Yeah, I’m behind again. This post is Friday’s effort. This is what happens when I’m on yay!cation. I get to 10 at night or so, and go “Nope, I don’t wanna sit at the laptop today”. So everyone get their Hermione Granger Time Turner out. 6 spins should do it (she says like she’s read the Time Turner instruction booklet…).

Friday started poorly. I was going to do the last minute things. I was going to check things off the checklist. But no. There were no keys to MY car in the bowl where there should have been TWO sets of keys to MY car. This isn’t the first or second or fifth time it’s happened, either. Apparently this time, there were keys *near* the bowl, but since the counter where the bowl lives is a crap collector for things that no one can take he extra 3 feet out to the recycling, I didn’t see it. Boy howdy I was madmadmad.

I resolved myself to make the key-stealers do something miserable with me – like go to Ikea on the Saturday before Christmas – as penance for their recycling and key-thieving crimes. That’d teach them, right? While I could have gone Friday morning had they not been irresponsible with MY keys, now, everyone could suffer along with me. Because when mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Then, Child got home from school. He put his schoolbag away and got changed and came down to help me decorate the Christmas tree. We looked at the Tootle the Train mini-Golden book that came with the Tootle Hallmark ornament. He stood on the chair and I handed him the glass ornaments to go at the top of the tree where I still couldn’t reach, even on the chair. He asked me about the ornaments with the confetti in them (that Mike sent me on my birthday the first year we were together, because he was away at school). We tried to figure out how old he was in the made-at-school ornaments that survived the impact or or water damage of the Great Timber of ’14, when the tree fell over (twice) and the water from the reservoir pooled under the fallen tree (twice).

Gotta tell ya, having a lovely afternoon talking and laughing and reminscing with my son was way better than plotting ways to make everyone miserable (and then actually making them miserable). I feel like that won’t be a surprised to anyone.

This Advent, may I choose the path to joy more often than the trenches and foxholes of anger. This Advent, may I see the gifts not wrapped under the tree.