Complaining and Explaining.

Well, just a few days left of school and then the partying starts.  We've got four birthdays next week, not including Jesus'.  The past two days I have run Lola through hurried shopping and mall walking on top of grocery getting.  I feel so bad for her.  I usually do my mad errand running just on her preschool day, but man, we're coming down to the line and I need to knock out my Christmas to-do list before the girls are home from school.  So Lola gets lunch 2 hours late, right along with me.  We were at Target and I bought some goldfish so she would make it through 3 more stops.  It's just not nice of me.

And guys, since Lucy has had her surgery, I haven't taken her on a walk/run in a whole week.  And I come home from errand running, see that the bathrooms are covered in pee mud...is that not disgusting?  People pee, people have dirty shoes, and they make pee mud shoe prints on my bathroom floor, then dog hair sticks to it.  It's the yummiest.
Anyway, so I came home yesterday from the mall and the grocery store, realized we had no lunch to eat, made humus and chopped cucumbers, inhaled some, cleaned the bathrooms, and it was time to get the girls from school.  So, no walking the dog, and no time or energy left to exercise.  This has been December.  No exercising, plenty of cookie eating.  It's not that I'm obsessed with muscles.  It really does make me feel better all around to exercise.  It releases the happy juices in my brain.  Muscles are nice too though.

Also, Lola pees in her bed nearly every night.  Like, the pull-up does not work.  I guess these expensive things are not meant to hold more than a dribble.  If I change sheets at 2am, I'm wide awake until 4.  That's today.  I need to return something to Dillard's, get a thing at Hobby Lobby, get 8 teacher's gifts at Starbucks, and return to the grocery store because I forgot Lola's fruit for her preschool Christmas party.

I am very hopeful that the weather lets me get away this weekend.  My little sister had her first child, a son.  Leon is beautiful, just like Shannon.  Actually, just like Tyler, because he's the spitting image.  Shannon is strong and awesome.  She had Leon naturally, at home.  It's surreal to see pictures, and I keep saying to myself, "How did this happen?  She's a mom!"  So, it's the plan to go see them this weekend with some of my family, if freezing rain doesn't devastate us.

What can I say, I'm a little disappointed in myself that December has done what I always hoped I wouldn't let it do.  But really, how can you slow down?  You have to do the things you have to do.  You have to attend the 7 Christmas parties and make cookies for 4 occasions.  Actually, I just didn't yesterday.  No time to get the cookies made, no time to even shower, so I just didn't go.  I was sad.  But too tired to be that sad.

There are some Christmas days I remember driving home after it was all done and being very sad that I hadn't thought about Jesus coming as a soft pink baby to save the world.  And in the midst of shopping and starving and fainting while I cleaned pee-mud, I said, "Dad-gummit!  This is advent!  I'm a crazy person over gift getting."  It has taken over.  It always does to an extent.  We have 30-ish people to buy for.  That takes time.  That cuts into having slow, thoughtful moments.  Well, I'm determined, after Hobby Lobby today, I'm done.

I'm making snowflakes tomorrow and going out for a birthday lunch...after I attend Lola's Christmas party, and before I bring drinks to Riley's party.  Next week.  Next week  will be slow.