𝅘𝅥𝅯 It's all about the numbers, but who's counting 𝅘𝅥𝆔

I don't think the photo does the cake (from a box) justice.
  I decorated it with white and blue sprinkles.  The blue ones
were snowflakes and icicles.  It turned out
really cute.  And I managed to
 find blue and white candles in my stash.

It is crunch time, and sleep is eluding me.  Damn it.  I wanted to go to bed at around 9 last night, but it was Curly's 12th birthday and I could not go to sleep before the birthday girl.  Because me grumpily chopping veggies in the kitchen while she relaxed in the family room with the males of the family is the stuff almost-Christmas-birthdays are made of, right?.  

I am gritting my teeth trying not to STILL be upset that a certain someone called to me that he unloaded a dishwasher and loaded another after work (granted he works from 9 am - 8 pm on Thursdays), so he was not going to set foot back in the kitchen to clean up anything else, JUST TO LET ME KNOW - and um - I guess it didn't matter that I make 6 loaves of pumpkin bread, the cake, babysat, or that I peeled the potatoes, and cooked the favorite chicken dinner and drove to and from dancing.  And printed out the last 12 envelopes that got messed up or overlooked originally.  

I know he INTENDED the kids to clean up the kitchen, but high schoolers have exams, Curly had a bday, and Reg and Lad wandered out a few times in response to my demands but pretended they didn't know where anything went or that moving a dish from the island to near the dishwasher mattered.  Groan.  This isn't over folks - I still got shopping to do, you should be TRYING!!!  Anyway,  . . . 

Curly asked me where her favorite new outfit is on the way home from her Irish dancing Christmas party (thank you dancing for celebrating today, because it sort of took the pressure off).  She brought these missing clothes to Louisville with us and she mentioned it before, but I assumed it was just in a laundry pile.  This many weeks later – now I fear that we may have left it in the smoking or non-smoking hotel room.  I called the hotel and they sent me to their lost and found website:  chargerback.com.  

Did you know about this?  You can find stuff that you left in airports, hotels, stadiums, etc.  Brilliant.  I wonder if they could locate the Yellowstone souvenir t-shirt I bought with my own money that never made it home from our trip back in 1987.

Anyway I stayed up late filing a report online and now we wait to see if they have it, or if I find a bulldozer to borrow and I maneuver it up to the girls’ room where poor Curly shares a room with slob-ola (aka Mini) and I uncover it on the bottom layer of their room. 

Between chargerback.com and chopping veggies, because I didn’t have to do that today for my 7 layer dip, I got caught up with the idea of pushing forward to get some more stuff done, and it was 11:30 when I crawled into bed.  I woke to pee at 4:30 am and my mind started to race with all of the things I need to do and the hope that chargerback finds Curly’s fav jeans and top that she wore exactly twice. 

I want to be fancy and write this to the tune and the pattern/beat of '4 calling birds, 3 french hens, 2 turtle doves,' etc. - not sure I can get my tired brain to be that creative so just play along here as I list shit I have done or encountered with that tune in mind:  

🎝🎜A week and a half before Christmas my Christmas plans went off the rails, I took 2 pills to deal with an doc office procedure ON MY DAY OFF, that procedure ran a muck after I waited 2.5 hours and finally went home and slept for 2 hours (nothing got done.  Nada.  Zilch)!🎝🎜

🎝🎜 I got back on track baking 120 cookies, 6 loaves of pumpkin bread,  4 outstanding time-consuming dinners, 2 birthday cakes, while forgetting to run the two dishwashers ONE flipppppping night . .  .  🎝🎜

Tank's cake from Dec. 5th

🎝🎜 Each day averaged 3 loads of laundry, 2 trips to kids' practices, a pricey grocery $523 run, and 1 round tripppp to dannnnnnce, 🎝🎜

🎝🎜Over the weekend I attended 8 sporting events, 1 was followed by a b-ball party, chose 2 grabbb baggg gifffts, and bought a fraiser fur Christmas treeeee🎜

The year-end rhyming recap
required a legal size page
this year as it was the longest ever.

🎝🎜I rhymed 52 stanzas to my annual year-end recap poem, printed 175 envelopes, and emailed the printer begging for a speedy delivery a few timess🎝🎜

🎝🎜Monday I had the day off and got soooo much-uch done, needed a nap, got 2 allergy shoots, and attended a 3 hour city council meeting cuz some ass holes think it would be cool to open a cannabis shop in the heart of our little townnn (this is when I was going to go to bed early after stuffing my cards, quiet sobs, - more on the meeting later)!🎝🎜

🎝🎜 Tuesday I took 12 photos of the babies, ordered 11 or more of them for 4 photo-craft ornaments, shopped online for a watch for Curly (still not purchased), and stuffed 150 envelopes with Christmas car-arrr-arrdddds,   🎝🎜

 🎝🎜On Wednesday, I finished loading envelopes, bought 5 stamps for cards to Ireland at the post office, gave kids bags of cookies for 8 favorite teachers, and took a much needed nappppp! 🎝🎜

example of our photo hodge-podge ornament

🎝🎜Thursday I decorated for a birthday, cared for four kiddos (last day before break), gave 3 families gifts, received 2 gifts from families* (note the numbers off here - will explain in next post), fretted over Curly's missing jeans, and started making 7 llllayer tacooooo dipppp,  🎝🎜

Me shoving bags in car to race back to dancing class.

🎝🎜In the last week I've made 3 runs to the mall, had 40 gifts wrapped there, hobbled down the escalator lugging 85 pounds of gifts on an efff-ing bummmmm knee, 🎝🎜

 🎝🎜Texted my sister how to make a baked potato in the microwave, cuz I guess she doesn't have google, ordered 15 things from Amazon, no idea what, 'cuz I'm in freakkkkk out mmmmmode, 🎝🎜

 🎝🎜I gained 3 pounds missing my workouts, ridden a bike for 8 to 10 miles a day though, quit eating stuff I love, lost the 3 pounds, and finally met with a guy who will build a hood for my kitchennnn,  🎝🎜

🎝🎜I made 25 pieces of french toast for Curly's 12th birthday, while wondering if Coach will decide on the 1 kid gift I asked him to research, and I question if it even makes sense to decorate with only 5 GOLDEN dayssss till Christmasssss🎝🎜

🎝🎜 All this and I have not strangled any of my offspring, even though I have 1 college kid already hommmme!!! 🎝🎜

Now if I can get those last 12 cards in the mail, workout, take a nap, get Mini to the doctor today to get her excessive ear wax vacuumed out, finish the 7 layer taco dip and then drive everyone where they need to be while Coach and Lad drive 8 hours round trip to pick up Eddie at college, I might make it.  Damn, need to decide on show tickets to a magic guy, Curly's watch, and Reg's Bulls jersey. Bahh haahhh!  (those are my weeping sounds).  Nap - priority #1. 

I invite you to tell me what you have left to do or what derailed your progress the most this year - mine was hands down the botched office procedure.  Entire day lost.  If you haven't been able to comment in the past - give it a whirl, because I just changed my comments from embedded to pop up, whatever that means.