and I say to myself "If we can just through summer everything will settle down once school starts." With the beginning of school things never settle down so I say "If we can just get through Christmas everything will settle down after the New Year." You can see where I'm going with this.

December is always a busy month. Not only is it busy for me at work because of the holiday party that I'm in charge of and all my year end duties that I have to complete before we close for the holiday break but it's also Jake's birthday month which means a kid party and a family party. Add in my usual two PTO meetings a month, my Executive Assistant's Group holiday event, and that pesky little task called Christmas shopping and you've got a busy month. I also try to take the kids to a Christmas show at the Wang Theater and this year they're putting on "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". We're going to see that on December 13th so the kids are really excited.

The good thing is that my company closes for about 2 weeks around the holidays so I have time at home to catch up on things that I never do during the year. Last year during the break I organized 7 years worth of back filing that we had in boxes in the attic. This year my hope is to file all our 2008 documents and then paint the master bathroom and clean our bedroom which seems to be the dumping ground for random boxes of stuff. We spent a pretty penny on some beautiful hand-painted tiles at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul and I want to redecorate the bathroom around the tiles.

Other than that 2009 is looking pretty quiet so far. I know that's going to change. As Lincoln said this morning when I pointed out we didn't have much on the calendar yet for January he said "Yet. It's only December 2nd after all."

Paying the Price

I guess having a 5-day weekend for Thanksgiving actually comes with a price. I've been swamped at work today. In fact, where did the day go? I feel like I just got here and now it's time to go home.