Eight more hours

That's how much extra time per day I'd like. Mainly do I can go for 24 hours, sleep for 8 hours, and then go for another 24. Honest to Pete... I have so many things that need to be done. I'm much farther along in my knitting (haven't worked on the sweater at all, though.. I'm pretty sure he's getting sweater pieces for Christmas). But my other Christmas PURCHASES I'm slacking on.

I also don't have a Christmas tree up. We did a major clean of the downstairs (I even cleaned out THE CLOSET) in preparation for the tree. And then life happened. So... no tree. And unless Gene can grade and I can knit WHILE we put up the tree, I don't see it happening anytime soon. Our first Christmas living together, I put up our tree BY MYSELF on Christmas Eve. I'm not doing that again!

I'm not baking cookies this year. Usually, I have a battle with my aunt. She always brings cookies. 24 cookies. For 30 people. I bring 300 cookies. And have little left overs. And she gets SO MAD when I bring cookies... and I think it's hilarious.

I also have to deal with Christmas with 3 families. We've never had a problem before this year. Since Daddy Dearest effed things up five years ago, we have 3 families to deal with instead of 2. Christmas Eve we spend with Gene's parents. Christmas morning we drive an hour to my mom's house, then I go to my dad's for dinner. Wonderful. Well, last year... we switched it up. We had Christmas dinner at our house Christmas night, and saw my mom on Christmas Eve instead so that I had all day to cook. Because of that, my dad, my brother, my sister, and myself got to exchange gifts by ourselves like we used to, instead of in front of our extended family. I think my dad really liked that.

Because of that, this year Daddy Dearest is trying to convince us to drive to his house (which is out of the way for everyone involved) Christmas morning. Well, that doesn't work. I'm not driving an hour away to go to dinner 20 minutes from my house and turn a 20 minute drive into a 2 1/2 hour drive. No. So then he wants us to come over on Christmas Eve. No. So now we've compromised. We're having Christmas brunch on Saturday (which is also my sister's birthday). It was dinner, but it became brunch because my brother has to work and blah blah blah. Seriously... this is getting to be way more of a hassle than it needed to be. But if my dad had thought of this, oh, SOMETIME earlier than 10 days before Christmas, then we could have worked something else out!

And in the midst of all of this, I'm trying to figure out when I can see Ireland Girl when she's home for all of 10 days. Of those 10 days, there are only two where I am available. But she doesn't know what her family has planned, so it's entirely possible that I won't see her at all while she's home. And then I will have a sad.