How we get ready for the holidays at my house-holiday cheer edition.

I was going to work on being a champion today. I have my list. There's a lot to do. The first thing on the list is get back to pushups.

Except instead I looked outside and we still have pumpkins on the front steps. From Halloween.

Also there's a witch hat gathering dust on top of a lamp. And a stack of books a mile high in front of the stack of boxes. Boxes?

Hoarders. My house looks like set design from Hoarders. Finding the vacuum, not an option. Instead, I read an article about dog training on the internet. Which is a lie. I skim it. I barely read it. Because it's talking to me and the answer is Lazy. If you're not out training your dog right now, you're lazy.

Some people have Christmas trees. I have another stack of books. And folders. Since I have an acute inability to be anything remotely resembling organized, I don't quite understand my folders overflowing with things like scraps of envelopes scribbled with cryptic notes. That I can barely read. Quickly I squirrel away a top layer of small items into some old cigar boxes and add them to a stack.

I was thinking a nice Christmas gift would be assembling little carry packs for fleeing when cannibal apocalypse strikes. Axes for all. Antibiotics. Ammunition. All assembled into sturdy little daypacks with nalgene water bottles and personal filtration systems.

Gary suggests, maybe just go down to the bookshop and look there instead? Maybe I'd see some gifts in a nice, normal shop?

So I find myself in front of the flashlight display at Home Depot. I tried to find one store to visit where potential Christmas gifts lurk and I end up in caverns of Home Depot. I don't even know where all our flashlights are or if we have enough. Sometimes I like to shine them on things and then they vanish. We even have ones that you can affix to your skull. Although once the lights are all gone from civilization, I don't think you want anyone reading your beacon. You're going to want to stay anonymous. And flashlights, as a gift idea, become suddenly dangerous. Exactly the wrong thing. So I leave Home Depot, empty handed.

So much for holiday shopping.

The only other thing that comes to mind for Perfect Gift Item is a diorama of taxidermied racoons and squirrels in costumes with hats and little sets. Except where do you put them? And how did they die for their art? Even the most perfect gift item, fraught with problems.

I wish I was in New York. I've heard you get Christmas Cheer there, then you go frolic in FAO Schwarz and the Kiehls store is a mile wide and everyone there wears boots and a stylish coat. Everyone there is a champion, and has the holiday spirit. Well, except for the homeless and the working poor. And unemployed poor. Ironic hipsters with mustaches and models ride scooters with their dogs and their dogs wear little coats and they all go hang out in bars with exposed brick walls and chalkboards, drinking cocktails made of things I didn't even know existed.

My dogs amuse themselves with a toy, back and forth across the house. It's their special game together. No wonder they run poorly for me at agility half the time. I write myself a note about this, that they should be playing with me, and file it away by throwing it under the table. I consider going and looking for the box of Christmas decorations, somewhere under all the junk in the garage, and then realize, there's nowhere any of it could go, anyways. Due to the already existing hoarder set decor.

Then I consider setting up 2 weave poles, to try and start the fixing Gustavo's pole entry problem. But, you know what that means. It would mean going in the garage. We've determined we must stay out of there.

So righty-o. Just the other day I thought, maybe I'm the kind of person, that, given a big enough truck, would want to strap a Christmas wreath to the front grill. That was the first time I ever thought that. I thought maybe it's because I have a removable tooth. Now I'm ready to wire a wreath to a car. What kind of wire do you use for that?

I thought about it for about 3 minutes. And then I thought, not going to happen. And that was the end of that.