Author: Jennifer M. Dodd

_On the seventh day of Christmas_
_My children gave to me_
_Seven stepped on K’Nex,_
_Six hours of TV,_
_Five unwashed socks,_
_Four spotty tonsils,_
_Three stacks of pancakes,_
_Two dirty plates,_
_And one magnificent nap._

I am tired, and there is laundry to finish, and presents to um, make, or box up, or otherwise get into some transportable mode. I uploaded the images for my holiday postcards to the printshop today, so hopefully those should arrive in a week. Ideally, I’ll go out tomorrow to the post office and survive the crowd and buy cute stamps because it is now too late to order stamps online and have them arrive in a timely fashion. Ideally. I say this because I will be going to the post office five days before Christmas so it is bound to be a madhouse and I do not like madhouses.

I have shopped as little as possible. I am delving into my boxful of possible presents for the kids (which is really a bad habit I picked up from my mother, which makes it not such a bad habit after all). I need to pick up cream and thank you notes and cat litter from the grocery store that used to be a Shoppers but is now El Primero Mercado. I kind of like the change, it means I can find five different kinds of eggplant without driving all the way down to Global Foods, and I love eggplant.

I am not sick, but Matthew’s sinuses are draining and he tossed and turned all night and it did not help that the sheet was in the dryer so we were both trying to share a blanket–unsuccessfully, I might add. Rebecca’s nose is again bright red, Marcus got a haircut yesterday, and I should find all of my camera accessories and charge it and my iPod and start rounding up gear for the car trip to New Jersey.

Tomorrow I shall be a slave to my sewing machine. Tonight, however, I am going to sit down with a cup of hot tea and think happy thoughts.

One should avoid purchasing e.p.t.s and a turkey baster at the same time. Really.

Even if one’s turkey baster really is broken.

I was bored. And PMSing.

Now all of Rebecca’s vinyl dolls are bald.

This is actually in improvement, really and truly, because their wigs were pretty fried. I did try to fix them (careful brushing with a doll brush, detangling with my fingertips, restyling, removing the last few inches of fried-ness), but they just wouldn’t fix.

So now they are bald, and I have ordered $10 of replacement wigs, and they will soon be good as new.

Annoyed at the world, check.

Completely bothered by everything, check.

Insane enough to bathe three cats in one go, check.

Ah, the joys of PMS.

### Found

* Candles, candleholders, a vase, and a crystal platter.
* Space for my set of Martha Stewart storage containers that I purchased to replace my missing Gladware. They arrived the day before Thanksgiving, much to my relief, because otherwise leftover storage would have been difficult and messy.
* Rose-shaped scented soaps.
* Skewers.
* Light bulbs, light bulbs, light bulbs. Did I mention light bulbs?

### Discarded

* Baby bottle nipples so old that the rubber had degraded. Becca claimed one silicone one so she could feed her baby dolls with a bottle.
* The shredding part of a cheese grater that I no longer own.
* A telephone book from 2004.

Thankfully, my kitchen is almost entirely organized. It still needs a little work in the hotspot near the oven, but that pile has been slowly reduced as I’ve been cleaning in other areas. I also need to sort through the kids’ shoes and figure out what is too small, what is out of season, and what is worn through.