10 MINUTES LEFT

I am cooking for the family's progressive dinner tomorrow and I realized that I hadn't posted yet this week. That is not living up to my self-imposed expectation of posting once a week. It was a busy week, as expected the week before Christmas. I had my mom, sister and her husband and my little nephew, Bobby over for dinner on Wednesday and they helped me to decorate one of my trees - the one that has the ornaments I have grown with and collected over the years. After it was done and they were gone, I sat to look at the tree. It was suddenly like, 'Ahhhh, it's Christmas.' This is the tree that will have to go up first in the future - it's the one that makes my home my home and my holiday spirit rise.

I have done well with having the spirit this year, seems like I am around a lot who aren't. I, of course, blame it on the weather - I think winter came to fast this year, comparatively. The past several years, the snow hasn't seemed to come and settle until after the new year and I think people being home more because of bad weather has started that cabin fever feeling early.

I am about to have myself a Grape Gorilla (my own name for the simple mix of grape vodka with white grape soda). While I continue with the decorating. I still seem to have a lot to do before people come over tomorrow - it's all good though. I am not stressing about it and have committed to only decorating until 2 and then going to bed.

So far, I have made brownies with M & M cookies mixed in, cheesecake (although I think I am going to make it for my gathering next week, but instead of the sugar in the crust mix, I am going to crush candy canes and then for the milk - I am going to use eggnog instead of milk (realize I am talking about the jell-0 easy mix cheesecake - oddly enough a family favorite. But I thought of that peppermint eggnog cheesecake after I had already mixed it up, or I would have done that tonight. I put the holiday mint kisses in a batch of the brownies too. If I get ambitious enough I will also be making lemon bars, but for now I think I am okay.

I believe I am hitting the twelfth week since submitting my story - and they said that if I hadn't heard from them by this time, they were not interested. So next week, I plan on starting to prepare to send it out again. Cool gift I got from my friend, Jason, the Gotham Screenwriting Book. I haven't gotten any real writing done lately - working and getting the house ready. Bad excuse.

Merry Christmas!