Me? I’m just happy to have a regular paycheck. I still have my freelance graphic art business and am working out of the home: that won’t change. But from 7 to 4, I am owned by the PDN.

This post is for suggestions on how to reduce the stress that many of us feel around this time of year, and perhaps re-capture an appreciation of the things that are good about it. I’m using Christmas in my examples, but feel free to apply this to other holidays which cause you or someone you know stress. If you have more solutions, please post them as comments.

1) Christmas is not a calendar date.
We were being really dragged down by the amount of traveling we were doing on what is ostensibly a day of celebration and enjoyment. One of the best solutions we have found is to make the day AFTER Christmas (Boxing Day) the day for visiting family. We don’t have to rush out the door, the child[ren] get to play with their toys or just play and be with immediate family.
We did not opt for the day before, because our daughter needs her sleep, which is hard enough on Christmas Eve without adding in hours in the car and getting excited by playing with cousins all day.

2) Spread out the presents
This is for families with children.
Some families have a rule about presents only being opened on Christmas morning, others allow one present to be opened on CHristmas Eve. My suggestion is to spread the presents out, particularly if you have lots of adult relatives mailing in kids’ gifts. If you are a parent, or around small children, you have probably witnessed Present Shock, the sensory overload that comes from opening too many presents too fast. Tags get mixed up, the child only remembers the last present opened, and then is faced with too many choices about what to do next. For a week before and a week after (or some other time period) open a present a day. Make a little ritual of it, doing it at the same time of day if possible.
The child gets to really appreciate the gift, and if you have them write a thank you card the same day, that task is spread out as well, and the child does not have to be reminded who gave them what.
Save the big family or Santa present(s) for Christmas morning (you know, the bicycle or video game system or what have you), as well as the stocking. But that board game from Uncle Max might actually be played and a cogent thank you note written if that is the only present for the day. Even the smallest present gets appreciated.

3) Stockings
This may not be for everyone, but it helped in our house growing up. Stockings are kid-distractors for parents who want to sleep late or cook breakfast before the morning rituals. A stocking is a “gift from Santa” whether your family embraces the tradition as “real” or not. Parents do not need to be present. Put in toys, puzzles, dexterity games, Rubik’s cubes, etc. in there to give you time to have a leisurely morning.

4) Commercialization
Do your shopping early, throughout the year if possible, or on-line even. Unless going to the mall and listening to Muzak Christmas carols and seeing Christmas displays is what you need to get your Christmas Spirit moving.
Mail out Seasonal cards. If you do this early enough, and regularly, far-flung relatives will realize that you are not getting them an expensive gift, and they don’t need to get you one. Christmas presents are for kids, really. Adults can buy the things they want. Closer family members can get simple gifts. Communicate this honestly and early and you might be able to reduce a sense of dreaded obligation. Hopefully, you don’t have a Christmas Zealot in your family to deal with, but coordinated action from the rest of the family might be able to reduce even this.

5) Married couples: Compromise
Be understanding that your spouse is different from you inside and probably has a different list of what they need to make the holiday enjoyable. Give them space if they need it, or follow them on some of their Christmas rituals. Give and take, and be honest with each other. Don’t make ultimatums or use guilt as a weapon. If you have a strong marriage, you probably already know this one, however.

6) Reducing the Gimme instinct in children
Organize some sort of community-benefiting activity. Helping with a charity drive, donating old toys and books, helping at church, anything that isn’t about getting. Make it just as normal, regular and important as the rest of the Christmas traditions. With any luck, regular exposure to this sort of attitude will instill good habits in later life and build a new young person with a good civic attitude. At the very least, you’ll be helping some folks who don’t have all the opportunities for happiness that you do.

I love living here.

I do not feel that this model will produce a program of sufficient quality that my daughter will benefit by participation, which is really the reason I got involved with R.E. to begin with. I have heard from other families that feel the same way. So by cutting the program down, they are simultaneously eliminating the need for one. I respect the board, who have had to come up with this proposal in the face of diminished pledges and a small, but powerful minority that would really rather not have kids in the Fellowship at all.

I did a lot of soul searching on this before deciding not to continue my presence in the program. Everyone whom I have spoken with has assured me that this is the right decision. 

So I’m going to have a lot of free Sundays starting in July.

sigh.

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So, I need to justify my position as Director of Religious Education for next year. The only certain thing is that business as usual won’t cut it. With the Minister gone, I am the highest-paid staff member (which still isn’t saying much). Cutting R.E. is not really an option. If the church wants to attract and keep young members, an R.E. program is essential. But they can’t continue to put money into it at the current attendance rate.

So after a lot of brainstorming, the best that we could come up with was for me to voluntarily cut my hours in half, and used pre-generated curriculum. This is tough because I currently write about half my lesson plans (to tailor them for our kid and fellowship demographic) and I am extremely frugal. I rarely use even half the materials budget. Normal curriculum calls for more art projects, field trips, etc. Stuff that costs money. So I’d have to ask for more for supplies. Also, I would require the church to throw more money into program promotion. If I’m going to cut my time, I want the church to put some dollars into advertising.

Then Susan came up with a brilliant idea. Currently, my time is pretty much divided between administration and execution. My first proposal was basically cutting the administration top end (using pre-written curriculum, or re-running previously created custom curriculum). Susan said, “Half your volunteers walk away saying that they never knew half the stuff you were teaching. Why not set aside one Sunday out of the month to run an R.E. class in the Fellowship Hall, in place of a normal service?” Without a regular minister, the board must now fill each Sunday with a guest speaker, and the fees mount up, as well as the difficulty in finding quality speakers. I have a number of lesson plans that could be presented to all ages that would probably be well-received. The church would continue to pay me as normal, but now they have one less speaker to hire per month, and the R.E. program gains greater visibility within the Fellowship. Win-win.

I’m really excited (and nervous) about this. I hope the Board goes for it.

The Barbershop Harmony Society  has a collection of 12 standards that are collectively called the BarberPole Cat tunes. In theory, if you are a BHS member from a Swedish chapter, you could visit a chapter in Japan and be able to sing any of these songs with the local members. I say in theory, because each member is encouraged to qualify on these tunes, but it is not required. So far I have only qualified on three. Usually we are so busy preparing for this show or that performance, that the Pole Cat tunes are usually a low priority.

Now that the annual show is done with, we are going to concentrate on these for about a month. It is my fervent hope that after this month, I will have qualified on the other nine and be entitled to proudly wear this pin.

I’m not leaving Livejournal though. I’m using the cross-posting plugin, so I’ve got the best of both worlds. Come leave a comment over at the new site, so I can make sure my spam filter doesn’t catch any false positives.

I just got an invitation from a friend to go play ping pong with him this afternoon at the Senior Center.

The saddest part is, I’ll probably go.

When I was 20 years old or so, a friend came over to my house and asked me to go rock climbing with him. I had never done anything remotely like this, but it sounded like fun. We drove out to a quarry in Snelling, California, and after about 15 minutes of instruction and safety tips, we were on our way up. There were many times when I was hanging on to things by fingertips or even fingernails. The stress and excitement were extreme.

The euphoric feeling I achieved when I got to the top was all worth it though. Once atop the quarry, it was a gently stroll through a forest path to get back down to the foot.

Today is the stroll through the forest. The show is done and it was a rousing success. Yes there were a few problems, but by and large they were the sort that are not apparent to an audience—things like one person out of the whole chorus flubbing a lyric, or the whole chorus slowly dropping a full tone throughout the course of the song. And some mistakes were more apparent. But most of it was fantastic. I received enough compliments on the scripted part of the show  to keep me blushing for months. Bud and I really clicked as a comedic duo. Bud brought the audience to hysterics with Spike Jones' "Man on the Flying Trapeze" routine.

After the show, at the afterglow, the guest quartet gave us a bonus performance, which rocked. They are the Gold Medal champions for the Evergreen DIstrict (which includes Washington, Idaho, Alaska, British Columbia and more). They also ran a game called Polecat Tag. Polecat tunes are the 14 standards that are common to all chapters of the Barbershop Harmony Society. If he has qualified on them, a member from a Swiss chapter can sing with a Japanese chapter. In Polecat Tag, a quartet starts a polecat song. Then anyone can tag any member of the quartet in mid-song and take over that part. We were rotating parts like crazy; the more advanced members even tagging into alternate parts (A bass singing tenor, for instance). It was a blast.