"The C Word" - the Houseworks Holiday Plan

Warning: I know this is usually a family-friendly blog, but in this post I use the C word. I apologize in advance, and recommend that children and anyone with delicate sensitivities navigate away from the page at this time.

Hello, my friends! It is time for my annual pilgrimage to Crazy Town. The start of school and the football season has turned our lives into only slightly organized chaos, held together by the most fragile threads of syncing calendars and my iPhone apps. I am practically living out of my car, clinging to the anticipation of a new podcast from Alison or Jean.

I can do it. I even enjoy it most of the time. The only thing is, I can only go on like this for so long. I CANNOT end the season in early November and crash headfirst into the holidays unprepared. It just might send me over the edge once and for all. But I have a plan. (Don't I always?)

For the last thirteen years, since my middle child was a colicky newborn, I have done some version of the Holiday Grand Plan. I don't do it perfectly; I don't do every single step, but just thinking about the holidays and taking some action each week has made my Christmas season remarkably better than the one fourteen years ago when, faced with my first Christmas as a mother and my baby's first birthday party just two days later, I became completely unglued.

This post is fair warning to those of you who hate the decorations going up before Halloween, who think mentioning "the C word" in August should be a class C misdemeanor, that there's going to be some Christmas on this blog. I'll be following the Houseworks Holiday Plan this year, and it starts next Sunday. I'd love for you to join me!