How I'm Surviving the Holidays

How did is get to be December already? And why have I started my annual pilgrimage to Diet and Exercise Mountain already, a full month before I'd traditionally do it?  I've got the answer to that second question. It's the fact that I've stress-eaten myself into gaining so many pounds this year that my clothes are getting uncomfortably tight and I refuse to buy a bigger size. I'm so serious about this that I'm not entering the gingerbread house building contest this year. Aside from the fact that I can't have all that candy around tempted me night after night as I'd add layer after layer of gum drops, gumballs, life savors, pretzels, cotton candy, twisted licorice, etc., etc. on a cookie house put together with Royal Icing. I also want to give some of the others residents at my CCC a chance to place in the winner's circle this year. Between shopping for just the right candy and building a gingerbread house, then decorating it, I'd be on a sugar high for over a month and once you're riding on that tiger's back it's hard to get off. And think of the money I'm saving. Gingerbread house decorating is expensive when you do things like buy a box ice cream cones because you want one to cover in spearmint leaf-shaped confectionery. Last year a bought an entire bag of something just to get a star shaped piece of candy for the top of the aforementioned Christmas tree. I need to go get on the scales. I think I gained a pound just writing this paragraph. 

Another reason why I'm not entering to contest is it's time consuming and I'm back to feeling like I'm running out of time in my old age to finish all the things that need doing and/or I want to do. Naturally, being a self-indulgent kind of person I usually end up doing the fun stuff before things like mattress turning, closet and filing cabinet purging, starting my income taxes and fine tuning my estate plans. And being a worry wart I've accumulate a lot of necessary distractions from what our reality will be after January 20th. My upstairs neighbor says she's just not going to worry about it. Easy for her to say, she's 93 and a prime candidate to be shipped off to the glue factory and she says there's nothing we can do to change things. I don't agree but that's not the post I'm writing today.

What projects are on my agenda right now? I'm working on finishing a landscape painting that I don't like but I need to cross it off the list so I can go on to a more inspiring painting, another customized paint-by-number of one of my niece's grandsons. She asked me to do it from one of her favorite photos. When I ordered the kit from the Asian import company they made it and sent it out the same day when others I've ordered from them took several weeks to product before putting it on a slow boat from China. I think they were trying to beat the coming tariff increases this time, same as me. After that is completed I want to try to repaint some of the tiles in my new 1930's Bakelite Mahjong set that my nice gifted me a couple of weeks ago. I've watched two videos on how to restore them and it doesn't look that hard to do. The only part you can't do over and over again until you get it right is putting the tiles in the oven to 'age' the ones that are lighter in color than the rest of the set. I won't be doing that on this set but I've love items made with Bakelite my entire adult life so I'm fascinated by the change-the-color-process. I might try the process on some orphan tiles I've accumulated in my hunt for one bams.

On Black Friday I took full advantage of the sales and also bid on a 1923 wooden Mahjong set. Won it! It's missing one tile that I think I can duplicate over at the wood shop and then dink around to get the aged paint color just right. But I won't let myself play around with that project until I've condensed and purged some stuff on a bookshelf in my den closet. That's my plan: for every project I do that's fun I'll alternate it with projects that need to be done, be it deep cleaning or downsizing here in the land of I won't live forever. Do I sound manic? I would be if all the plans in my head actually come to pass. They won't. But half a list accomplished is better than nothing and without a list that's what would happen.

I did manage to carry out a project for the common good here on the continuum care campus. Our mail room cabinet where we store out of seasonal decor, Mahjong sets and boxed puzzles was in desperate need of cleaning and organizing. It's always been a fight for space as the puzzle boxes seem to breed in the dark. So I took it upon myself to move the puzzles to our library---after getting permission from the woman who man's our library. She's self-appointed but was an actually librarian before retirement and she's done wonders with our library here, doubling it's size and rotating books between ours and the library in our assisted living building on campus and the county library's donation box. Book seems to breed in the dark around here, too. It felt good making space where it was needed and giving people better access to the puzzles.

I've also started gearing up for another project in the community. Starting in mid January I'm teaching three two hour classes in how to play Mahjong followed by a month of monitoring a newbie table of players during our regular club's playing time. I teach with a lot of hand-outs so I'm set up folders for the class attendees this time around. 

But the biggest thing I'm doing to get through the season is what I'm not doing. I skipped going go the choral concert, the brass band concern, the Christmas plays and live nativity, the bus tour of city lights and I won't be enjoying cookies-by-the-fireplace Christmas morning. And I didn't join the decorating committee who spent last week decking the halls with every wreath, garland, tree, ornaments, candle sticks, nativity sets, lights, reindeer and red bows on the planet. I am, however, going to the Christmas buffet, a sing-along, a cookie decorating party and the White Elephant Gift exchange. And I just returned from seeing a ballet company of girls 13 and under who performed to music from The Nutcracker. 

There truly is something for everyone to do around here and no pressure if you want to sit out any or all parts of the festivities. Well, I shouldn't say that. I've been taking heat for a week for not building a gingerbread house this year and I'd like to punch the woman who keeps nagging me about my decision. ©