Dear Santa

I really just want to take a nap.  My daughter is at a friend's house, and my son is occupied on the computer with his World of Warcraft (his most recent obsession).  The house is fairly tidy (ehem, okay... it's passable), the dog is curled up on the couch next to me, it's cold outside and I am very, very tired.

Why am I so tired?  Many reasons... but here's what I figured out.  It's the holiday season.  Now, it's not the holiday season itself that exhausts me.  I love Christmas music, baking, gathering with friends and family, finding the perfect gift for my loved ones.  I love the snow, and sitting around the hearth while a fire blazes in the fireplace, lighting up our faces with a warm orange glow.  I love all of those things about this season, and it never seemed to exhaust me before.

But this year is different.  I have thirty-five fewer available hours in my "work-week" than I had last year.  When my kids were in school, I spent those seven hours a day for those first few weeks of December shopping, baking, planning, cleaning, mailing, shipping, writing, candy-coating, wrapping, drinking Bailey's and cocoa curled up with a good book...  Now, I'm not whining.  I know that working mothers/fathers whose children go to school have the same kinds of time constraints, as do parents with small children still at home.  I'm not comparing myself to those people.  I am simply comparing my 2010 Holiday Season Self to my 2009 Holiday Season Self.  This year, I have less time to complete more tasks.

Now, in an ideal world my wonderfully well-behaved children would accompany me to the post office, the craft store, the mall, the market.  They would joyfully don an apron, baking cookies and making caramel corn while laughing at each other's floury faces and frosting-fingers.  We would do this while listening to Christmas carols and drinking home made egg-nog, and afterward they would willingly (nay, eagerly) help mom polish off the dishes and sweep the last sprinkles off the floor.  In the evening, they would be snuggled in bed by 8:30pm, their cheeks rosy from an afternoon of sledding, dreaming of sugar-plums while mom wrapped gifts and placed them under the tree.

What?  WHOSE life is THAT? 

I ditch my kids at my neighbor's house so I can run out for an hour, stop at the bank, run to the grocery store, and pick up a last minute gift.  I barely get the floor swept and the dishwasher unloaded before it's time to cook another meal, and it's trashed again.  My kids are up until after eleven.  They don't feel like baking, they want me to take them sledding and skating before we're even out of our pajamas, they can't even get their rooms clean let alone help with dishes...

Now here I sit, Christmas a few short days away.  All the goodies we've already baked are eaten or given away, none of my gifts are wrapped, I have seven loads of laundry to finish, the winter sunlight draws undue attention to my streaky windows and the dust on the mantel, our Christmas cards are now New Year's Greetings (even though they've been on the counter since Thanksgiving), we have no outdoor lights up, who said you need to get a gift for the garbage man?, and there is a bathroom sink in my dining room.

Santa... if you're out there, reading this... all I want for Christmas this year is a clean, organized house.  Just for a month.  A week?  Just a weekend?  I think I've been very good.  It's not too much to ask, is it?  Practical.  Inexpensive.  Home-made (kind of).  So, Santa... or Mrs. Clause... if you're out there in the blogosphere... never mind the acoustic guitar.  I'd like this instead. -Thanks

I'm sure I will get this under control, the time-management thing, maybe by next holiday season. In the meantime, where's the Bailey's and Cocoa?