Seasonal

The good thing about being thousands of miles from your loved ones at Christmas (sniff, sniff) is that at this point, when all around are wringing their hands and declaring to Facebook that they're not remotely organized, will never be organized, and vow to be super-duper organized next year, you can sit smugly with your tea and muffin and bask in the glow of having it all in hand.

No doubt a large whale will now fall from the sky to crush me in my insufferable cockiness.

But, fingers crossed and stuff, I'm not too disorganized. Cards were posted, with photos, to the lucky few recipients. The parcels to Ireland went off last Wednesday - two days before the Post Office's deadline for international mail, but up to the wire on my own personal last-chance-to-queue-up-child-free timeline. (And boy, I'm glad I did it child-free, especially when I discovered that the large box I'd so cleverly packed everything in was now too big for the regular customs form and needed a special iron-clad extra-information form to be filled in. I was also glad I'd covered up the graphics and lettering on the box I'd snaffled from outside the supermarket with plain paper, as I heard the woman behind me being told that she couldn't mail that ex-wine-bottle-box as it was with all that other stuff visible on it. Well, you would feel a little silly if your presents all ended up at a vineyard in California.)

I have procured marzipan - from IKEA, of all places - to commence icing the Christmas cake, the children's presents have arrived from far-flung Amazon (not the river), and I even have something for my husband that's a tiny bit more imaginative than a CD and a book. (It's not even a book and a sweater, so there.) I am counting the slippers I bought him yesterday in Target as part of his present too, even if he did ask me to buy them, they were not wrapped up, he's been wearing them since last night, and  - oh yes - I don't bring home a paycheck so I suppose, technically, he pays for everything. But I totally was going to get him slippers for Christmas because I knew he needed them, so it counts, right? I'm just so thoughtful and concerned for his cold feet that I didn't want him to have to wait another day for them. Or even have to go to the bother of unwrapping them.

So that's how organized I am. We also have a tree, though there will be no presents under it until Christmas Eve, because three-year-olds are not known for their self-restraint. What we don't have is any actual plans for the day, or any of the days surrounding the day. I don't know what we're going to eat or who we're going to see or even what I'm going to wear (which is really a moot point if we don't see anyone). Maybe we'll spend Christmas Day in our pyjamas, eating muffins and drinking Prosecco (just the adults, I promise), and watching cartoons.

That doesn't sound so bad, really.