<p>It is 6:07 PM and I’ve been up for 13 hours. D arrived home yesterday after two months in Europe (post-graduation trip, planned for years) last night; S arrived home Sunday. </p>
<p>In the last 24 hours I’ve been to the airport with D and with H (one coming in, one going out), the vet with the 15 1/2 year old cat who is “not doing well”, back to the vet to pick up the pills, been bitten while pilling said cat, to Seattle and back to drop off D to visit with friends, had a nail removed from my tire (and ordered new tires after realizing that my tires are close to bald), wrapped some presents… and just finally sat down to breathe, relax, and have a cup of tea. (And all of that while trying to get my regular jobs done.)</p>
<p>Oh, I also did 4 loads of laundry. Did I mention the piles of laundry?</p>
<p>I love my kids, but my word they’re exhausting sometimes. </p>
<p>You have your old age to relax…enjoy the thrill and the rush…if you can survive it. It is amazing how much we can do, and how important it seems at the time to plunge through it all. I think this means we are still young (enough)!</p>
<p>Does your cat have a particular problem, or is old age the issue? Pets are such an important part of our lives…I am sorry yours is not doing well. Lorelei</p>
<p>aww, dmd… it’s just such a busy time of year. I’m sorry about your cat. We have three and one is 15 and 1/2 also. He’s doing fine for his age but they do get fragile. Enjoy your Swiss chocolates in between folding clothes!</p>
<p>The cat’s weight has gone from 11 pounds (and not fat) to 7 (and skin and bones) over the last six months, with no diagnosis in sight. It’s not kidney problems, it’s not … it’s not … We’re now refusing further tests and we’re treating with prednisone for the remaining possibilities. My daughter has slept with this particular cat since she was 7 (she was my D’s Christmas present that year), and of course the ill health of the cat is making her unhappy. (The cat even went to college with my daughter.)</p>
<p>I thought everyone was paying anywhere from $5K to $50K per year so that they’d learn to do their own laundry, plus a little bit about Plato or something.</p>
<p>This weekend I will have all 4 children at home, plus the spouse of the eldest. A gf came & went, but we might still have another guest. You never know.</p>
<p>At least we don’t have a cat.</p>
<p>And I changed the sheets on all the guest beds, so there’s laundry right there, even without any the kids bring home. I think I’ll put the flannel sheets on my bed (it’s that time of year) so I can do ANOTHER load.</p>
<p>Other than your cat, it sounds wonderful, and I think you will lokk back at it one day and wish you had the same busy errands around the holidays.</p>
<p>All of the hustle and bustle is a good thing when it brings your loved ones around ( except the extra laundry ! )</p>
<p>Dmd–my sympathies to you for your ailing cat. We had to put our older dog down last week–was really wrenching. The week or so before, it was so hard to get anything done because we just wanted him to get better, and eat something. We knew what he had, though, so at least we weren’t fighting something unidentified, but up until the last couple weeks, he was his regular self, just slower, and the eventual sudden-ness took us by surprise.</p>
<p>Anyhoo, I guess my point is that fretting over our long -time animal friends can really make getting anything else done much tougher, so let a few non-necessities slide if you need to. On top of dog-mourning, my H is suffering from a flare-up of a neck condition which is causing him immense pain, and making it hard to do anything. but will he go to his doc? No way, he’s Irish. :rolleyes: </p>
<p>We finally just got our tree this week, no cards written, present buying has been sketchy, and house is not in such great shape. S comes home today, and D will be around most of the weekend till Christmas, and we’re counting on their goodwill to understand if “standards” have been lowered.</p>
<p>Will be just glad to have them around (and will hope for no nails in tires! :()
Best wishes to you and family.</p>
<p>on their demand, had to wait till both kids were home to get tree.got tree yesterday after H returned from office Christmas party.Brought tree home anticipating only setting it up,decorating next day. D announced change of plans including being out Friday night and meeting us elsewhere Saturday for preplanned early family holiday gettogther,so tree needed to be trimmed last night. Trimmed tree with ritual exclaiming over lifetime accumulation of ornaments,arguements over lights,etc. All considered perfect, H waters the tree, we start cleaning up. Tree falls down with a clunk, water,needles broken ornaments everywhere. Right the tree,reposition and tighten.Pile up the ornaments too tired to rehang.
Next year Im buying a fake.The kids schedules have gotten too hectic to accomodate waiting so long for the tree.we’ll skip to the ornament ritual.
And my S brought me home 8 heavy duty loads of laundry.Filled up his car with it seems everything he took to college in August.Told me he would “do” the laundry but where would I put all the stuff until he got around to it?So, I did it.</p>
<p>My S is coming home by subway and commuter bus. He’ll be lucky to fit one medium sized duffle–so, the laundry amount is seriously constrained!</p>
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<p>One Christmas, we got the tree home in the evening, started putting it up–tree stand broke. Drove out to get a new one, put tree up again, got lights out–not working. I drove out again, leaving a very tense house. At store, hardly any lights. Call home to see how things were–D answers phone–“Well mom, the upstairs toilet just overflowed, and it’s coming through the kitchen ceiling. If I were you, I wouldn’t come home.”</p>
<p>Boy, was it tempting to take her up on that! ;)</p>
<p>Garland, and others. For some reason the song lyrics ‘these are the good old days’ started playing in my head when I was reading the latest on this thread. Started to laugh about your upstairs toilet… reads like ‘Skipping Christmas’ by John Grisham.</p>
<p>If you get a fake tree, for heavens’ sake get one of the pre-lit ones that still work when a bulb burns out. I am jealous every year of my friends who yank it out of the box and plug it in. </p>
<p>Kathymm- Me too! 1st time in 25 years that I had a tree tip over. Turns out we put it up at night and could not tell it has a funny little crook the last 1/4 of it’s height. If it looks straight, 3/4s of it is crooked, so it it now 3/4 straight, but looks crooked.</p>
<p>My DH called me when I was out and asked me to come home & help fix it ASAP, when I arrived his question was how could he help? My answer was let me be alone in the room to cry for a few minutes- though I have to admit, after 25 years of special ornanments and especially breakable ones each year for the kids only a few important ones broke, so we really were lucky, and best of all the lights still worked- I hate when you do the whole tree then the next day a strand of lights in the middle goes out- shake it a bit and it comes back on, then off, then on…makes me yearn for the prelit fake tree too!</p>
picked up s this afternoon. He had a very large duffle. On the way home confessed that he was pleased that he had solved the problem about how to keep his dirty laundry separate from clean clothes. Had managed to fit his whole hamper into the duffle:eek:</p>
<p>dmd I’m so sorry to hear about your cat. We’ve been through old cats three times and now we’ve got an old dog. It’s unspeakably rough. </p>
<p>I’ve got a mountain of stuff to get through before Christmas but somehow Christmas will happen whether the stuff gets done or not. </p>
<p>Happy to have s home and to hear lots of stories about his life. It’s good.</p>
<p>^S from the above quote did indeed come home with one small duffel. Went upstairs to change, commenting that he hoped there was some clothes of his left behind, because he’d brought so little. Called down to lament that all his clothes at home were T-shirts of Mets or Michigan, neither of which he was really in the mood to wear, after the seasons they had both had. Ended up going out in a Mich shirt, obviously the lesser of two evils at the moment.</p>