Seriously? Best shot of the bunch. And Dane’s not even in it. Sigh.

I wish you a merry Christmas and a good night’s sleep. (Because what could you possibly want more than sleep?)

Have a lovely holiday.

The only problem with baked goods is that they get stale if one takes too long to eat them. One is practically forced to eat double death by chocolate cookies for breakfast some days, with chocolate-raspberry pie for breakfast dessert. And by “one” I do mean “me” (or, okay, “I”) since everyone else in this house has the good sense to let a few cookies go to waste rather than induce a sugar coma.

It’s cold here. I need to get a sweater or something.

Dane’s been out of town on business this week. (Since I wrote this essay, he’s been travelling more often, though I have yet to improve my only-parent-in-the-house skills.) He’s home now. I realized, though, that pretty much every time he’s gone, my week goes the same way.

First, everything goes well. The dishwasher gets loaded regularly, we eat actual meals on a logical schedule, the kids go to bed on time (early, even). I look around at my clean house and my happily slumbering children and think: I am so freaking competent, it’s amazing. Obviously I am asking for trouble here.

Next, then, comes the “the sky is falling” stage, wherein either the house falls apart or the children do. Occasionally both. This week one of our sliding doors leaked during a rainstorm, Sadie got a new tooth, and we were invaded by ants (again because of the rainstorm). Awesome.

And then comes the “I no longer have the energy or sheer will to pretend to be a fully-functional adult human being” phase, in which the house falls apart and I feed the children English muffins for dinner. This phase coincides neatly with Dane’s homecoming, such that he walks in to find the couch covered in laundry, train tracks and blocks covering the living room floor, the children sticky with honey (from the English muffins), and me sitting in a corner, sobbing about how I haven’t bathed in four days.

It’s a routine, anyway.

Okay. To date, we have received exactly four Christmas-or-other-winter-holiday cards. (That’s double how many we had as of yesterday morning—two came in Saturday’s mail.) There are, what, eight mail-delivery days left before Christmas? Nine? I’m feeling mildly unpopular.

No, I’m not really, because: 1. We don’t know very many people who send cards, and 2. We don’t even know that many people. So there’s that.

Of course, I haven’t sent out cards yet. Last year I sent them the day after Christmas; I’m aiming for slightly earlier this year. Not that I even have any cards yet. But I might get some and send them. I have good intentions toward such a goal.

Which brings me to my actual point: exactly zero of the cards we’ve received thus far included letters of any sort. No serious letters bragging on the kids’ SAT scores, no ironic, self-deprecating letters, no updates on babies and their first three teeth. Has the much-maligned “family newsletter” become extinct, quite suddenly and while I wasn’t looking?

Because I like the cheesy letters! I want to know what you’re up to. I want to feel inadequate next to your annual triumphs and achievements. I want to hear how the home improvement projects are coming along, how many AWANA verses the kids have memorized, and whether you’ve taken up Bunco. Really, I do. So please, bring back the cheesy letters!

Or are my four cards not representative of the world of holiday cards in general? Are you all being inundated with letters? Am I the only one missing out?

You know what? Paring down a book list is hard. I’m trying to order books for my kids for Christmas, and I have to cut my list back a wee little huge lot tiny bit. And it is killing me.

I know I say this every year. It’s always true. How does one not buy out the bookstore every time? I don’t understand.

I try to tell myself that I can always order more books later, some other time. And I will, and I do, but still, it pretty much kills me not to get everything I think the kids will love right now. Interestingly, I rarely have qualms about the toys we don’t buy. We get some things, we don’t get others, whatever. No big deal. But the books… sigh. Books are a whole different story.

And, oh crap, I just thought of three more books we need. Just right now, while I was typing this. I so totally should not be in charge of the gift selection process.

But in other news, my eye appears to be completely healed and I have vocal cord action again. So on the health front, I’m a happy camper. [-cue menacing music-] For now.

Just so you know: If you get in a car full of kids when you have lost your voice, it will take them approximately 38 seconds to forget that you can’t speak aloud.

I understand that the car is one of those prime locations for asking important informational and/or existential questions. (“What does a honeycomb look like? Why is it called a comb?” “Is there grass in heaven?” “Where are we going?” “Are we there yet? How about now? Okay, NOW?”)

However. If I cannot speak, then I cannot speak. Not even to answer really good questions. No, I am not ignoring you. And when I whisper-shout in an attempt to calm you down (because you think either I’m ignoring you or maybe my soul was abducted by aliens while my body continues to soundlessly drive home), I hurt my throat, and you still can’t hear me way back there in the third row of the minivan.

So what I’m saying is, I’m done with the driving until I have restored vocal abilities. Home is nice.

Hey, guess what! My eye is pretty much totally kind of better! Better enough that I can read a little bit at a time, as long as I’ve taken over-the-counter pain meds! (I know, you were not wondering about my eye, and I know, this is boring and kind of gross. Sorry.)

Anyway. Instead of the scratched cornea pain, now I have completely lost my voice. Why? I do not know. I had a cold last week, and I’m guessing I didn’t give it enough attention (what with the eyeball injury and all), so it’s looking for retribution.

On the one hand, when I whisper, the kids all whisper back. So it’s pleasantly quiet around here. On the other hand, if they can’t hear me, they don’t respond at all, quietly or not.

I just cannot win this week.