Sluggish.

That would describe my internet connection for the past couple of weeks, after the most recent spate of rain. I was too busy getting ready for Christmas (insert huge grin) to take five minutes and see if turning off my modem would beam me up, Scotty. It would. It did.

The gifts for the grandchildren on my side of the tribe are wrapped and gathered up in a tote bag. The adult gifts are mailed out (my sister and Middlest) or boxed up and collected in more totes. The birthday gifts for LittleBit and BittyBit are bought and wrapped. I'm done shopping. I'm done cooking, at least for awhile. I blitzed through Costco last night and picked up a five pound bag of clementines, two ginormous bags of organic tortilla chips (as opposed to the inorganic kind?) and two vats of Wholly Guacamole, all for the tribal feast on Friday.

Work has been going well. We are a skeleton crew this week. Tomorrow I will be wrangling SemperFi, handling both halves of my other attorney's docket, and backing up three other attorneys whose secretaries (and their backups) are out. Only three of those attorneys will be in the office and likely to ask me for something, and the courts are all closed tomorrow, and the post office closes at noon but deliveries and pickup will happen as scheduled. So I may still be looking for stuff to do, and ways to help.

Fourthborn will be coming back with me after Christmas dinner, and we will spend Saturday working on projects. I'm looking forward to that.

I may be picking up a waif-and-stray from the ward and dragging him along to the tribal feast. Yes, I said "him". No, this is not a romantic thing. I do notice him as a disturbance in the Force, for lack of a better term, but I'm not feeling flirtatious toward him, and I'm pretty sure he's not feeling flirtatious toward me, either. But he's a long, long way from home, and I got this prompting, and the next thing I knew I was asking him if he had plans for Christmas dinner. Secondborn has a huge house, and her philosophy has always been "the more, the merrier". There are already 23 confirmed attendees. One more will not mean that we have to hang by our toes from the banister.

If this turns out to be another rich, platonic friendship like the one I have with Brother Sushi, I will be over the moon. Romance would be a Volkswagen-sized spanner in the works, and I just flat don't wanna. I have a job to do, and a mortgage to pay off, and art to pursue and a house to finish and and and and. Not lonely, thank you very much.

Thankfully, I do not hear Moroni tap-dancing on my front porch with this good brother (or any other good brother) in tow, so I think I'm safe.

And now if you will all kindly excuse me, it's time for me to try to wind down and go to sleep. I've already decided that the charming small knitting project will be an excellent start on next Christmas and have firmly instructed the Ooh Good Idea Fairy to knock it off, because la la la la, I can't hear you.