I’m tired, neah, exhausted. You see, I, like many of you, have just come off a 5 day (excluding prep time) one woman show. It happens every year, I become the sole proprietor of a full service Bed and Breakfast, otherwise known as Thanksgiving.
The shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry and entertainment (not to mention trying to work a little) it takes to pull off a festive family holiday is truly astounding. So why am I surprised that I can’t move today? For a moment I thought there might be a significant decline in the productivity of women everywhere today, but then I remembered, we all have to do this again in a mere three weeks! Only this time we will be adding in a significant amount of decorating and shopping – and thanks to the Pinterest revolution we are supposed to be doing it on a level of perfection that’s quite frankly isn’t human.
The fact of the matter is producing lifelong memories and traditions for your family is SERIOUSLY HARD WORK! Yet we do it as an act of love for those in our lives who make life worth living and in doing so many of us work ourselves right into a state of misery brought on by quadrupling our work load and decreasing our sleep time. I think if you truly added up that little equation the time it takes to pull of the Holidays – is actually against government regulated labor laws. But we are all going to do it, so let’s vow to bring a little joy back into our own holidays (yeah, totally forget it was a holiday for you too, huh?) So I ask you to take the following pledge:
I {insert name here} will show no shame, I will have no mercy, I will shortcut the entire season WITHOUT GUILT! I will use store bought cookie dough, paper plates (although maybe spring for the fancy “crystal cut” kind), use gift bags (even if they are not holiday themed), and let the kids throw the lights up and let them be as they are. I will pre-order ready made side dishes from the grocery store, and put them in my own dishes – will anyone really know? I will not hold myself to the exhausting ritual of making sure every single tradition is kept up – especially if nobody in the family (not even your 90 year old grandma) can tell you exactly why it is a tradition, and I will NOT run myself into the ground hand addressing holiday cards – when an e-card or even a carefully crafted facebook post can do the trick. I will sit, and not just in the car or in front of a computer, but sit …with people…. and talk…and try not to run the list of 35 things I should be doing through my head. In the words of the new holiday sensation movie Frozen, LET IT GO, because after all that is the best gift you will ever give to the ones you do it all for anyway.
— Truly Yours Without Guilt ,
ME xoxo
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Kara Vanderpool Ward is owner of Triple V Enterprises, where she works daily alongside her father and brother (yep read that right) and generally subscribes to the theory that you better learn to laugh. She is a full time caregiver to her grandmother, the mother of two and the wife of one. She lives with her family in Charlottesville, Va
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