Can You Block Your Ears for a Second....

...while I SCREAM!!! *ARRRRRRRGH*. There. Much better. I think I am almost officially over Christmas. Only one more week to go and I still have done nothing and I can't see where I am going to get the time to do it.

See I started Christmas planning in September. Organised my Christmas cards, made lists of who I was buying for and even started making my Christmas cards to give to people. Then *nothing*...nada...zip...nil. I don't even know what happened. I had oodles of time and now one week before the BIG DAY and I am unprepared.

It's been wet here most of this week. In fact on Thursday, because of the storms we were having, our relieving Boss closed the office and kindly let us all go home 2 hours early to make it easier for us to get home before the storms struck. As it turned out for me, the only train traveller in the office, my trains ended up being cancelled and I ended up getting home an hour AFTER I normally would so my 2 hour head start was wasted! Was not happy Jan! Plus the storms hit as I was driving home from the station. Friday was not much better as it bucketed down just as I got off the train and headed for my car. I was drenched right through before I even got to the car so I was cold and wet and quite snarky.

Anyway let me start at the beginning. Monday and Tuesday in the office was dead quiet. All our schools and kindergartens are now closed so no phone calls or emails which is nice for a change. But dead boring with not much to do. I have a years worth of filing to do as most of us do as in our office it is menat to be a paperless office which means we electronically archive all paperwork, check to make sure it is in the system then shred everything. Now for the past 6 months our archiver has not worked so the entire office has boxes and boxes of archiving to do. This means when we go back online no-one will have time to archive the back log and we normally employ someone's kid looking for extra pocket money to come in and archive...an extremely boring job but not bad since they can whack their headphones on and listen to music while they are doing it.

Wednesday was the judging of our Annual Christmas Decorations competitions. The quality this year was even better than last year. The winners will be anounced at the Christmas Brunch on Friday.

Thursday was quiet and very stormy and we were sent home early.

Friday was Christmas brunch/Secret Santa gift swapping and judging of the Christmas decorations. We didn't win anything this year which we were disappointed in as the person who won stole our idea and only did theirs 2 days before judging whereas we had ours done the first week of December! And ours was way better and more personal! My Secret Santa gift was a ceramic green frog and some choclates.

Our area has decided to boycott secret santa next year and just donate to a good cause instead. What we saw this year did not invoke any Christmas spirit at all. Everyone draws names from a hat and several people were taking names out looking at it and putting it back saying "Nah don't like that one" and pulling out a different name until they found someone they liked. Very rude I thought. Plus some of us buy more expensive gifts (it's hard to buy something decent for $10) only to get something they don't really need in return and not quite as expensive as the gift you gave. I know it's the gift that counts and all but sometimes you would like the gift to be a little more thoughtful than a bottle of hand cream or some little soap balls that were probably gifted by someone's Aunt Sally last Christmas! We just thought that the $10 could be put towards making someone who has nothing a little more cheerful so its not wasted.

The weekend was quiet for us. I had to start my Christmas shopping so ran around like a mad thing trying to buy all the things on my list. We looked at our bank account last night and realised "oops" we have depleted most of our funds and I don't get paid again until the week after Christmas and MM informs me last night that its our turn to host the Christmas lunch. So no idea at this point how we will afford the food! Mum has offered to buy the chicken so that's one thing and MM's mum always makes the trifle and the plum pudding so that is all good. We will just buy the ham, salad and nibblies and everyone brings their own drinks so we should be okay I guess. Will let you know how that goes *grin*.

Generally I do love Christmas but I think with the mad rush I get stressed a little by it all. But come Christmas day I will sit with the family, mum and I will share a bottle of Asti Ricadona between us and giggle like little girls (so my MM says!) and put the past pressures behind us.

And with this blog I will sign off for this week and wish everyone a joyous and wonderful Christmas! Love you all! Stay safe, try not to overindulge (hell no...you know what...indulge to your heart's desire! I know I will!!). And if you are going away please drive safely.

I have been truly blessed once again to have wonderful friends and family like you all!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS ONE AND ALL