These poor snowmen. I used a picture of them in a different arrangement last year in a post about how really, really annoyed I was by everything. I'm in a much better mood this year. Also, the snowmen have moved to the Hoosier for the season. I did notice, however, that this seems to be the week where lots of people get really stressed out about Christmas.
Here's my theory: A few weeks ago, Christmas seemed like a long way off, so there was no use worrying about how much needed to get done. A few weeks from now, it will be too late to worry. Right now we're at that crossroads where we're still thinking of everything we'd like to do while realizing there isn't a lot of time to do it, and it creates stress. The solution is clear: Get busy, or give up. One or the other. No matter how much you may wish otherwise, additional hours and days will not be added between now and Christmas.
Lest you think I've achieved some sort of Zen-like balance in my life, I looked for a couple of things to be annoyed about. It didn't take a lot of effort. One is my birthday. My birthday is in December. Clearly, I did not plan this. I'd like a birthday in early April, when there's nothing much going on, but that's not the case, and since my birthday occurs EVERY YEAR on the SAME DAY the people around me should be able to take note of the date and plan ahead. So when my husband, whose season consists of shopping for maybe three Christmas presents, complained about the "double whammy" presented by my birthday and Christmas, I was irritated, but only a little. Later, however, when my mother also complained about the VERY SAME THING, I was annoyed, not just at her, but retroactively at my husband. They're both on my naughty list now, and I don't see any way for them to get off of it. Unless they're really, really good to me for my birthday.
This is the top of the Hoosier. I'm not the kind of person who would name a snowman, but this one came with a name on the tag: Stuart Sparkle. I really like that name a lot. (He's related to this snowman, but larger.)
Anyway, in addition to being aggravated by two of the people I love best, I've also decided to be annoyed by some of the commenters on my blog. Originally I was going to go on quite a bit about this, but I think a lot of you probably have the same issue with comments that exist only to sell books or promote some self-serving agenda. I wish they would get their own blogs and leave ours alone.
Really, those are my only two annoyances right now, so that's not bad. Also, the sun unexpectedly popped out in the midst of this morning's snow and sleet extravaganza, so I'm grabbing my camera and taking more pictures before the clouds roll in again. I have more ideas for blog posts than there are hours of available light for photos, but I am just not going to stress out about it.