It is a stressful time of the year: shopping, visiting, parties to attend, parties that you don't want to attend but you feel like you must, and family from out-of-town icrashing at your house so you have to clean out your "guest bedroom" which is actually a euphemism for "your hoarding/craft room."
I work at UNBC so the last weeks of work tends to be packed full of the things that you "must get done" before your holidays start to get ready for the next semester. I have found myself, over the past few weeks, not sleeping very well and worrying over the next items that have to get done. In all fairness, I also have young children who like to wake me up in the middle of the night to let me know that they're very tired. I have found that it is exceptionally easy to calm yourself by gorging on Christmas baking done by more organized people who have helpfully decided to share.
In times of great stress, it is helpful to take the time to count your blessings and identify the things that you are grateful for. So in the Spirit of Christmas (and the 10 days we have left before Christmas), here is my list of 10 things that I am grateful for, this holiday season:
1)The snow melting off my roof melting into a sheet of ice on my driveway (it sounds like I shouldn't be grateful for this but an icy driveway means you can sled down it with your toddler.)
2)Chinooks bringing unseasonably warm weather and melting the ice on your driveway.
3)Finishing some Christmas gifts that I am making.
4)Knowing that those in my family who receive half-finished projects from me on Christmas Day will just laugh and give the presents back to me so that I may finish them at a leisurely pace.
5)Knowing that my in-laws won't mind if their Christmas package and gifts arrive just after Christmas because I haven't yet ordered a crucial gift for them yet.
6)Knowing that my mother and sister-in-law won't mind if I've made them gifts that may not fit and will appreciate the thought (and the work) behind them. (Everything that I have knitted this year hasn't quite turned out the way I anticipated and now I've run out of time to make replacements).
7)I am grateful I haven't had to shovel my driveway yet.
8)I am grateful for my husband who has shoveled the driveway (and he's grateful for number #3 as well).
9) I am incredibly thankful that I live in Prince George with my large, extended family composed of kind, generous, funny and strange people.
10) I am grateful for my husband and my children, who are also strange and wonderful and whom I love very much.
Drive safe and shop well, Prince George. Take the time to be thankful for your blessings, too. Finish your Christmas baking and in the event you have extras, I'm game.
