Ten on Tuesday, the to-do edition.

This week Carole has us sharing our to-do lists. That is not a bad thing to suggest 2-1/2 weeks before Christmas, since some of us...

::la la la, fingers in ears, I can't hear you:: 

...tend to procrastinate.

Ten Fourteen Things On My To-Do List, More Or Less In Order Of Importance Urgency.*

1. Take my nomination papers around door-to-door around my district to get 30-40 signatures so that my name can be on the ballot for county supervisor in the election next April. Deadline is January 7, but the sooner I do this, the less likely someone else will decide to run against me. Only 20 signatures are required, but getting more is recommended in case any are disallowed. 
   
   
2. Finish editing the Christmas letter.
   
   
3. Choose photos and insert to  Christmas letter.
   
   
4. Print Christmas letters. This will involve finding a new cartridge for the color inkjet, which may be more difficult than it should be, given the state of my desk.
   
   
5. Address the envelopes for Christmas letter. This is the tedious part but is also the part I kinda enjoy because it involves no creativity or decisions. Yeah, tedium is my medium.
   
   
6. Fold and stuff and stamp Christmas letters. This part is both easier and harder than it used to be. Back when the kids were still at home, I would force enlist them to do the collating, folding, and stuffing. But I also insisted that all of us sign each letter. That last thing took a bit of organzation to get all of us to sit down together at the same time.
   
   
7. Mail Christmas letters. Happily, this is the easy part.
   
   
8. Contact Kiera The Teenage Helper to schedule her to work next weekend. I may have her scrub my kitchen top to bottem, including the inside of the cabinets and refrigerator, which hasn't been done in, er, um, years.
   
   
9. Take Elder Son's leather coat to the cobbler shop to see if it can be repaired. He hung it over the back of his chair at the campus library, then rolled the chair back and ripped the bejesus out of it. No matter how cheap the repair, it will be more than he paid for the coat; he bought it at a thrift shop in North Carolina on his spring break several years ago. He likes the coat because it is not too warm. Both our sons inherited Smokey's internal thermostat, which is always set to FLAMING INFERNO.
   
   
10. Buy new laces for my winter boots. A certain dog seems to have discovered them sometime since last winter. Last week the laces broke when I pulled on them to tighten, pre-tying, the first time I wore my boots this winter. They broke in several places. I'm pretty sure it was the dog because moths do not eat cotton shoelaces...
    
    
11. Finish cabled hat for Ali. This is no longer quite so urgent, since he emailed me to have Elder Son bring it back to Ann Arbor with after Christmas.
    
    
12. Knit a baby sweater for a friend's newborn. Newborn is two weeks old, baby shower was Sunday, but I told her we couldn't come (true). Instead, I sent her photos of several different yarn choices and let her choose which she wanted for the sweater. I also told her that I planned to knit it so Baby Abigail could wear it NEXT winter. Newborns grow so darned fast that it didn't seem practical to attempt to get it done for this winter.
    
    
13. Modify the dog sweater I made for Ser Percival The Energetic so it doesn't slide down his body. This will involve some combination of, 1, frogging the existing turtleneck and reknitting it tighter, and/or B, cutting a steek down the back, cutting away part of the existing turtleneck, picking up stitches, knitting button bands, and sewing on buttons. Given that the temps have been subzero and that Ser Percy is an extreme short-hair, maybe this should be higher on the list.
    
    
14. Figure out what to give Elder Son for Christmas. He's a bit past the age for Legos. The  gifts for the rest of the family are already purchased ::smirk::
    
    
15. Finish the two pairs of socks that have been in time out for way too long: Snickets and the ones Kym sent me last year. I love both of those, but because the patterns are not plain vanilla socks, they require a bit of attention. Both are at a point where I need to Figure It Out, which is just another way of saying, Oh, look, a squirrel! I think I'll cast on something else!