Still only Christmas Eve

O, the holidays are a great, muzzy miasma.

The day began with the usual flood of spam email -- but one from Sears actually got me to look at it twice. "Shop The After Christmas Sale -- Starts Christmas Eve At Noon". What? Now, this is just another clear sign how bad the economy is, but the dissonance makes one goggle. They didn't even have the decency to call it the Pre-After-Christmas Sale.

Had one errand run to make today, a quick grocery run. At the local supermarket, crowded though I've seen it worse, the endcaps -- the best, most visible ones, right by the checkouts -- were already re-stocked with New Year's Eve merchandise. Okay, I can understand that, get a leg up on necessary work that doesn't need to wait until the 26th. Even the cold case had switched from egg nog to sparkling wines. But in my shopping, I noticed the holiday stock aisle was now only half-Christmas -- and half Valentine's Day! Oh now come on, that's jumping a bit too far. Let the calendar roll over at least.

Home, the wrapping awaited. I slogged on through it, finishing in mid-evening, with one excursion to get more gift tags -- a minor last-minute crisis, as last-minute holiday crises go. The last items wrapped and stashed or stuffed under the tree, I cleaned up, folded camoflage blankets, piled up the rolls of paper -- whew, always good to be finished, and much better than finishing (or giving up) around 6:00 am on the 25th, which was the status a few years ago (that was miserable, though the day got a lot better). Oh heck, one last gift, unearthed from a near-forgotten cache -- but no matter, it is small. That's the last thing I have yet to do.

Amie wanted to make cookies for the jolly ol' elf, so we did, chocolate-peppermint style. We took the standard Toll House recipe off the back of a bag of Nestle's semi-sweet chips, added 3/4 cup of cocoa, and switched peppermint bits for the chips. They came out quite good.

Carson zonked out early, we don't know if he'll stay down or not. Val has been in one of her cleaning dervish modes, during which I just step back and take the occasional order. The house is delightfully clean and organized; she really overdoes it, but no complaints. Carson's room alone was a Herculean feat to clean. Amie will be off to bed soon.

I gotta wrap one, little gift. And then a midnight ride.

Merry Christmas, y'all.