Ready or Not

Today I talked with my two older sons -- the youngest has been staying with me, so I talk to him every day. The middle one said he's going to the mall tomorrow morning because he's not quite finished with his shopping. The oldest one said he'll have to do some shopping once they get to Florida (tomorrow, early afternoon) because he isn't finished either. Several of the gifts I ordered are coming on Monday, others on Tuesday. We're doing dinner and gifts on Sunday. I suppose I feel a little bit better knowing I'm not the only one who isn't ready.

I know I said this before, probably recently, but I can't remember how I managed to pull everything together when my kids were young and I was working full time. But I always did. We didn't necessarily have a roomful of gifts, but we had enough. Okay, I won't dwell on that. I just think I should have more free time now, which should -- in theory, at least -- makes getting things done easier. So I can't figure out if I really don't have more free time, or if having more time doesn't make getting things done easier. My mother used to say, "If you want something done, give it to a busy person." There's probably some truth in that. I've experienced the momentum factor; when I've been working a lot, having one more thing to do just doesn't make that much difference. The reverse is also true. When I don't have to be anywhere at any particular time, it's really easy to sit around and do nothing.

We are -- or will be by noon tomorrow -- as ready as we're going to get. I'm training for a new scoring program (and my internet provider had a three-hour outage this morning when I was an hour in, really jamming me). I should be able to knock that out in a few hours early tomorrow morning. I have cookie dough chilling in the fridge, I'm cooking a ziti and Italian bread, and most of the gifts are wrapped. Ready or not, indeed.