ISO: a little bing crosby to finish things off

status check - exhausted
background ambiance - television

christmas 2004. i've managed to outdo myself without doing myself in. the holiday should be a success.

i'm a habitual last-minute holiday participant. while i annually know precisely what to get for those on my christmas list, the holiday sneaks up on me each year, leaving me breathlessly running from store to store to pick up the items.

i wasn't going to let it happen again this year. as i write this, with nearly a week until the holiday, i have every item (save one being purchased tomorrow) either home (and fabulously wrapped) or en route via mail (with wrapping paper, ribbons and labels ready).

and i'm exhausted as a result.

but the holiday will be grand, i predict. i'm thrilled to see my loved ones' faces when they peel back the layers of paper and tissue to see what i've carefully selected. i think i've done well.

after my parents finally accepted our acceptance of the santa situation, my mother started a habit of labeling gifts with clever hints as to what waits inside. the year i received a dvd of "say anything" (still one of the best movies provided by the 1980s), the label read "from: lloyd." last year's toy-sized vespa (because i'd jokingly said i wanted one) was from rocco (courtesy of "the restaurant").

i always enjoy making similar labels, but i worry if i'm taking the fun out of the game by making it too difficult. it's a fine line, really. you want to give the person a fighting chance to guest it, but you don't want to make it overly obvious.

this makes the label-writing more of a mind-racking experience than one might otherwise think. but i've come up with a collection of gifts with labels of various degrees of difficulty. some they'll get right away, others might make them scratch their heads. others they'll have no chance at. i almost wonder if i should put a number on each label, to distinguish the difficulty level of the label. 1 - easy. 2 - ponder it a bit. 3 - don't even think about it, just open up and laugh after the fact.

nevertheless, i'm looking forward to witnessing the brain teasing and being likewise forced to think early on a saturday morning. the one time i'll allow thought without coffee that early in the morning.

as i wrapped and decorated the gifts yesterday with my flatmates, we decided christmas music was necessary. as my mother owns all the holiday cds i've ever listened to in the past, we turned our cable to the digital music channels (such slaves for technology). we bobbed our heads to bon jovi, sang along to "jingle bell rock" - i even stared at the television for three minutes while the eurythmics performed "winter wonderland."

festive, in a somewhat alarming sort of way.

but i'll save the rest of my holiday music for the christmas eve drive to SoVo and, later that day, massachusetts. christmas is the drive, harmonizing to my mother's radio accompaniment to "rockin' around the christmas tree" and bing crosby's "christmas in killarny."

as for now, four more days of waiting for the holiday goodness.