Fretting About Undelivered Gifts

Well, there are less than two weeks until Christmas and, while I did my online shopping early, there are still a few undelivered gifts floating around out there somewhere. I placed one large order with a company I’ve never shopped at before. They sent me a receipt when I placed my order and I’ve heard nothing since. Everything I ordered was supposedly “in stock.” I tried tracking my packages at their website, thinking maybe my sp*m filter had killed their delivery receipts. The tracking wouldn’t work on my order. I emailed them. No response. I called them. The line was busy all day long. I then filled out a help request on their website. They finally responded…by sending me a form email telling me to track my package on their website (sigh…).

We had a big snowstorm in the middle of the night last week. Nobody knew it was coming, not even the weatherman, so it was a big surprise! By the time I realized it had snowed, it had already stopped. Had I known it was going to snow at night, I’d have had the children run outside for the annual Christmas card photo. I think a night shot would have been nice. But, it was snowing when we were sleeping and Zach wasn’t here anyway. No more snow is expected this week. I’ll go ahead and write the annual holiday letter and will just wait by the window with my digital camera and the children’s snowsuits at the ready. If it doesn’t snow by this time next week, I guess I’ll just take a picture of the children and try to Photoshop some snow in there. Can’t be too hard to paste a bunch of white dots. 😉

This year, we’re going to see the The Santaland Diaries at the Penobscot Theatre. The children are very excited about that. Richard’s dad and step-mom are coming on Christmas Eve and staying through New Year’s Eve. Grandpa has promised to go sledding with Max, so Max is particularly anxious for a big storm! Unfortunately, the snow from the night storm we received has almost completely melted.

Oh yeah. I almost forgot! A few months ago, we paid off our van. Richard, being a typical man, wanted to rush right out and buy a new car (well, a new used car – we never buy new cars). I said, “No way. It’s paid for. We’re going to drive this thing to its grave!”

We did just that last week. That funny rattle under the hood was actually the catalytic converter going out. The repairs were going to be over $600. By bedtime that night, we were the proud new owners of a new (used) 2005 Ford F-150 pickup. We were going to buy a truck in the spring anyway to haul materials on our land. We just had to bump it up a few months.

The next morning was when we woke up to about four inches of snow. Ali (age 15) came in our room and urgently whined, “Daddy! You need to go outside and shovel the driveway!”

Richard turned around and replied, “I don’t have to shovel. I have a four-wheel drive…”

I have to go. I have tons of goodies to wrap and ship! 🙂

This week’s Maxism:

It was quite early in the morning and Max had something in his mouth. I said, “What are you eating?”

His full-mouthed, garbled reply was, “A candy cane.”

I asked, “Have you had breakfast yet?”

He shook his head up and down, “Mmmhmmmm.”

I asked, “What did you have?”

His sticky red lips smiled and he said, “A candy cane.”

Hugs to all!

Ang

P.S. Write your autobiography in 2007!

Afraid you can’t remember your childhood? Yes you can, using my memory triggers! Sign up for my popular and FUN class, How to Remember, Write and Publish Your Life Story! See: