Checking It Twice

Our Christmas plans have been made, plane tickets purchased and rental car reserved. So now I can start putting together my annual lists!

I'm a list-maker, no question about it. Even moreso since I became a parent and discovered that about a third of my brain had liquefied and dribbled out my ear -- I have to write everything down, now, or it simply gets lost. If I tell you I'm going to do something and you don't see me write it down, then you've got about a 25% chance that it's gone. I maintain -- I'm not exaggerating, here -- five separate calendars. Six, if you count the wall calendar at home where I occasionally jot things.

Christmas, with its busy schedules and multitude of activities, is a prime list target. It doesn't just get a list, but an entire spreadsheet.

The first tab is Schedule: Are the kids' schools having holiday events? What days are schools closed? When are we doing the Moon Cookie party? When are we having various get-togethers, and where? Are we combining Matt's birthday with Thanksgiving or having a separate party? And what the hell are we doing about Alex's birthday, situated as it is only two days before Christmas? And anything else that might need to be worked around: Doctor appointments, book club, Matt's D&D game...

I use the schedule to back into my shopping: If we need to ship gifts at least a week before Christmas, then I need to have the gifts at least 10 days before Christmas. If any of them are going to be ordered, I need to place my orders about 10 days before that. Which means we need to decide what we're ordering in about the first week of December. (Give or take; we trust some places more than others to deliver quickly.)

Then there's the Gift tab, where we track who's getting gifts from us, and what the gifts are. I'm such a dork, I also track the status of each gift, so I can see what still needs to be ordered or purchased, wrapped, and delivered. (I'm thinking that this year, we may have stuff for Matt's family shipped directly to his mom, and then we'll buy some wrapping paper and wrap it all once we're up there, rather than have to re-ship it all one way or another.)

The Gift tab also lists everyone we want to send cards to, and keeps their addresses. I thought about formatting the address bit so I could print it out on label stock, but then decided against it. I always roll my eyes just a little bit when I receive a card with a machine-printed address. I am, however, pondering a printed family newsletter for the first time ever. I got several of them last year, and while I don't care for the "bragsheet" variety, I really enjoyed the conversational ups-and-downs ones. We'll see.

And finally, there's the Packing tab. Last year, it was a list of things to pack, separately, for Penny and I so that we'd be ready when I went into labor. (Naturally, I went into labor ten days early, as we were putting Penny to bed, so that bit of careful planning kind of went out the window.) This year, it's things we need to remember to pack to take with us to Chicago. I'm putting everything I can think of on it (I'm a completist) but it's mostly so I can plan things like, how many glucose test strips will Penny need while we're there? and how many diapers should we count on to get Alex from our doorstep to Jill's?

Why yes. Yes, I am a freak.

But you knew that already.