It's weird I kinda caught the "spirit" of the season and had a huge part of my shopping done two days after Thanksgiving. But I still don't feel ready for this Christmas thing.

I feel like there are a lot of details looming over me and I have only one day to take care of them. It's the same day that I have to say good bye to my boyfriend for a week; it's the same day that all the stores close early; it's the same day that the roads will be aimlessly and unpredictably choked by a lot of people trying to get around, but not in any set patterns; it's the same day that I want to give a few friends that last few non-family gifts I have. I just don't feel ready.

I just one more day to lounge around with my boyfriend, knock a couple of errands off my list, hit the gym and wrap a few more presents. *sigh* Now I know how it was that for years my parents ended up stay up rediculously late on Christmas Eve laughing and wrapping presents.

I was thinking I was pretty well done with buying presents but, as always happens, someone else made a late entry to my list. Thank God I'm not going to see him until after Christmas. Also my oldest brother called me to request a specific item since I was the most likely to be able to get it.

For my dad I've bought a stupid amount of books - nearly 50 big ass non-fiction books, heavy on history but also including biographies and anthropology/sociology tomes. I've decided to give him the bookcase, bookends and a handful of the inordinately large books on Christmas. On his birthday, three days later, I'm hoping to present him with a huge cardboard box filled with books. It's the box that I've used to move a great deal of my own books from apartment to apartment, so it's starting to aquire a little bit of a literary soul to it. But it's also starting to fall apart.

and I'm just hoping, praying really, that my dad likes this gesture. Or at least won't be cranky enough to tell me straight out that he only wants the biographies on saints and I can return the other four dozen books. *sigh*

Day after tomorrow I plan to show up at eightish (maybe earlier?) with armloads of presents loaded into my laundry basket (yes, it will have some dirty laundry in it }:P). I hope to play loud music created by the Mormon Tabernackle Choir (stop giggling, they're good) and bake cookies and pour out some eggnog. We'll go to mass and then open presents. With any luck we'll be able to do it all together.