{"id":3997,"date":"2014-12-18T09:24:11","date_gmt":"2014-12-18T14:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=3997"},"modified":"2014-12-18T09:24:11","modified_gmt":"2014-12-18T14:24:11","slug":"neglect-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/miscellaneous\/neglect-something\/","title":{"rendered":"Neglect Something"},"content":{"rendered":"![\"cookies\"](\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/cookies-300x208.jpg\")
When in doubt, neglect something. That\u2019s my go-to strategy for dealing with holiday prep. Not \u201cstart early\u201d or \u201csimplify.\u201d Those boats have sailed, my friend. I say, embrace the chaos. Accept that if you go upstairs to change over the laundry, on the way you\u2019ll see the ornament boxes that need to go to the attic, and once you\u2019re in the attic, you\u2019ll find the pile of old games you intended to donate away, so they\u2019ll come back down with you to land by the kitchen door, beside the bin of recycling that also needs to go to the garage.<\/p>\n
By then, you\u2019re fretting about your novel, so you plop down on the couch and get going, and meanwhile you\u2019re neglecting:<\/p>\n
Shopping for gifts
Wrapping (Ha! As if!)
Dishes
Oil changes
Calling for eye doctor appointments
Sleep
Closets
Making holiday cards
Getting groceries
Recycling
Putting a year\u2019s worth of photos in an album
Folding up the fold-out couch from your mother\u2019s visit
Returning the rental wheel chair
Cleaning anything
Watering the tree
Watering the plants
Fighting the mysterious spider mites that are making the orange tree drop its leaves<\/p>\n
And yet, I know it\u2019s still going to be Christmas next week. The family will be here. We\u2019ll make it to Mass. We\u2019ll have enough to eat. Everyone\u2019s healthy.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s face it. We\u2019re already blessed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When in doubt, neglect something. That\u2019s my go-to strategy for dealing with holiday prep. Not \u201cstart early\u201d or \u201csimplify.\u201d Those boats have sailed, my friend. I say, embrace the chaos. Accept that if you go upstairs to change over the laundry, on the way you\u2019ll see the ornament boxes that need to go to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3997"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4000,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3997\/revisions\/4000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}