mothers on the verge

Not going to be able to really post much right now. (And I will refrain from tsking YLM..!) Just too much chaos. How much? 1. Hosted 75 people at our home last weekend 2. Baked 850 cookies for said event (truly) 3. Hosting 36 children this Saturday for The Rabbit's birthday 4. Hosting parents who are sleeping on the air mattress in my livingroom/office right now. 5. Baking 48 cupcakes for birthday event at school. Today. 6. Taking Rabbit from school event to Rockettes this evening. (Yes, bringing aspirin for moi.) 7. Making candy for gifts to be mailed for holidays (if my head doesn't pop off) 8. Oh yes. And working. And so my dear friends, I shall remain silent again until probably Monday when the house is empty, The Rabbit is at school, The Prince is at work and I am solo with my computer and 1 apot of dear dear coffee all to myself. Then, I will download and reflect on how I managed to eliminate the word "No" from my vocabulary yet again.

Off to California in the morning to spend Christmas with my American family, Alpha and the girls in tow. All very excited, but sad too as we were so looking forward to Christmas with my grandmother and now she won't be with us - or not in body anyway. Sorry for not having posted for a while but Granny's death and funeral took some digesting. On top of that I have been reorganising the apartment in the aftermath of the new kitchen build (a kitchen bigger than a cupboard, amazing!), dealing with the fact that Alpha's new job is seriously full-on (I got used to the whole sharing of school responsibilities but that is now sadly a thing of the past), then a whole series of crazy work deadlines and pesky panicking clients. But anyway, who cares - all that is so almost last year as from tomorrow I am free, free, free for a whole ten days and virtually incommunicado as I'm leaving the CrackBerry at home. Thrilled is too downbeat a word to describe my soaring elation. Merry Chri...

The great thing about Gotham during the holidays is not the glow of light on the street that makes you feel like you've walked into a Dickens story (sans Scrooge). Or that glorious feeling of coming in from a frigid windy day to a warmly lit apartment and heating up warm apple cider. Or the fact that what dogs leave behind on the street stops smelling as badly (because their Marc Jacobs-clad, $2.1 million apartment dwelling owners can't bend over to pick it up because they'll faint from not eating since the Summer Solstice....) The great thing about Gotham is the true hybrid of culture. Tonight, the Rabbit and I are putting the finishing touches on our tree, and are racing off in a few for a Hanukah party where we'll eat latkes, apple sauce and some chocolates after lighting the menorah. And then tomorrow, we're making Christmas cookies for our holiday shindig. Don't know much about Kwanzaa, beyond the beautiful kinara (kind of like a menorah I believe but with ...

When The Prince and I were dating we took one of those personality tests. You know. The ones where you're assigned a series of letters that attempt to clarify your uniqueness. Anyway...so when we went back to see our results, this guy had put some numbers on the floor. I was told to stand at one end, and The Prince at the other. This was the gap in our way of handling situations. Basically, I'm close to an atomic stress ball and he's a Zen master. How does that work in our life? Welcome to our holidays: I have 15 lists, in different colors, in a spiral bound notebook. The Prince has a six-pack in the fridge.

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/he...

I've been back from holiday for a couple of weeks now but have been trying hard to ignore the fact. I've been an ostrich, sticking my head in the London sand and pretending that I am still in that lovely holiday doze zone. Sadly, I now have to emerge and blink in the harsh light of reality. Yup, I'm back in London. Yup, back to work and no more lazy days with the girls running around and not giving a stuff about the mountaineous pile of laundry/ washing up/ whatever. No more getting up late to a pile of croissants and no pressing deadlines. I'm getting used to that knot of mild panic twisting ominously in my gut again, always somewhere in the background, always nagging away as I race from place to place, always about to be five minutes late and not sure how I'm going to fit everything in to one short day. Still, I guess if I was in holiday mode the whole time there wouldn't be much to look forward to. But then again, can you ever get too much of a good thing? P...