hosting holiday gatherings is tiring even at the low-effort end of the scale

This day has too many obligations.

By which I mean I agreed a couple weeks ago to attend (and bring a dish to) Downstairs Neighbor S's holiday potluck dinner. Which is at 5pm. Which means I need to start making my food item (I have decided upon Laddie's hotdish, because it is dead simple and I forgot to buy supplies for anything fancy anyway) by 3:45 at the latest. Which is in two hours.

In the intervening time, I need to finish my laundry (gather it from the laundromat, fold things, put them away), do some general housecleaning (unsure whether I want to dust all the flat surfaces or wash vegetable planters so I can then stack them and stash them out of the way), and also package the batch of veggie sidedish I currently have in my crockpot.

I think I can probably excuse myself from the potluck after an hour, following which I need to... do more housecleaning, probably.

Nick arrives Monday afternoon while I'm at work (I will leave a key in the mailbox for him) and I have no clue what we'll do for dinner. Then we do who knows what on Tuesday morning and afternoon until our parents arrive and we collectively head to the early Christmas Eve service at Sage Chapel. It's at 5:15pm, but we should be there around 4:30pm in order to make sure we get seats and that everything's organized for me to do one of the readings (which I agreed to last week).

Um. That's no longer today, is it? Also at some point in there, I have an overdue library book to finish and return, a Yuletide story to edit (and maybe expand?), and some other writing I'd like to get done. And I need to vacuum at some point. Maybe that's my housecleaning task for this afternoon?

Anyway, I'm going to go deal with laundry now.

holiday prep continues

With reference to my earlier post:

Laundry is done and everything that isn't still air-dying has been folded and put away. I put new sheets on my bed. I hauled the air mattress out of the closet. I have tidied away some random clutter.

I cleaned all four plastic storage containers that I use as vegetable planters, dried them, and have stacked them neatly in my bathroom.

I took a walk for general mental and physical health purposes, and also to take my daily photo of Cascadilla Creek.

I made Laddie's hotdish and took it over to Downstairs Neighbor S's apartment for the potluck at 5pm. Upstairs Neighbors K and P (and Mini-Upstairs Neighbor S), Diagonal Neighbors T and Z, and Downstairs Neighbor S's daughter were also in attendance. I was sociable until 6:15pm, whereupon I made my farewells and escaped, because I'm not really great at extended socializing. *wry*

Then I cleaned my four tomato pots, plus my three window-box-style planters that had been gathering dust and spiderwebs.

It would be a little weird/rude to vacuum while everyone is next door eating dessert and chatting, so I think instead I will maybe dust all my bookcases and flat surfaces, and then run the dust mop along the ceiling corners and around my kitchen and bathroom floors. I can either vacuum early tomorrow morning, or tomorrow evening when I get home from work. (The main point is to get the vacuuming done before Nick and I inflate the air mattress, because otherwise his bed will be on a dirty carpet and that's just gross and inhospitable, you know?)

I suspect dinner tomorrow will be leftover Laddie's hotdish and veggie sidedish, unless Nick has strong opinions otherwise. Or one of us could have leftover pot roast, I guess? I'm definitely taking the leftover chicken-onion-asparagus stir fry in to work for lunch, though.