When Later becomes Now

I've learned to be pretty forthcoming with my shortcomings (as I find this much less stressful than trying to hide them) and, well, let's face it, nobody's perfect. I'm impulsive, impatient, and easily overwhelmed (although the 5 boys underfoot might contribute to this last one). Big projects, how do I put this... freak me out... that would be why my kitchen is still yellow after 14 years in this house because the thought of the additional chaos that would be created by cleaning out every cabinet (since they are painted inside and out) and the prep work involved simply paralyzes me. So, since we plan to "re-do" the kitchen anyway, I figure it can wait. Actually the re-do part partially hinges on me selecting cabinets, counters, colors, etc...so we are really at a standstill since decision making is another area I struggle in. We completely gutted and remodeled two bathrooms a couple of years ago and the experience nearly did me in. Heck, I'd have ceiling fans in all of our rooms by now if I'd been able to make a decision when my hubby sent me to Home Depot to select them last summer. Home Depot = Panic!

And lastly (well at least for now) I'm a procrastinator. And at this time of year, this becomes an especially challenging obstacle. It's not so much that I put things off, it's more that most things in my life are either happening "now" or "later", and if something is happening "later", I won't worry about it until it becomes "now". Well just this week, Christmas became "now" in a big way.

First hurdle, as of last Tuesday I had yet to buy a single Christmas gift. Solution, a whirlwind of shopping with my oldest and a couple of hours on the internet. Check.

Second, lack of any brilliant gift ideas for a few friends and family has brought me to "now" - knitting for Christmas. (I swore I wouldn't do this) Eight small gifts to be exact. Eight, wow, I hadn't actually counted until now... hmmm, I'm thinking I may not get this all done.

At any rate, most of the gifts will be fingerless gloves which are a quick, fun knit and the yarn is from my stash! The colorful ones were made from one ball of SWTC Karaoke made up from a free pattern that came with the yarn. Then you can see I'm working on finishing a pair of Fetching in Rowan Cashsoft Aran. The rest of the yarn pictured all needs to be knit before Christmas (yes, please, start laughing). Plus there will be one special gift that will be knit up in a cashmere I have yet to select... but, heck, you tell me, would you rather shop at the mall or pick out cashmere at the LYS? See... I'm not totally crazy. Not sure that I'm succeeding in making that point.

The next hurdle is a big one... decorating... for a number of reasons. First of all, we have very little room since our small living room is taken up by enough furniture to seat a family of 7 so furniture, books, and toy baskets all need to be relocated to make room for a tree. In addition, to access our Christmas boxes in the attic you need to open a 3 foot tall cabinet, remove all of it's contents and the shelf, then open a crawl space door through which you climb into our dark attic across rafters to collect all of the boxes and lug them out the hole into the hall. In my book this qualifies as a major BOPper (Big Overwhelming Project) so is delayed as long as possible.

However, what happens when you take all of the same struggles I have (ie. impatience, impulsivity...), multiply them to the max, add 100x the energy I have, and transfer them to a 14 yo boy? (Let's just call it ADHD... me, no H, just the ADD part.) What happens when you tell the anxious lad that you do not want to deal with the attic today and you can't have any more mess until you get things ready downstairs? Besides, you tell him, Grandma has just brought us a handful of cute decorations and you really don't want to pull out too much more this year due to space issues (and getting easily overwhelmed). But, what if after hearing this, your son with the "H", who is much more of a "doer" than you are and earnestly,eagerly, impatiently wants to help is left at home alone for a half hour?

This...

All of it... every last, stinkin' box (stacked about 3 deep from what you can see)! Plus any boxes he happened to come across labeled clothes that he thought might fit somebody in this house. But notice they are all still upstairs as opposed to downstairs where, to his understanding, I did not want them. Apparently the fact that we can barely access our bedrooms at this point was not considered relevant to him.

So, my work today is cut out for me. But first I need to run a few errands to pick up a couple of things I need for a party we're going to tonight (see the party is today, which officially makes "now" the time to deal with this).

I'd better get knitting!