I started feeling a little Christmassy yesterday when I put up the garlands on my loft and stair rails. This year, I got clever and plugged them into a remote-control outlet (that I normally have a lamp on so I can turn it on from the front door, since my light switches are in the back of the living room). Now I can click the lights on and off without having to go upstairs and grope around behind the chaise and the antenna.

I also went to the neighborhood tree lighting last night, which counted as exercise, since I walked over there (though I think the cocoa I had there might have undone the effect of the exercise). It’s fun watching the kids run around and play together before they light the tree. My neighborhood is in one of the most diverse zip codes in the country, so there are kids from just about every race and multiple nationalities all playing together, and it does the heart good to see that. I enjoy seeing the people of the neighborhood come together, and then I like looking at all the lights along the way as I walk home.

Today is a shopping day, but it’s an excursion for supplies. It’s my last Wednesday of children’s choir until after the holidays, so it’s also the last Wednesday night dinner at church. I figure that makes it a good opportunity for an Ikea run, since the church is on the way home from the Ikea, and there are a number of other stores in the general area of Ikea that I need to visit. I think I may do my actual Christmas shopping tomorrow in a big mall day, maybe even with lunch out and a movie.

And then I need to dig back into writing, though I’m tentatively planning a Christmas movies on the couch day next week since there’s supposed to be a cold, rainy day.

I’m sort of treating today as a holiday, since I worked throughout the Thanksgiving holiday and I finished my draft. I let myself sleep in, and I’m still hanging around the house in my fleece pajamas with a cup of hot tea. When I get up and going, I’m going to devote most of the day to cleaning house and catching up on the stuff that didn’t get done while I was frantically writing a book.

I may also get around to putting up some Christmas decorations. I don’t know if I’ll do a tree this year, since the place I would put a tree is right where they’ll have to do work on my baseboard and wall, and the contractor has already come out to take pictures and give the HOA an estimate on repairs. I figure if I don’t put up a tree because I don’t want to have to take it down if they schedule the work, the work won’t happen until January. If I put up a tree, they’ll contact me the next day about doing the work. I have some wheeled dollies of the sort you put under large potted plants, so I wonder if putting the tree up on one of them might be cheating. I could roll it out of the way if they need to work (probably removing the most fragile/valuable ornaments first) but still have a tree — but would that summon the carpenters or count as not putting up the tree, so it delays work until January?

I think I really like the book I just wrote. The heroine’s voice is a lot of fun because she’s really snarky, and one of her character traits is a tendency to blurt out something inappropriate when she’s stressed — she says the thing she’s thinking, and only realizes too late that she said it out loud. I like the town I created, and I’m intrigued by the supporting cast and the relationships that might develop along the way. I’m already figuring out ideas for the next book in the series. The plan is to have the second book just about ready to go before I launch book 1, so as soon as you finish reading book one, you can already pre-order book 2, with a teaser for book 2 at the end of book 1.

It seems my writing holiday may not last too long because the ideas are already spinning, but I do want to make it to the movies because there are several out right now that I want to see in theaters. And I’m rewatching the Star Wars movies to build up to the new one.

Meanwhile, I’m leading into the crazy time of the holiday season. Neighborhood tree lighting festival tomorrow night, choir rehearsal and children’s choir Wednesday, choir rehearsal Saturday mid-day, party Saturday night, cookie jamboree at church Sunday morning (for which I’ll have to bake cookies, probably Friday), two concerts I’m singing in on Sunday afternoon and evening, then a party Monday night. After that, things slow down a little. And then I’ll start revising the book, though I might start before then if I get ideas. And I’m kind of thinking of taking a mini vacation sometime during all this.