Five days and counting

I thought I was in great shape, Christmas shopping-wise. But I'm at that point where it suddenly occurs to me that I have more to do, and not much time to do it in.

Still to do:

1. Finish Roger's "High Tech Tucks" quilt -- I really don't want to give him an unfinished quilt for Christmas. If all else fails, I can do it as a New Year's present, I guess...

2. Bake cookies: brown sugar shortbread cookies are a must, and the coconut thumbprints are a new addition I want to make (given how delicious they were when Julie nextdoor gave us a bunch. I had to go over and demand the recipe this morning!) And then there's the peanut butter fudge...

3. Final shopping, which should be done tomorrow when I meet Beth at the mall in Corte Madera. I should stick my list in my purse now!

4. Finalize Christmas dinner menu and make shopping list. We're having a ham (purchased today), some potato cheesy thing I can make in the crockpot (recipe yet to be determined), some vegetable thing--why is that always the hardest for me to decide on...Maybe oven roasted veggies? But wait, the ham will be in there... Sigh. More recipe hunting...

5. Finish wrapping. Santa ran out of the red paper he always uses even though he was wide awake for wrapping last night.

6. Buy red paper.

With all of this yet to do, I set out this morning to return library books, mail two packages, find some plain white christmas ornaments to make last-minute name-card thingies for the Christmas table (wouldn't that look cool, tired to a red ribbon, with the name written on it in silver?) and buy flaked coconut. I had a successful trip to the library--it was one of those inexplicable days where books I can't wait to read practically leapt off the shelves at me so my library basket was full of books to bring home. Then, finding the post office lobby filled with people, I smugly dropped my boxes into the mail slot because Roger had done pre-paid, printed labels for me via the internet... Well I was across town, on my knees digging through the boxes of half-priced ornaments to see if I could find white or red ones when my cell phone rang. Turns out the PO site did some wierd thing and the labels Roger afixed to my boxes were "invalid" but the PO only emailed him about 30 minutes after I dropped them in the shute. Oops. Now I'll have to call the recipients and tell them that I did not intentionally send them their gifts postage due!

Never did find the white or red ornaments. Lots of gold, blue and green balls left around town, however. Then I thought I'd pop in to say hi to my sister Laura, and we got onto a conversation about camellia plants and how now is when they're in bloom and next thing you know, we were at the nursery looking at camellias. They were expensive, so we HAD to go to Home Depot to see their cheaper plants...and next thing you know, I was loading three camellias, a fern, a daphne plant, and two lemon trees into the car. How did that happen?! One of the lemon trees (a meyer lemon) is for Roger for Christmas. Two of the camellias are mine, the other stuff is Laura's. We do get each other into trouble.

We dropped everything off at Laura's -- the lemon tree will stay there until Christmas eve--and I hit the grocery store, my intention to make spaghetti with fresh zucchini and tomato sauce fading rapidly. Did they have coconut? No. Did they have coffee filters, size 4? No. Rats.

I got home to find Caroline having a playdate with her friend Sarah, and just as I was putting my shopping goods away, Sarah's mom Ann arrived to pick her up. She didn't have the urge to rush home and cook either, so next thing you know, we had plans to meet at our favorite local chinese place.

The hot and sour soup, spicy orange chicken, beef and broccoli, ma po tofu, cashew chicken, and sweet and sour prawns tasted much better than I think my pasta would have!