And Here is Where I Start to Hyperventilate over Holiday Stress

I mean YEAH! Here’s where I start to get overwhelmed and feeling crunched and tied. It all kicks in after Halloween. Ha! As if it hadn’t already started getting busy. The appointments, dates, requests, gotta-get-dones, extra work at work, extra stuff at home, extra needs on everyone’s part, scheduling, travel, shopping, planning. My head is starting to spin, my hands are starting to shake, and I can feel anxiety building within the very core of me.

I get a flight or fight response with every request. I’m trying not to panic. But here’s what is on the calendar so far.

November activities (on top of a full time job out of town):

• Finishing up quarter end. Told ya it wouldn’t get done on time. Just not enough time and I can’t do quarter end after hours because my life is busy. That said I worked over all week last week. Can’t do it this week. It is what it is/was. Life cuts no slack in any direction.
• Month end. Yes, it rolls around fast but it’s at least manageable and can be worked in without having to disturb your entire household and home life.
• Dentist this morning at 7:00 a.m. Just a cleaning. Man that rolls around fast.
• Drop of George’s car after work to be serviced before our trip.
• Mom called last night and wants a perm so I have to find someone that can hopefully do it after work because most of our Saturday’s are booked and I have to leave the ones in December close to Christmas open for family in town. An after hour perm is going to be hard to find during the work week but maybe not impossible. Yikes.
• Tomorrow night pick up George’s Car
• Dinner at Mom’s Thurs night (after picking up the car and Dexter)
• Friday night. A hopeful attempt at slamming through the next video for Saturday’s 7:00 am deadline. (It’s the colonoscopy one, and building up of adopting a dog). I’m still very much into editing, need to upload and do thumbnail. I think I can. I think I can but that means tonight I have to finish editing! ahhhh.
• Meanwhile I’m spending a bit of a stretch of myself to do my monthly challenge (see yesterday’s blog): drinking more water, read for pleasure, Bible Study, post a blessing on social media from yesterday, and darn what was that last one? Oh yeah, do a cleaning task in the house.

• Nov 5 is our “one Saturday” to try to make sure we have everything we need for Christmas, begin working on the house, and tying up projects as pretty much the rest of the year is busy as far as Saturday’s go.
• Nov 6 is “Overflow Sunday” at church – coffee and donuts at 9:30, a unified big service with a guest speaker, and a catered meal afterward, and invited guests. No Sunday school. Mom decided not to go – too much for her she decided. She is not big on socialized events and crowds. But I bet she hates missing the big meal. And the donuts. lol
• Nov 7 is my nearly year long planned visit to the GYN. I figured I would do one more trip since I’ve had a bit of pain. Not recently but off an on during the year. I think it’s just aging, but I need to do this visit and then probably that will be it unless there are issues.
• Nov 12 Saturday is Fancy’s trim. Mom wants to look for curtains and a bed spread. I think that is for the guest bedroom. Not sure. I also have to make dressed eggs that afternoon and begin packing for Texas.
• Nov 13 is church and then Thanksgiving with Mom that evening. Mom offered to cook crockpot chicken, sweet potatoes, green beans. I’m doing the dressed eggs, tubed corn, and sister Schubert rolls. I hope it will not be too much for her but she wanted to do it.
• Nov 16 nails done – both fingers and toes. I like to do it separately as when I do my pedi I can delete email and hang on social media and catch up, but when you do both you have to sit there with foil on your fingers and can’t use your phone. ::sigh:: lol. Time is important though so two birds, one stone. (I hate that analogy, poor birdies.)
• Nov 17 Mom’s grocery night out and to grab a quick bite to eat – as we gear up to be gone for over a week.
• Nov 18 Mom’s eye appointment in Hendersonville and we’ll take the afternoon and do that and I’ll take her out to eat and then head home for final packing.
• Nov 19 Dexter to boarding, set up neighborhood house sit person, top off the household security, and then Hot Springs
• Nov 20 Texas
• Nov 26 Hot Springs again and dinner reservations we are looking forward to.
• Nov 27 p/u Dexter from boarding and head home to do laundry.

And here goes December – so far (let’s repeat – on top of working FT out of town)!

• Dec 3, outing with friends
• Dec 6, Sonya hair cut
• Dec 7, meeting with financial Friday. Yes I have to leave work a bit early for this so hopefully I will have hours in the bucket, meaning to work the hours ahead of time. I try not to get in a situation where I have to work it after. I’d rather not “owe time”.
• Dec 9, my PTO day to pull our Christmas together and get wrapping done and may have to shop for final items, and pull the house together for the holidays. No one can touch this day. If you do, you and me, we gonna go round like you have never seen. This is my day. I do for everyone else constantly – this is my day. And quite frankly the day is to work toward everyone’s Christmas so it’s not really my day if you want to get technical. Tribe has spoken. Leave the day alone. It’s mine!
• Dec 10 George’s company holiday party. Mine doesn’t have one. Go figure. lol. But yay, more time for me!
• Dec 16 Possible PTO time for me if I have it and family is in town, final Christmas prep, and housecleaning, maybe some baking but I doubt it.
• Dec 21 Wednesday morning eye appointment at 8:00 am. I won’t get to take her out to eat I don’t think as I’ll need to get back to work. Wednesdays are busy. Have to get check stubs out and such for our plant.
• Dec 23 Definite PTO day – Family in town and holidays beginning. Might get baking in.

Final Christmas plans have not yet been developed. It’s not for sure if Katy and Cody can come in. They are planning on it unless he has to use more PTO days before then. It will be sad if they don’t but we have to be prepared for the possibility of bad news. That will really bum us out. We have a nice Santa spread we are planning for River.

Family coming in from Jacksonville area, (Amelia Island area) the week of Dec 12th and we are unsure of plans from then until Christmas but want to spend as much time as we can.

Still unsure of Christmas with George’s sister Susan and BIL Kevin. Yet to be determined. We also have her birthday which is this month and we usually meet them somewhere to celebrate. That usually means travel for one or both of us so that usually means a weekend day and I’m just not sure what we can do right now. Plans are still being formed.

January of course is the dreaded month of all for work. Year end processing. It’s harrowing and long and a lot of long hours. I’m going to set some rules and boundaries for myself though before we do this to make it more bearable. However, we won’t be traveling for a week of it like the last two years, so that will make it a lot easier for me. I don’t want to stroke out! And then there are the snow and ice events.

So there ya have it. A run down of our schedule. No planned doc appts in Jan but Mom’s eye appt and we’ll need to keep it that way.

On the flip side, January brings a lot of things I enjoy.

• New Year’s celebration. Not a big fan of the holiday but I do my “year end review” and put up Christmas stuff and George fixes fabulous meals and we get the day off. lol
• The refreshing start to the new year
• After Christmas house projects, reorganizing, and cleaning. I am crazy I guess, but I love this!
• Cozy nights under a quilt watching a Netflix show.
• New goals
• A new slogan
• New ways of trying to do things
• New hopes for the year
• My birthday 🙂
• The first snow (which can be bad or good depending on if you are at home or at work)
• Celebrating Kevin (BIL’s) birthday
• FaceTiming with the grandson for his birthday.
• Getting to order special gifts for ourselves with our Amazon points (George and I split it up) and I’m needing to start on my wish list, lol.

So yeah, February will likely always be our hibernation month but since we are not going to TX this year maybe we can hibernate some in January lol. I need to come up with a list of ways not to stress. But it gets hard when you start getting crunched up with time, appointments, plans, and such. And the requests and plans keep coming and we search the calendars trying to fit more and more in. ::yikes::

And all that said, I’ve got to rush my make up on and close up and get out the house for my dental appt at 7:00. I think I will work in Chic Filet this morning. I deserve it. 😉 That is my thing after a doc appt.

Ya’ll be good. Be back later.