Thursdays at CatholicMom.com begin with a look at the past week’s Small Successes!

My house doesn’t look like Christmas yet, and I’m OK with that. I am not going to be climbing on things and hanging things up this year–my foot (and the boot that’s on it) won’t allow that. But I have a daughter who’s just home from college and looking for things to do, so I’ll show her where I keep the decoration boxes and leave her to it.

I’m even OK with the fact that I won’t be doing my traditional chore of putting lights on the Christmas tree (that job involves 4 hours, at least 3 folding chairs plus a stepstool, and much up-and-down. I’m vertically challenged.) The year this photo was taken, I hit my Personal Best of 1500+ lights and, I believe, at least 2 blown-out extension cords. I’m the Clark Griswold of Christmas-tree lights, and I’m not ashamed of that in the least. There were so many lights on that tree, who even needed ornaments?

But someone else will light up the tree this year, and I’m sure they won’t use as many lights as I do, but that’s OK because the doctor says my foot is healing well. I have to continue wearing this boot full-time until January 5, when I get to bring a shoe to the doctor’s office and wear the boot only half-days for another week.

At least this keeps me out of the mall, which is perfectly fine with me. I’ve been doing a lot of online shopping thanks to various free-shipping offers and my good friend Amazon Prime, and I’m here to tell you that Target’s “order online, pick up in store” is way, way, WAY better than Best Buy’s. (Place order. Wait for text message. Go to Customer Service and tell them you’re picking up. Hand them your driver’s license for verification, take your stuff and go. By the time you get home, your receipt will be in your email inbox. It’s THAT easy.) Using that service saved me a trek through the whole store. The less walking, the better.

I’ll have a couple of weeks off from work to celebrate Christmas, and I’ve got plans:

• set up a gift-wrapping center in TheKid’s old room
• start wrapping gifts and use my Super-Secret Gift-Numbering Method™ to keep snoopy people from snooping
• 2 beta reads and 1 (short) freelance editing job
• spend some time with my Everything Notebook, doing some goal-setting, planning and dreaming

I wish I still had this sign to hang on the door to the room where I’ll be doing the gift wrapping. I should have kept it!

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