It's the Most (Stressful) Time of the Year

It's that time again when a retail-worker's thoughts turn to the Holidays and I begin to panic about Christmas presents and Priority Mail and the like.  I love the actual Season, and I truly enjoy working in a bookstore come the Holidays, but on a personal level, I always find myself all atwitter, trying to arrange gift-giving and shipping and making something to send.

Almost everyone I know lives elsewhere.  This means at the very least half of a dozen trips to the Post Office to send out packages.  There is some thought, and some work involved.  I do try.

My latest calendar of caricatures is finished and printed, this year in a timely enough way as to not worry about it again until I start printing shipping-labels in a few weeks.  But what to go with it?

I do feel a little guilty, just sending along the things I make myself; the calendars and the little books I make on the Espresso Book Machine.  For family, I do try to include at least one other gift they may actually want, be it a subscription to "Old West Magazine" for my father and brother, or gift-cards for this and that.  (Oddly enough this year, for my father and brother I already have something bought, but what now for the ladies?)  My friends, I fear, will again this year have to be content with the simple efforts of my pencil, meaning, in addition to my calendar, yet another new alphabet book -- if it gets printed in time.

Any other time I might be excited to announce something forthcoming from me and my friends and coworkers at the University Book Store Press, but just now it seems a bit... predictable.  Still, it's what I got to give.

This will be my third publication via the EBM.  I'm proud of the work, or rather, pleased enough to anticipate sending off copies of the new one to the four corners of the earth.  Why not?  I make these things very much with the intention to amuse.  My efforts to date all have seemed to meet that purpose well enough.  What's one more?

I of course have yet to see a copy of what will be my latest.  Fingers Crossed.

But now that Christmas ornaments and candy-canes, green and red this and that and Hanukkah cards are making their insidious way into every corner of the bookstore, I begin to worry, not just about getting my own stuff done and shipped, but finding something to buy for my beloved husband, dear A., and something for my mother, and something for the (grown) nephews, etc.  Panic.

AND I have my annual Capote reading to think about, and finding a encore to read for that.  I can barely imagine doing that yet.

So, given all that added stress, why then this morning do I find myself already humming Carols?!

It's a sickness, my friends, it really is.

And so it begins.