Well it's only 12 minutes til Christmas. By the time I finish typing this it will be Christmas. Hmm what inspiring Christmas quote can I come up with * rifling through Completely Lost for Words.

This one sticks out, ' It's a busy time of the year, make sure you take the time to stop and enjoy'

Takes me right back... to yesterday. I took myself out to the shops, was supposed to buy the fixings for breakfast and for making Gingerbread Houses, instead of heading to our closest grocery store I decided that I'd head to a local mall. Cars filled the carpark, all vying for spots as close to the door as they could get, I pulled into a section on the other side of the carpark from the door and had my choice of spots, the section was half empty. Once inside the mall I headed to a cafe for a cup of tea and a mince pie. I felt so relaxed and listened to the roar hum of frantic shoppers, a spruiker spruiking and tossed in for good measure, a howling child. I sat calmly drinking my tea think I was glad it wasn't my child.

Eventually did go to the grocery store bought everything I needed - eggs, bacon, muffins, ready made pancakes and hash browns. I am cheating on the pancakes and hash browns, I usually cheat by buying a packet mix for the pancakes. Cooked Hash browns the other day and they turned out good but couldn't see myself grating potatoes in the morning while trying to cook a dozen people's breakfasts.

When I got home I went to the hot but clean kitchen and thought nope that I wasn't going to mess it up by making gingerbread either. Before that the stress meter had been starting to rise and then plummented, it's been that way ever since. Except for a 2 hour period between midnight and 2 am last night. I headed to bed around midnight and looked at the gifts stacked by the bed I realised that my brother's gift wasn't there. Searched every spot I could think of, wondering whether I had left it in the car or worse at the store. I even did the lost item numerology, the answer was that it was between layers of soft fabric. I was despairing I was becoming my Grandmother who usually told us that she had another gift for us but had put it away somewhere safe and couldn't remember where. I tried picturing where it was and got the image of the bag hanging from our dining room chairs. I had asked my daughter to tidy the dining area and remembered her version of cleaning is to pick things up and dump them elsewhere. Yesterday her dumping spot was on the floor in the hallway, a quick search and I found it. By then I was so worked up that I couldn't sleep, put a hypnosis cd on to relax myself. I fell asleep during the cd waking when it finished, worried I might not get back sleep, then the next thing I knew was the alarm going off.

Well would you look at that, the clock is now at 12.27am, it's Christmas! I need to go wrap a few odd gifts and will get to bed at a reasonable hour this Christmas - usually we have a whole 3 hours sleep.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a Goodnight. - stole that too.