December 19, 2001~~12:23 p.m.
Plan A - continued...

Plan A is well underway. I've actually mangaged to finish the Christmas letter. It's well enough written, but getting very difficult to fit much in about our year as the kids get older and involved in so many things. There are some things I will do to manipulate the text to fit more, and some things I refuse to do.

I will adjust margins. I will reduce the font size between the paragraph breaks. I will attempt to shrink things by changing fonts, but in the end will almost always go back to ComicSans MS.

I will not go to a 10 point font. There is nothing in my life that is so important as to justify a 10 point font. I hate the letters that arrive in microscopic typeface. It takes only a glance to determine that they will be full of self-important bullshit.

Not that my letter is a brag-free zone or anything. But at least it doesn't go on and on in 10 point font. Hey... we all have our boundries.

Now all I have to do is get them the stamp of approval and print them. I have two hours of down time before I have to scoop the kids up at school and speed like a mad woman to the hair salon where Elle has been squeezed into a half-hour slot. Then it's pictures by the tree, etc...etc...

Oh.. and then there are the stepping stones T brought home last night. Only they aren't exactly stepping stones. Right now they are bags of powder and plastic forms. They are for his parents' garden. Christmas gifts. Only he wants them to not be bags and forms, he wants them to be stepping stones.

And today is Wednesday. And the instructions say that they have to cure for two days before you take them out of the forms and then should be covered with a damp cloth for two more days if you want them to really harden to the best they can be. And the kids still need to design what they'd like to mosaic around their handprint. And we're celebrating Christmas with them on Monday. And so, you see, there really isn't much time to spare.

Gosh, I used to seem so on top of things. Or maybe that was all an illusion. Maybe I'm losing my mind. Have I always been like this???

~Alice