T'is the Season to Freak Out

Well, it's December again. And as usual, I am in a tizzy wondering how everything that needs to be done will get done. In the middle of my annual freak out, there stands my husband, cool calm and collected. Assuring me that everything will work out, that the presents will all end up bought and wrapped, the house cleaned, decorated and ready for visitors, the Christmas Eve food decided on, bought and prepared, and that this all will happen without me having a heart attack or ending up in the loony bin.

My husband is such an optimist. He stays stoically calm, if a bit impatient when I reject suggestion after suggestion for a gift for our 8-month-old grandson. I stand in the toy aisle, making him dump every box upside down to see where each toy is made. Made in China they all read.

"Terry,” he says, “they are all made in China. Face it; you are going to have to buy something made in China.” 

“But he's a baby. They put everything into their mouth. I'm not getting a baby anything made in China!”

So on we march, me determined, and Al mentally calculating how many of these shopping trips we will have to make before I succumb to the inevitable. My stubborn refusal is threatening to derail the hardcore shopping that we had intended, needed to get done. My husband, in an effort to derail what I'm sure he sees as an oncoming temper tantrum and to assuage his own growling stomach, suggests we stop shopping and eat. 

The warm lobster bisque, the thirst quenching raspberry lemonade and the quiet talk about anything NOT having to do with Christmas, revive me. I decide when we get home I will shop online for something made in the USA for the youngest member of the family. I call both of my sons, and tell them I am in a store parking lot, ready to do Christmas shopping and that they had better tell me right this minute what to buy. Surprisingly, both sons have suggestions that they give me without too much coaxing, and without one threat of dire consequences passing my lips.

Al and I even come up with a good idea for a gift for my parents, and suddenly all is right with the world. We get some of the needed shopping done, pat ourselves on the back, and I go home, get online and find an actual toy made in the USA, not out of stock, that if I order today will be here 10 days before Christmas. Oh, sweet success! 

Now, if I can just resist the temptation to look on the bottom of the crock-pot I bought for one of the boys to see where it was made, I can count this a perfect shopping day. 

Until Next Time — Happy Ancestral Digging! 

Note: This post is my way of letting you know that due to my annual freak out, my posts this month will be sporadic. T'is the Season! 

Note this post first published online at Desktop Genealogist Blog, December 3, 2007, at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

© 3 December 2007, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder