The Countdown Is On

I woke up this morning, anxious to get the day started because I have tons of work to get done. I open up my email and find 5 are from the same place: Gifts.com. My first thought was "uh oh, did something happen to their server? Why so many emails?" But then I opened them and saw they were all reminders to get gifts for each of my family members because Christmas is only 10 days away! Eek!

Of course, that made me panic. So far I've only gotten one person their gift (thanks to TWM's silent auction), so I have at least another 4 to buy and no clue what to get anybody. Suddenly all that mocking I did of people who were done with their holiday shopping before Thanksgiving has come back around to me.

Shopping for gifts wouldn't be all that stressful except I really hate giving people generic gifts. I like their gifts to mean something to them, and make it something they'll remember. But I also don't like spending very much money on gifts. As it turns out, these two very simple rules are not so simple when they are put together. I always end up finding either very inexpensive stuff that nobody will actually want or need, or gifts that would be perfect but are completely out of my price range.

So it seems that now I have to spend the entire day trying to brainstorm gift ideas on top of everything else I need to do. It's moments like these that it's easy to forget why we do this in the first place. And while the cynic in me does think that the holiday season is driven by major companies who want us to spend every penny we have, I do love giving people gifts. I love seeing their reactions and realizing I've gotten them something great. It's the one thing I like about Christmas.

Well, that, and Christmas music. I LOVE Christmas music!