Oh, the joys of blogging

I was so excited to start my blog. I have always wanted a place to put my random thoughts. I never realized how hard it is to have random thoughts until I had to write them down everyday. What to focus on today....Hmm... That is the joy of a blog vs. writing a book. Each blog can stand individually and you can pick and choose your topic of the day. Today I want to write about holiday excitement. Once Halloween is over, it seems like the holidays fly by. There is so much planning to do. I have already made my menu for Thanksgiving. Every year we have the same foods. Tradition. We even have the same basic desserts: pumpkin pie, graham cracker pie, pecan pie and a chocolate cake or brownie for the ones who don't like pie. Being a list freak anyway, the holidays cause me to become fanatic about my lists. We all have our own little quirks and I can't believe I am airing mine on the Internet, but here it goes: Even my lists have lists. I start with your basic menu...a list of every dish we want to fix. I place it in an excel form. Then I go through each item and make a list of every ingredient that is needed to prepare the dish. Then I cross reference the items, remove duplicates and walah! You have an instant grocery list. I then check the kitchen cupboards, freezer and fridge to see what we have already and mark it off the list. Over the next month, we will slowly stock up on the canned goods and non-perishables so we don't have as much shopping to do the week of the big event. As we buy something, I mark it off my master list. Now for the really ironic part of all this. My husband does the cooking and the main shopping, I just go along for the ride. He just picks up things off the shelf he knows we need and I discretely mark it off my list. With my month of preparation and my intense list making, he gets up the morning of the final shopping trip, opens cabinet doors and checks the fridge and is able to mentally make the list of what we need. AND HE NEVER MISSES AN ITEM. Oh, to be able to be that good and not need a list.