Christmas in three weeks, and I look around this house thinking, "How am I POSSIBLY going to be ready?" Well, that's easy: I'm not. Ever.

So for the last two or three weeks, I just hit the high spots, scrape off the top layer, give it a lick and a promise, etc.

I don't dust, I don't mop, I don't clean the microwave or the stove top...all that stuff can wait until the two or three days before Christmas. I'm not going to do the same stuff six times between now and Christmas.

Energy has to go into "Christmas" stuff, like wrapping and re-arranging (my daughter-in-love is in a wheelchair) and cooking and cards (maybe, maybe not) and so on. So the house is at its messiest.

Plus, I don't WANT to reach for cobwebs, I want to reach for the Christmas music and scream along with my bad piano-playing as I run through my repertoire of top seven hundred favorite Christmas songs.