Well its 12 days before Christmas and 5 days before we load up the family vehicle and drive over 1200 miles to enjoy the holidays with our wacky California relatives.
Everything is just going according to plan...gifts are bought and shipped, kids are wrapping up their school stuff, dog sitter is arranged, car is tuned up and running smoothly and everyone is brimming with excitement!
Yeah....no, not really. In a perfect world, I'm sure that's what today would look like for me...but this is my world, so if you take everything I said a minute ago and reverse it...that's today.
Over the next 2 days I have to help Dave make a Mayan "hat"...headdress sounds weird to him...for his school project, I have to help Angie put together a sampling of her favorite foods for Spanish class, and I have 2 holiday class parties to put together. I'm starting to think teachers plan these projects to be due this week cause they figure "If I have to be here putting up with your kids the week before Christmas vacation...you should have to suffer too!" Not to mention Al has finals this week which is sure to lead to a lot of wonderful head-butting, mumbling of rude things and eye rolling...and that's just me, there's no telling what he'll do!
My 2 doggies are still a little up in the air. I hate leaving them at the boarders...cause I worry they'll feel lonely and cooped up in the little room...but there's no way I'm ever taking 4 kids and 2 dogs in my car half way across the country EVER AGAIN!!! So...I guess I'll pack them some extra toys!
And the car....oh my wonderful car! We've had our suburban for a few years now...its been good! Its taken us to California and brought us back home several times...sucker's rolling on 120 thousand miles, with only regular tune-ups and the maintenance a car so well used would require. And I had every expectation this year would be no different...oil change and tune up and off we go! Until Saturday night....when I turned it on and it decided it didn't like sitting in neutral. It wasn't sure whether it wanted to go anywhere, (not that I can blame it, its freaking COLD!) its would idle just fine...then putt putt putt putt like it was gonna turn off, then rev up to normal again, then putt putt putt putt....
Now I'm no car expert...but I drive often, and this is NOT good...especially when in 5 days we're planing on driving through miles and miles of nothing!
SO...as soon as that paycheck elf gets here, instead of gift shopping, I'll be heading over to our friendly mechanic to see what's up with my car. And he will sadly take the blame if we have to cancel our vacation plans...cause it sure as heck wont be me!!!
And so...if we can eek out a little Christmas magic, and the car does not need some costly repair, I will be doing a 1 day online Christmas shopping marathon in the middle of all the other stuff to make sure everything gets shipped to grandma's house and delivered on time.
The kids...yeah they're excited, cause all they've got to worry about is how many gifts they'll get.
But me... I wouldn't exactly call what I'm feeling excitement...although the light-headed, shortness of breath symptoms inspired by a panic attack are somewhat similar feelings to extreme excitement I suppose.
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