I know just what to ask Goddess for. I've thought carefully about this, and made the whole pro / con list and the only thing I can think of that has the potential for dramatically improving my life is agonizingly simple:

stamina.

I'd like some please, and very soon, because xmas, that energy reducing shopfest that rides unwanted into our lives under the guise of a religious celebration, is kicking mucho Shann ass. After a day with the babies it's all I can do to get the clean dishes put away and make sure everyone gets their teeth brushed, so I think it's fairly obvious that my plan to finish the shopping after Sir Lawrence gets home is a dismal failure. Starting tomorrow I will be taking the babies and the double stroller out for short trips, in which I will buy as many gifts as the storage compartment under the stroller will hold then go home and repeat the process the next day. I have to do this before my energy reserves are exhausted trying to keep track of my two little ones, who seem to have no end to their own reserves.

As of tomorrow I only have eight days to get the shopping finished, the wrapping done and mail the few cards I intend to send.

That reminds me. I also have to overnight payment for Zoe's last xmas gift tomorrow (otherwise it won't be here in time), and send SIL and nephew's gifts out. Oh shit - I have to buy them birthday cards first.

Dammit dammit dammit!!

An early start. I have to have one of those.

Yup.

Moving right along...

I'm reading yet another book about the Black Dahlia murder (and this time the information is accurate and corroborated), and it's starting to get to me I think. I am majorly creeped out by it, but more than that I feel so sorry for this woman, who was by all accounts a kind and decent person and didn't deserve to have that horror inflicted upon her. She was young too, and really beautiful. The worst part of it is the photo section, which includes images from both the crime scene and the morgue. Oh my god. Pictures of Elizabeth Short's mangled body from every possible angle. I love true crime stories and have read an awful lot of them but this is especially horrible, probably because I never really knew about her life before. Now I know who she was and the kind of person she was. Her death seems all the more hideous and brutal because of it. She had friends and a family that loved her. She'll never be anyone's wife or mother, and she'll never realize her dream of becoming a movie star.

And like Jack the Ripper, the man who took her life was never caught.

The details of it can really mess with a person's mind when the house is dark and quiet.