It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ...

Not only am I woefully behind on my reading and seriously delinquent in my blogging, I'm behind on everything else, too. I am now getting emails and phone calls from my mother-in-law wanting to know what the kids want for Christmas. I think they might want me to stop talking about the Revolutionary War and the names of the boats on which our ancestors sailed to America, but that's just a hunch on my part.

In years past I would have had half my shopping done before Thanksgiving, but now here we are with just over a week to go to Thanksgiving and I don't have a menu planned, much less any clue what I'm doing about Christmas. If any of my children are reading my blog, you can stop rifling through my drawers ... I haven't bought you anything. Please post your list in the comments section, I need some good ideas ASAP. Including a link to the items you want would be a win for you on many levels - you'll probably get exactly what you want and as an added bonus, I won't make you finish dinner to get dessert.

Clearly, I need to refocus at least some of my attention back on the living, in this century, so in that spirit, I made a list of Christmas books and have started some seasonal reading. 

I began with Knit the Season, by Kate Jacobs, but I was having a hard time getting into it. Holidays were just not on my mind - until last night, that is, when the mailman left an unexpected package on my doorstep, from a friend of mine in Las Vegas. Among the goodies in the box was It's beginning to look a lot like Zombies: A book of zombie Christmas carols.

I tossed it into my bag along with Knit the Season and headed out for my daughter's swim class. I got a couple of funny looks when I guffawed but I don't care - there's no way to sing  "Deck the Halls with Parts of Wally" in your head and laugh silently.  I'm just sorry we took down our Halloween decorations already - we could have been the coolest house on the street, maybe the coolest house ever - if we'd just added our Christmas decorations to the Halloween decorations and spent December with a band of merry ghouls on our lawn.

Oh well. Next year!

So now, thanks to a good friend, a random act of holiday spirit, and one seriously funny book, I am in the holiday spirit and the reading spirit too.