The Holidays Have Arrived

My wife’s true calling is being a Project Manager.  She always has a legal pad by her side with an agenda and a never ending things to do list.  If I want any peace in my life I must do what she asks of me with a minimum of complaining.  To her credit not much would get accomplished in our life without her.  We are on vacation next week.  It will be a stay at home vacation.  We decided not to make our annual trip to Gatlinburg since we were just there in the summer for our son’s wedding.  Neither my wife nor me wants to spend our Thanksgiving vacation doing chores.  Because of this we moved our holiday schedule a week ahead.  Last weekend we had the annual “Bringing in the Bins” from the outdoor shed.  This weekend we began putting up the tree and setting out other decorations.  In all honesty my wife did 99% of the work.  I was just a beast of burden.  Chloe was around but she seems to have inherited my resistance to manual labor.  Much to my wife’s credit, she decided this was the year to simplify our usual Christmas excess.  We are passing on some of the shopping chores to the younger generation and much of our shopping is being done online.  As of result of these changes most of our shopping chores are completed although the wrapping of the gifts has not yet been completed.  As my wife told our children, “We just can’t keep up the pace of previous years”.  This is more about the physical labor involved than about money.  I am not the man I used to be.  This year we outsourced the “Bringing in the Bins” to our new step-grandson.  It was the best $20 we ever spent.  I am in some disbelief that Thanksgiving is next week and Christmas is little more than a month away.  This time of year always seems to be in hyper-drive as the holidays draw nearer.