It's December third! The day each year when I give myself permission to go whole-hog on the Christmas season. The baking is underway. I made decadent dark chocolate cookies and have plans to do brownies and banana bread as well. I can only do a about a day or two a week of baking because if it gets too chaotic then none of the baked treats actually make it to the holidays thanks to a house full of predictable men with big appetites, and crafty, clever men who will distract me with charm and affection while the rest carry off entire trays of still-warm cookies and cakes.
It's maddening and frustrating and I love it. I make decoy treats that they can decimate and then I don't mind so much and can run off with a a huge box to load into one of the freezers in the garage. The locked one no one is allowed into because I don't like surprises. After six or seven locks were cut off in honour of being fair they have relented and let me have a whole freezer to be organized with and the other one is the free for all with frozen waffles and air fryer stuff and a few sacrificial treats, in with the buckets of ice cream.
We'll never eat right, though I have transitioned over from so many treats to more fruit and ingredients and if you're really hungry a half a bagel with a slice of cheese or a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar is a good alternative to seven chocolate chip cookies.
Right, Benjamin? RIGHT?
I have Ali & Theo singing around the clock, doing their greatest Christmas songs like Where Are You Christmas? and Let It Fall, as the world is sleeping on this duo. And Eisley's Christmas songs because they're just freaking MAGICAL.
I have all of the decorations and outside lights up and done (Thanks to Lochlan and Duncan and Sam and Matt, who breezed in and without asking or directing on my part, emptied the bins that were neatly stacked in the front hall, just in time for Advent to begin and Sam will be too busy to do anything now until Jesus is born and after that he will rest until Easter and do it all again but the countdown will only be like a long weekend instead of four straight weeks and it's easier somehow) and the tree will go up early next week, I hope.
I'm not doing it.
I played the boys Paris Paloma's Labour song once and that's all it took to get a huge amount of preemptive help. I've also started to let go of some things that I just did and don't do any more and I feel like some of the work is lifting and I have more time to watch Netflix and knit and sew (holiday romance, true crime and documentaries, if you will, at present. I finished my list of horror movies left over from Halloween that were on my list (NO GOOD ONES JESUS) and so far A California Christmas is still winning, because it had a SEQUEL, City Lights. I also watched Christmas in Rome, Hot Frosty and A Crown for Christmas and Hot Frosty was hilarious but obviously written by someone who hated sci-fi but saw Fifth Element, and A Crown was weird because Danica McKellar is MY AGE and they positioned her as a burdened thirty-year-old and I couldn't help but think that the whole movie was written for Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany but someone didn't land the budget and so they went this way instead.
I'm not even going to talk about the BUY NOW Documentary because it was so bad and once again the onus lands on me to use shitty paper straws and not buy from Shein but ignores the companies and countries using plastic and shipping our 'recycling' to places out of sight.
Wait, what?
I'm doing everything I can. I want Amazon to have a 'deliver everything at once' so when I order eight things (saving gas, time and the carbon footprints of multiple stores) they don't bring them in fifteen separate trips. Goddamn. Last night they delivered a single box the size of my Jeep. Inside it was a sole button battery for a ornament that lights up. I tried four different stores and couldn't find that one size so I ordered it. FUCKING SUE ME. I was so mad that it's come to this, but I did spend the past six years with a dark ornament so it's not like I need instant gratification, I just decided this year I would fix the darn thing. But ARGHHHHHHHH.
I have more thoughts if you're interested but the boys aren't which is why I put them here.