And now for a break from our regularly scheduled rantings... Today is Christmas, and after yesterday's last minute shopping, last night's last minute gift wrapping, this morning's slaving away in the kitchen... Ha! I almost had you on that one... No, this non-cooking heifer did not produce any culinary concoctions, although I DID cut up fruit for nearly 2 hours for the aptly named fruit salad. Hey, that counts, doesn't it? After all the mad-dash preparations, my wonderful family arrived at 11 a.m. for a mid-day brunch-y sorta thing at Mom's house. Why, with Mom being so sick, did we not move the gathering to my humble abode, you might ask? Well, for a variety of reasons. First, and foremost, you can barely get in the door of my place for all the "stuff" that needs to be picked up/cleaned up (I have a bad habit of starting projects and getting distracted mid-way through, and their skeletal remains haunt my abode like a bad scene from "Tales From the Crypt.") Secondly, I am currently owned by 4 cats (cat people know what I'm talking about -- no human owns a cat. Cats only deign for us lowly humans to provide them fancy feasts and princely palaces at their behest. They are only gracing us with their presence as long as they see fit.) and numerous members of my family are allergic to the feline furr balls (why wasn't I blessed with such an allergy?), so family gatherings of any kind at my place are out of the question. Which doesn't exactly get me off the hook, since I've spent quite a few spare moments over the past several days helping to clean my Mom's place.

Which brings me to my point: I'm exhausted. Deep-down bone-weary I-could-sleep-'til-New-Years tired. Of course, this state has been aided and abetted by a sinus infection/bronchial crud I can't seem to shake. I initially contracted this mess more than a month ago, got better, and then got it again. I am on the upswing, but Mom is on her second go-round, and I'm actually quite worried about her. She spent 2 solid weeks cleaning and cooking in preparation for today's gathering, and I couldn't convince her that not a single solitary soul in our family nor any of our friends cares whether she cleaned the dust bunnies out from under her bed, nor whether she got down on her hands and knees to scrub behind the commode. Christmas is about gathering with family, watching the little ones squeal with delight over their presents (only to play with the boxes they came in) and eating ourselves into a carb-laden stupor. Each of those things can be accomplished quite easily in a comfortably clean house (which my mom's home is -- ALWAYS) instead of one that has been spit-shined like the tip of a West Point plebe's shoe. But to no avail. Mom has dusted, vacuumed, rearranged, polished, and scrubbed herself into a frenzy over the past 2 weeks, all for a 3-4 hour gathering of 16 people, including the 2 of us. And of course, it looks like a hurricane hit as soon as all the presents have been opened, so why go to all the trouble? I guess I just don't care enough about stuff like that, which might explain why my house is ready for condemnation at any point -- I'm just waiting for them to tack the notice on the front door. I guess the answer is somewhere in the middle. I certainly need to care more, and she needs to care a little less. But isn't that one of the great lessons of life? Compromise. Meeting in the middle. Making concessions. I think that is one of the principles I'm going to add to the list of things I need to work on in the upcoming year. That, and cleaning my house, so I'm not constantly peering out the front door in fear of seeing codes approaching with a hammer and nail and a little pink notice.