3 nights... 2 days... 1 inconvenience....
My wife's been ill this week so I have picked up the bulk of the work around here... including shopping, which I really hate. I tried to do a bunch of it online and was reasonably successful, but now there are some gifts yet to be purchased and that means... shopping around other people!
Even though I have a pretty good idea of what I want to buy, the notion of getting into those Christmas crowds makes me feel as if I'm about to enter a slaughter house... moving along in lines of stunned shoppers toward the eventual demise... of my bank account. Okay, it's not that bad... but it's not what I call fun, either. Actually, I'm looking forward to everyone getting their gifts from me. I'm just not much into the process of the getting to do the giving.
But I'll get two of my sons involved to help out and we'll make sure everything is ready for Christmas morning. Naturally, my wife will question my choices, but I can guarantee that nowhere among the gifts that I buy will be a sweater or a pair of socks... as needed as they may be. If it doesn't use electricity and a circuit board, it can't be a real Christmas present.
Of course, I still reserve part of the remaining time before Christmas to make some pastries my Armenian grandmother taught me how to do almost 40 years ago. I used to roll out the dough by hand, but now I get the Greek dough. I think about doing it the old way, but I know that only leads to confrontations with my wife. Too hard, too long, too messy. Oh, well.
The good thing is that the inconveniences we have getting ready for Christmas are magically forgotten the moment we begin unwrapping presents. Really. At least until the next December.
