Skip to main content

The Countdown Begins

It's not even December yet and already my family looniness has started in preparation for the event The Prince fondly refers to as "Oh God. Is it THAT time of year again?"

Ah yes. The time of year when I start to make my own New Year's cards (100 of them), plan a holiday party, a birthday party (22 kids this time. Yes, I am off my meds), cupcakes for the said birthday at school, (homemade -- nut allergies prevent bakery cupcakes from being picked up), packages to be mailed to DC, packages to be mailed to LA, packages to be packed, and then if I have time an attempt to stand and gaze at the tree at Rockefeller Center with a hot cocoa. Which never fails to turn into a shoving match with tourists wearing cameras the size of their heads (wasn't the digital revolution supposed to make everything SMALLER!!?) and hot cocoa all over my coat. Every time.

And did I forget that I do work?

The Prince and The Rabbit have come down with a combined cough/laryngitis/runny nose/headachy kind of thing. And so since I need to be in sprinting mode for the next 28 days, and cannot afford (ABSOLUTELY NOT!) to get sick, I have thought of locking myself in the bathroom when they are around in an attempt at quarantine. But since we have just one loo in this establishment I know that won't work. But let's just say my hands are starting to get seriously chapped from the hand-washing. And I've laid in a heavy supply of those anti-viral Kleenexes.

Happy Holidays!

Comments

Sugarmama said…
Can I just say, though, that your New Year's cards are absolutely lovely pieces of paper art? If that makes you feel any better about whipping up 100 of them...
Manhattan Mama said…
Thank you Sugarmama! That is why I make them because I actually love making them. Although there are those nights, at 11:30 pm, with me, a pair of scissors and glue where I just, well, wonder if it might not be better to say, sleep?;) can't wait to meet our newest reader!

Popular posts from this blog

Apologies for being incommunicado this week and hope none of you out there are too distraught not to be receiving the usual almost-daily MotV missives. The reason for the silence is that I'm up to my neck, metaphorically-speaking, in research papers for my first grad course assessment. This experience has made me realise how rigorously un-academic I am in my thinking. It has also illuminated how reliant I am on red wine in order to get through endless evenings typing furiously on my laptop, not to mention the fueling of increasingly colorful curses that I feel obliged to aim at the University's online library system which consistently refuses to spit out any of the journals I'm desperate for (I refuse to believe this is 100% due to my technical incompetence...) Oh well, if this is the price one has to pay in order to realize a long-cherished dream then it's not all that bad... No one ever said a mid-life career change would be easy. Wish me luck!

A thought

Perhaps sometimes a gift can be delivered in the guise of a tragedy. It's just a matter of perception, after all. I suspect that the talent lies in looking beyond the surface to what lies beneath and beyond. And, of course, being able to make sense of it all and going on to apply that knowledge to building a productive way forward. Here's hoping.

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to

A friend recently emailed me to say that her big memory of her stay with us last year is that she had a great birthday, one of the few where she didn't 'act like a spoiled grumpy princess'. She tried to give me all the credit but as I explained to her, it was all down to having a fellow female organising the birthday fun rather than leaving it to her partner. Her email got me thinking about birthdays and how very different men and women are in their attitudes to celebrating special occasions. It also had me thinking about my birthday two years ago when I threw a major tantrum in the Carrefour car-park after being told that we were off to do the weekly shop, kids in tow, which was simply the final straw at the end of a very uninspiring day. In contrast, my birthday last year was rather lovely (a morning on my own in a spa with no mobile coverage, pure selfish bliss). This year - in a few short months, eek! - I'll be hitting the grand old age of 38. This will be my las...