Today is the beginning of the Grand prize at the Smutty Advent Calendar. There are a TON of prizes to be won, including an e-copy of Ladies of Steampunk Magazine... so go take the quiz and win a really lovely prize-pack. Entries taken from now til the end of the year...
I didn't quite meet my goal of posting daily, but I did pretty well. 19 out of 25 days is certainly more than I've posted in recent months...
Today is Christmas and I'm stealing a few minutes upstairs before the family expects me to cook, clean, open presents and generally be merry. Or a reasonable facsimile thereof.
Usually by this time of year, I'm freaking out about money. In fact, I managed to give myself a small freak the other day anyway. (My husband is big into Christmas, an enthusiasm that I'm almost ashamed to admit I've done a lot to quash... on the other hand, it's easy to be enthusiastic about something when you don't cook, clean, plan, buy most of the presents, wrap, organize, decorate, or do any of the actual WORK involved. I mean, he does shop for me - online - and he does take the kiddo out for one day of getting her presents for her friends and her present for me... but really... I'm the one who does the bulk of the Christmas work... which some years I mind more than others... )
Wow. That was a long aside...
Anyway, he likes to buy presents (or more exactly, he likes me to buy and plan and wrap the presents, he just likes to give a lot of them OUT...) which tends to lead to us being more broke than usual around this time of year... a common problem. But I spent too many years playing the "If I pay the gas bill this month and the water bill next month and the electric bill in February, can I fool everyone enough to think they'll get paid eventually to not shut the power off?" game to really feel comfortable with a low balance in our checking account. I recognize that it's unreasonable and irrational and that if I give myself a budget to buy gifts with and stick within that budget, there's no reason why I should be freaking out, right?
You'd think...
You'd be wrong.
I freak out anyway. The other day I managed to worry myself into freaking out enough to be terrified when I went to check the bank balance. Heart beating in my eyeballs, barely breathing, mouth dry, hands and joints stiff kind of panic.
It was... fine. Better than fine. Confusingly fine as a matter of fact.
Meanwhile, in the real world, I hadn't been paid for one of my writing jobs yet. And it was starting to aggravate me. I knew one of my fellow authors had been paid and she lives further away... Finally, I wrote a note to my editor - I did move this summer and I've had a surprising amount of trouble with getting my mail. She wrote back - "What are you on about, nitwit... I Paypal-ed you weeks ago...Moron."
(Okay, she didn't say that. She was actually exceptionally nice about it, but I always read things in that "sarcastic cat speaking inside my head" voice... you know the one. Or you don't and you're very lucky...)
So I went to check Paypal. And indeed, I was paid. In fact, not only had I been paid, but Paypal had been using that money to pay for the few Christmas gifts that I bought off Etsy and ThinkGeek and Woot! and the places that, you know, I have my PayPal account set up for...
Which would explain why there was still money in my checking account that I couldn't explain...
Which was, in the end, sort of like getting an extra present....
Now, if I could just stop wrapping things up with the crazy paper, I'd be great...
Happy Holidays...
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