BAH HUMBERG

Sunday, December 07, 2008

Being Jewish, it is always so fascinating to me that I feel the same holiday rush as everyone else. Oh sure, I have my share of Hanukkah presents to buy. And some years - unlike this year - Hanukkah is retardedly early and I have to start the whole holiday thing in November.

But this year I couldn't even bring myself think about it. I couldn't even make a list and check it twice. Or even read last year's list.

This is - and I am going to use the most overused word from CNBC - unprecedented. If there's anything that always, even on my last nerve with no sleep, I am able to do, it's make a list. At one time, I even had a master list of all the lists. (that was in the relocation phase...)

Eventually, panic set in. I was foreign to myself. Why was I having a list block? This is an intellectual and organizational disaster. Would it bleed over into other areas of my life and prevent listmaking at work? And how was the holiday shopping going to get done with NO LIST? I can't even go to the grocery store on a "10 items or less" day with no list.

I went to Bunco on Thursday and lamented my fate with the girls. Of our 12, 4 of us had not done anything yet - list making or otherwise. Of course, as usual, I was the only one thinking I was losing my mind. Everyone else was in the "oh well. It somehow always gets done" mode.

So I made like Nike and Just Did It. Listless. (or should I say, list free.) Don subbed in for me and froze his ass at the Ice Arena while I power shopped. I did it Southern California style - I "felt" the gifts. I channeled my nephew... who was he and what would he like? I meditated over the journals... which one is right for Vica? I meditated so hard that I didn't even notice my friend Val staring at me in the aisle. This is something, considering she's a 6 foot tall, shockingly blond woman and she was making faces at me so I would notice her.

There was buying. Then buying more online. Then wrapping. Then running out of tape and taking a break. More wrapping. Boxing. Shipping. And after a hectic weekend, funny enough, it's somehow going to get done. The Bunco girls were right. I'm tapeless, sleepless, and spent a whole pile of money. But it's done.

The real question that remains is: why wasn't I able to make the list? I think it's inability to accept that the holidays are really here. After all, it's still 68 degrees outside. And I have worked enough 70 hour weeks in a row that I'm not sure what day it is. And I have been working on 2009 planning for so long that I am already writing 2009 as the date. I think it's safe to say I am temporally misplaced.

Gotta go. Making a list of posts I owe you people...