Feel the festive spirit...

I am sitting in a quiet office, full of cold and sinusitis and fretting about all the things I have to do when they eventually let me go.  I should be home at 3.30pm and although I'm on call until tomorrow morning, I'm not expecting to have to actually do anything bar a short report tomorrow first thing.

This is good as I still have to:

• Finish decorating the living room
• Tidy the spare room ready for the canine invasion (with my mother) and make up bed
• Make amaretto butter and rum butter
• Make cranberry sauce
• Make custard, butterscotch sauce and roast pears for trifle.  Then make trifle
• Then get on with supper for tonight!

All before my mum arrives c5pm.

Some of this is slightly thankless as P does not understand why I bother making custard from scratch rather than buy a tub from Waitrose and says he 'prefers the stuff in the jar' to my lovingly prepared cranberry, orange and port sauce.  Pfftt.

Things I'd like to do that seem extremely unlikely:

• Finish wrapping presents (currently only done on a need-to basis of actually seeing people)
• Curl hair with my new hair curling gizmo (thanks Boots points)

I'm also trying to avoid that last minute panic of 'oh no, we don't have a whole cheese - Christmas will be ruined' mentality which involves me buying a ridiculous quantity of food that we will then struggle to get through.  It makes me twitch nervously - 'but what if we suddenly want brie/stichelton/stollen/chocolates/anything else that randomly occurs to me' - and I think I'm going to succumb on the Baileys front and buy a bottle if I can shoot out of the office for half an hour.

It will be hard work until Boxing Day morning when my mum and her pack return to Kent and we head off for Suffolk.  When I may actually collapse until New Year and it's time to get back to work (boo).  The weather looks like we'll have a mixture of hiking and staying in and reading/watching films when it's too wet to walk - pretty perfect.  Also P's version of bubble and squeak is probably as good as Christmas dinner and it'll be relaxed with only ourselves to please.

Actually I am also planning on winning the lottery as I have fallen in love with a sofa.  I know how bizarre that sounds but it's tweed.  TWEED!  I can't tell you how much I love and need it.  And it would be handy not to have to return to work too.  So that's my NY resolution made.

Whatever you're doing and whoever you're doing it with, have a lovely Christmas and see you on the other side.