Recapturing My Youth

I believe I am beginning to make a fine art out of wasting time.  Darn you, Internet, with your viral videos and you, too, Twitter, with your hashtags and 140-character quips.  I wonder, do you hear of anyone on their deathbeds saying they wished they had spent more time on Facebook?  I'm thinking I will have to pull the plug on all things Internet, just to get a handle on this problem.

Or, maybe no.  Let's not be rash.  After all, what would I do without you lovely readers?

Anywhoo, my fingerless-mitt knitting extravaganza is proceeding apace.  At this rate, I will have to knit, oh, 6 pairs of thumbs some evening next week, all the while bemoaning the fact that I saved them to do all at once.  I don't seem to learn from my mistakes, now do I?

I'm not even shopping for kids' presents until the 21st - I mean, aside from ordering some books from Paperback Swap for Rachel.  That's right, folks - for the SIXTH YEAR RUNNING, I am holding fast to my resolution not to prepare for Christmas until the last week or so.  Stressful?  Not at all.  While the rest of you are talking about running around, looking for gifts, making cookies, and generally doing all things Christmas right now, I am sitting here with my fingers (figuratively) in my ears, singing, "LA, LA, LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

Yes, it does feel great.  Thanks for asking.  You see, the years previous, I had subscribed to the notion that it was best to get EVERYTHING DONE in November and the beginning of December, which method only resulted in my trying to do everything right, so we would have an awesome Christmas. Because, you see, I had so much time to prepare. This, I can sadly attest, is a very stressful way to approach the holiday season.

Hark back, if you will, to your college days, when you (or at least I) sat in finals until the 21st of December and couldn't even THINK about Christmas until that last exam book was handed in. At that point, it was actually fun to realize, "Oh, hey, it's almost Christmas!" I would go off to the nearest store and buy some silly presents for everyone I knew and maybe even pick up a Charlie-Brown-type Christmas tree for my off-campus apartment.  Then I would call up (or maybe run into?) a few friends (how did we manage to get together without cellphones, anyway?) and invite them over to my place for hot cocoa and Christmas carols on the turntable (that would be a Flintstones-era music player, you young'uns) and probably a game of Trivial Pursuit (it being the 80's and all).

No stress.  No striving for perfection.  Just enjoying one another's company and the end of all that exam pressure.  And that is the feeling I am going for here.  Of course, I don't think anyone at age 51 (particularly someone with 6 kids) could ever feel as carefree as a 20-year-old, but I am certainly going to give it the old college try.

College try...oh, I slay me...


[CB tree image: Digital Bullpen]