Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

I love the holiday season. From Halloween until New Years (or mid-January on occasion) my house will be decorated to suit the season with an embarrassing, and yet impressive, array of festive ornamentation for both indoors and out: jack O' lanterns, tin spiders, fall leaves, tiny bails of hay, Christmas wreathes, garden snowmen, sleigh bells, nutcrackers-the list goes on and on. Normally, I have these treasures of holidays past stashed in every available nook and cranny, filling baskets, buckets and bins--and more than one top closet shelf-- but, in my new home, I am blessed with an L shaped under-the-stairs closet. Square footage wise it's about the size of a small bedroom, but, because of the sloping ceiling and it's funny shape, it presents quite a problem when using it as storage. My husband took one look at it and saw his Mt. Everest. He practiced and planned, put boxes in, took boxes out, finally sorting out just the right sizes and shapes. At the end of the day, the closet was full top to bottom , side to side, front to back, like a gigantic puzzle. It was, and is, a thing of beauty. Unfortunately, somewhere in that perfect stack is my holiday decorations. So, we stand with two choices, sort through all those carefully put away bins until we find the ones marked Christmas, Halloween, and Thanksgiving, or just call the holidays off.

Patti, My Spirit Guide

I lose things. Car keys, my purse, shoes, recipes, addresses, my train of thought, my car in parking lots and, more often than not, my way. Anyone who knows me would never ask me to drive and if they ask me to meet them somewhere new, will expect me to be late even though I will have left an hour before anyone else. I've spent roughly as much time circling Disney World looking for my hotel as I have wandering through Disney World looking for my family, yet still, if my husband is not along, someone will hand me the map and say "We're following you", crazy people. My kids now quietly roll their eyes and look the other way when I make the same turn three times. I once made plans to meet a friend in a town half way between her house and mine, at a Cracker barrel. We arrived at different Cracker barrels, two miles apart, and waited there patiently for each other for nearly an hour before one of us thought to call and check on the other. Guess who was at the wrong restaurant? And I map quested that one. Recently, my husband bought me a GPS. I call her Patti because she has a tendency to talk just to hear her own voice, like "turn left on Alvarado Blvd... turn left in 800 yards... turn left in 400 yards... turn left in 200 yards... turn left at next intersection..." I get it, turn left! And my kids personal favorites, Patti chastising me when, despite her best instructing, I still miss that left, "Make immediate U-turn!" or "Recalculating, recalculating, recalculating.." You can almost hear her gritting her teeth and rolling her eyes. Still, I love Patti, and eventually, I get where I'm going.