Working the Week of Christmas

I sit here enjoying Pluto Boy's coffee, which he fixed up in a travel mug, all doctored up with cream and saccarine, and then obligingly left on the kitchen counter while he took off empty handed at 6:15, in the freezing cold (well, pretty close to freezing). 



It's a work day for me; in fact, it's a 3-day workweek.  Earthgirl and I will babysit a precious little 1-year-old sugar plum at her home.  So I'm gathering up our stuff - lunch, crocheting, books, etc., so we can make the most of her naptime.  And I am tossing in my spiral notebook, because I'll need to make notes to keep up with what needs to happen for various shopping, travelling, catsitter-arranging, cooking, and general running of my household while I am at someone else's household. 

This is the easy stuff, though, compared to some week-of-Christmas working years I've experienced.  When we lived in Atlanta, I worked for a consulting firm.  It was not unusual for clients to call with projects and money to spend before the end of the year.  (Sometimes their budgets had a use-it-or-lose-it-from-next-year's-budget clause that made it inadvisable to economize).  We would be in a flurry of activity, trying to schedule meetings and get approvals for programs and deliverables from various client employees who were taking off for vacation, too.  One Christmas week I spent in upstate New York, all day in various meetings, then evenings at their mall getting Christmas gifts that would fit into my hanging bag, so I could run through the airport in high heels 2 days before Christmas hoping to catch the 5:00 flight so I did not have to wait for the 8:10 flight...whew!!!! Can you feel the stress????

I remember whining to my husband that we did not even have a tree up. (This may have been a year when I came home 3 days before Christmas.  The 1980s are a blur.)  He picked me up at the airport, drove me home, and there in the bay window was - a lighted, decorated Christmas tree!  He had spent the time and energy after his workday to go buy a tree, put it up, and decorate it so it would greet me when I came home. It is one of my sweetest Christmas memories.