From Where I Sit – Do This, Not That

Here’s the situation in a nutshell. Roy is away working until Christmas. Because we are having our children over Christmas Eve, all the preparation falls on me. Here’s what you should know: our house is small, I’m working two days a week, and I only cook and clean because someone has to. I’m not one who reads cookbooks like novels or scrubs until her hands bleed. It’s way down on my list of preferred activities. Consequently, hosting a big do is a big deal.

So with me in charge of all the cleaning, decorating, menu selection, shopping, and cooking, being organized and starting early was my only hope.

I worked like a demon yesterday doing the last loads of laundry before the holidays, ?picking up? in every room, and list making. Because the kids will be sleeping in the two basement bedrooms, my usual trick of stashing stuff out of sight down there is now lost to me. That’s why my car is stuffed with bags of bedding and clothing for Goodwill?and the old coffee table and four-inch slab of foam that will become Hilary’s upholstered ottoman. The burning barrel was hot yesterday as I got rid of things that had overstayed their welcome.

In the basement are boxes of stuff for a spring garage sale, the public library’s cases of book lights, supplies for an annual event I coordinate, decor items for Hilary’s event business, a treadmill, a sewing machine, art supplies, two chairs awaiting upholstery, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Last night I watched one Christmas movie after another as I sorted through a banker’s box of papers. Most of it was chucked. I did keep a box of mementoes for the kids to look at on the weekend (ha!). There’s the school project with Greg’s tiny handprints; ticket stubs from concerts, Oilers games, and the 1978 Edmonton Commonwealth Games; and newspapers clippings in which we’re pictured. But most precious are the July 1994 goal lists I must have forced the kids to make. Greg was seventeen, Hilary nine. His list included, among other things, the following: getting good marks and graduating, owning three vehicles, including a Viper; getting a good job; having lots of money, clothes, CDs, TVs, gold, or stocks; and retiring early. Hers included getting a McDonalds’s Stacie, meeting Candace Cameron, going to Disneyland, attending art school in Halifax, having a cottage at Dartmouth, NS, and having a big-screen TV.

Like all written goals, many of them have been met. Or exceeded.

So on the eve of another year, don’t make any resolutions. Follow the lululemon manifesto: ?Write down your short and long-term GOALS four times a year. Two personal, two business and two health goals for the next 1, 5 and 10 years. Goal setting triggers your subconscious computer.?

If they manifest, celebrate. If they don’t, revel in the authentic desire you were brave enough to articulate. Either way you win, from where I sit.

Heartfelt wishes to all of you for a joyous Christmas and a New Year overflowing with blessings.