Keeping up with the ?

Okay, I've realized something about the money thing. The point is not really that I need to control how everyone else does Christmas, i.e., how much money they spend on buying presents for me and J. The point is that I have to be comfortable with "inequity" as J. puts it. I have to be okay with the fact that I know I won't be buying or making or giving as many or as spendy of presents to other people as they might be giving me. This sounds so stupid when I spell it out, like what's the big deal? But it is. Money is the one thing I have trouble talking about, and being decisive about. I know last year J. and I talked early on about how we knew we didn't have a lot to spend on Xmas presents, and we really should come up with a spending limit. And we never did, we just kind of winged it. I don't know if we're going to do that again, we might. I just hope we wing it a bit lower than last year.

But why do I feel like I have to spend a certain amount of money to show people I care? Am I trying to keep up with the Joneses? I don't know. I don't want people to feel sleighted, and that's real. I do like getting presents for people, picking out things I think they will enjoy is fun. But it's so stressful when you don't have money to spend, and that's not what Christmas is supposed to be about. I saw this commercial yesterday for Toys R Us and it said "so you can get your child everything he wants." Is that the point, to get everything you want? I mean, what does that teach you? I think it just teaches you to want more. Seems like there should something more useful to learn about Christmas than to want more stuff.

One thing I still haven't done that I've always wanted to do for Christmas is go caroling. I don't know, I probably need to already be in some singing group, which I'm not in.

J. is going to be off work a lot this next month because he has to use up vacation time before the end of the year, and I really hope we can spend some fun time together, even though we can't go anywhere really. I mean, I know we can find fun stuff to do in town, like go to museums and take Cocoa to parks and stuff. I hope there's more snow than last winter, it would be nice to go Cross-Country skiing in town at one of the big parks.