Headless Chickens and Other Signs The Holidays Are Here

Have you ever thought about the expression, "Running around like a chicken with its head cut off?" I mean, is that to imply that pre-beheaded chickens are somehow orderly and organized? Head or no head, chickens are a fluttery, chattery, ditzy species, right? So do we have to be so very graphic and insensitive? Can't we just say we're running around like chickens period?

So. I've been running around like a proverbial chicken with or without its proverbial head. I've often bemoaned the shortage of time in December and the long list of things we all expect to get done in so few days. Between the Day Job and Christmas shopping for four increasingly picky children (with increasingly expensive tastes) and trying to scribble out a few Christmas cards to the nearest and dearest (a good portion of whom I only hear from (and vice versa) this time of year) and trying to get a little ritual baking done (it's therapeutic--what's NOT therapeutic is trying to schedule it around everything else that's going on).

In years past, I have suggested to friends, family and coworkers that we start a movement to add the 28 days of February on to December. I mean, what's the point of February, really? Especially in the areas of the country that experience the joys of winter weather, February is just one more trial to be survived before spring's arrival. Though it's the shortest month according to the calendar, it often seems to drag on and on. And December, though it has a full allotment of 31 days, seems to fly on by with barely a chance to catch your breath. Borrowing a page from the best episode of Rugrats ever, we can call it "Decebuary" and we can have the 28 extra days all at the beginning before Christmas, thereby at least moderately upping the chances of me getting all this stuff done on time.

You know what else would help me get things done in a more timely fashion? Spending a little less time blogging (and compulsively reading everyone else's brilliant blogs)...but I gotta say we stand a way greater chance of pushing this Decebuary thing through than of me cutting back on the blogging.