I hate the holiday season. I really do. I hate shopping, I hate all the fake cheer that people cram down your throat, I hate the over chipper carols that stores play to help induce the holiday shopping frenzy, I hate snow (sorry Holly), and I detest wrapping presents.

Why do I hate all these things so very much? Because every year, around this time, something happens to rob me of all of my money so that all my fine gift ideas go down the tubes. This year’s trauma is my car.

I’ve known for a long while that it’s in the slow process of dying. Well apparently it’s decided to speed things up a bit and I need to buy a new one. Like… tomorrow. The way people keep talking about it, you would swear it’s going to disintegrate if I touch it. And I have absolutely NO money saved up. I can barely pay my bills right now, so it was already going to be a rather meager Christmas for my family and friends, mostly including handmade gifts (we’ll get to THAT drama in a minute), but now I don’t know if I can afford to buy anyone anything, especially if my father has it his way and next week we go shopping for a car.

Now don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy Christmas. I like the day. My whole family gets together (all 19 of us), we have dinner and have a lot of fun just catching up and goofing off. We have this great game we play where everyone buys a $10 item and wraps it, then we all pull numbers and choose a gift or steal from someone else. Assuming you’re not the person who ends up with the toothbrush or toilet paper, it’s a lot of fun. Plus my grandpa makes his awesome mostaccioli of which I eat the majority. It’s just the surge of stress and pressure to spend money. (I know it isn’t about the gifts, and I could care less about what I receive, but I love to give presents, it’s my favorite thing to do. Hate to shop, love to give. See my dilemma? It’s no wonder I’m a knitter.)

On to the knitting portion of this rant (I’m cranky today aren’t I?) I have almost none of my holiday knitting done. Between my mom going into the hospital (she’s home, alive and healthy now thank the Gods), and the sudden dump of stress about my damn car, I’ve wanted to knit about as much as I’ve wanted a colonic. Which, incase you were wondering, isn’t much. So my stress level keeps going up, because I know that I need to knit, but I don’t. Last night I spend a grand total of 2 or 3 hours staring blankly at a TV screen while I played a video game. Not a good way to spend the time, I could have finished one of my projects in that time. But on the plus side, I’m now on level 3 of Zelda and the Wind Waker.

There are 24 days until Christmas. 24. And this is what I have to finish:
3 hats
5 scarves (only 2 of which are actually in process and on needles)
7 potpourri satchels (pattern of which I still have to make up)
I also planned to make 2 additional hat and scarf sets, for my secret santa and grab-bag gifts, but now it’s looking highly doubtful. Maybe if magic knitting elves make my projects super easy to work on….

If I finish a project a day everyday until Christmas I’ll only just make it by the skin of my teeth. (An expression I’ve never fully understood. If your teeth have skin, you need to look into your oral hygiene routine)

So here is my revised plan for my projects:
Thursday – 12-1-05 – Finish Hat Z, Cast on Scarf A
Friday – 12-2-05 – Work on Hat Y, Continue Scarf A
Saturday – 12-3-05 – Work on Scarves C & B, Continue Hat Y (Wolves Game in PM)
Sunday – 12-4-05 – Casey’s Baby Shower, Scarf A
Monday – 12-5-05 – Scarf B, Finish Hat Y
Tuesday – 12-6-05 – Finish Scarf C, Make Satchel pattern
Wednesday – 12-7-05 – Satchel 1, Cast on Scarf D
Thursday – 12-8-05 – Work on Scarf D
Friday – 12-9-05 – Start Hat X
Saturday – 12-10-05 – Finish scarf B
Sunday – 12-11-05 – Satchel 2 & 3
Monday – 12-12-05 – Scarf A, Scarf D
Tuesday – 12-13-05 – Finish Hat X
Wednesday – 12-14-05 – Satchel 4
Thursday – 12-15-05 – Begin Scarf E
Friday – 12-16-05 – Satchel 5
Saturday – 12-17-05 – If following schedule, use this day to relax (Wolves Game in PM)
Sunday – 12-18-05 – Satchel 6 & 7
Monday – 12-19-05 – Scarf E
Tuesday – 12-20-05 – Finish Scarf D
Wednesday – 12-21-05 – Finish anything left undone
Thursday – 12-22-05 – Add beads and fringe to Scarf F
Friday – 12-23-05 – Finish Scarf E

Objects in BOLD are to be worked on at work during my lunch, no more going to MickyD’s for me. Time to brown bag it. Names of the projects’ owners have not been included so that I can show pictures of progress without people knowing what they are receiving. They can only drool over the pictures and hope that it’s for them.

Now I don’t know if you have noticed, but I’ve calmed down quite a bit since I started writing this post almost 3 hours ago. Planning things out always helps, plus when I started writing I had just gotten out of an hour and a half long traffic jam thanks to the snow falling. So I had reason to be cranky, it made me late for work. But I feel better now, less likely to walk down my block, popping those dopey inflatable Christmas lawn decorations. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still stressing, but if my car can wait until after the holidays then things will be fine. And looking at my knitting schedule, it’s really not that bad. I mean, it isn’t great and I certainly won’t be doing this much holiday knitting again…Woah… DejaVu … but I know I can finish in time.