No Stress Holidays

The holidays are coming soon. Get organized now, and you'll have plenty of time to spend with your family. With everything that needs to be done throughout holiday season, it is very easy to feel overwhelmed and stressed. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a simple system that would help you get your holiday season organized? Start with a family meeting. Family meetings are perfect for organizing things from chore schedules to parties. It's also perfect time for everyone to keep in touch with each other. Schedule one or two per holiday season. Start now for Thanksgiving and schedule another one for Christmas before end of November. Schedule a call-free hour for each planning session and let answering machine field calls. Planning early will give everyone something fun to look forward to. Don't overbook your schedule. Pick things you enjoy doing most, and focus on them. This way, you'll have plenty of additional time for yourself and your family. Purchase a five section divided notebook (or use pages from your personal organizer). Title each of dividers as follows: Holiday Schedule, Gifts, Meals, Parties, and Extras. Holiday Schedule In Holiday Schedule section of your notebook, paste in a calendar page for month of December. This section will be center of all holiday activities. That is why it is so important to have a family meeting, making sure everybody gets to do and participate in what he/she likes best. On this page keep track of all holiday events and parties, including school programs, concerts, and work parties. Remember to include your favorite television specials and family traditions such as viewing Live Nativity or Christmas Light Tour. Don’t forget getting Christmas tree and decorating house.

In same section of your notebook number pages from 1 to 31 and use these pages as your daily calendar. As month progresses you will appreciate open spaces of daily calendar for scheduling events and activities. Remember to schedule in shopping for gifts along with wrapping and mailing them. This would be a good spot to schedule in Christmas cards, too, writing them and getting them into mail.

Gifts

In Gift section of your notebook write a heading across each page as needed. Kid’s Wish List requires a page for each child. Copy directly from their list or paste it in. Gift Ideas should be a couple of pages devoted to jotting down gift ideas as they come up while shopping, watching TV or talking to someone. Stocking Stuffer Ideas should follow same format as gift ideas but jotting down stocking stuffer ideas instead. The Master Gift List is key to your budget and your sanity. On Master gift list use a page for each person or group of people (people from work, nieces and nephews, etc.) and keep track of what you actually buy and how much you spend. This is key to making sure you don’t forget anybody, that you don’t spend too much, and that your spending is balanced. Holiday Meals

The Fate of Public Enemy Number One

THE FATE OF PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE We live in a world of patterns. But, according to science, patterns are unlikely. Any patterns that do occur are described as chance events that become quickly reabsorbed into a pervading trend towards formlessness or featurelessness. You can test this easily. Take several coins and pile them up, one on top of other, on palm of your hand. You will observe a 'cylinder' of coins - a recognizable pattern. Now toss them on ground. If three or four of those coins wound up in a pattern you would be surprised. If you tossed coins again and they fell into same pattern you would be completely flabbergasted. What generally happens, of course, is that coins wind up in a scattered arrangement on ground. All of natural forces identified by science, except one, lead to randomness. The exception is gravity, which leads to simple spherical shapes of planets and stars. But even stars and planets are scattered across heavens. If there are any patterns, these have occurred by chance and will not last.  But gravity cannot account for all complex patterns and structures that repeat everywhere you look. Here on earth there are people, animals, plants, fish, birds, reptiles, insects. There are any number of repeating patterns of behaviour. Why? . Science and logic attempt to explain existence of patterns and structures by saying that chance is responsible for them. According to our learned duo, whole world is a clockwork, predictable process in which order and routine appear by chance within a general trend towards featurelessness. In other words, routines of your life occur by accident and always in an onward march towards meaninglessness, dissipation and grave. Logic and science say that, ultimately, your bones will be nothing more than so much dust blowing in someone else's eyes. Well, that is one explanation. Now I will tell you a secret that logic and science are not aware of. Most of patterns and routines that drive your actions and those that you encounter in your daily life have no logical antecedents. This means that there is no chain of causes and effects that you could trace that would lead up to routine or structure in question. 'Patterns' just emerge into world in a surprising way. The patterns of development that emerge as if from nowhere repeat themselves in every era. Originally they were depicted in great mythological stories. One such is Greek myth of Phaeton. This is an important story because pattern of development that gripped central character is common in modern world. Phaeton's father was Sun God. Now this God was far away in sky, so Phaeton was brought up by his mother alone. One day young Phaeton's pride was hurt when his great lineage was doubted by an acquaintance. So Phaeton went to his mother and asked for proof that his father was Sun God. The great lady directed her son to land in east where sun rose. Phaeton traveled there and was greeted by Sun God who confirmed that he was indeed his father. As an act of good will, Sun God grants Phaeton a wish. The young man, still smarting from damaged pride, asks to be allowed to drive his father's chariot across sky. Because of his inexperience, he was warned not to attempt such a feat. But Phaeton could not be dissuaded and he launches himself forward in chariot. Eventually, control is lost and fiery chariot lurches towards earth threatening a great scorching of land. Before damage could be done Phaeton is blasted out of sky by a thunderbolt and is killed. Now what possible relevance could that story have for today's world? Well, it is 'pattern' of development that is important. The absent father. Offspring brought up by lone female. Lack of self-esteem. The young person biting off more than they can chew. The catastrophic fall to earth. The children of unmarried mothers are very much 'available' to this archetypal pattern. Perhaps youngsters turn to crime and are emboldened by some early success. They climb to dizzy heights of notoriety. But, in their battle against authority, they have taken on more than they can handle and police inevitably catch up with them, bring them down to earth and cast them into gaol. In those lives, mysterious living trend of Phaeton will have been fulfilled. Many privileged people, politicians, industrialists and people in public eye suffer a similar fate within channel of their individual activity. Hitler, for example, did not get on with a father who died when he was thirteen. He then went on to live tragedy of Phaeton. If you examine these lives you will discover an absent father or a weak father or perhaps they were sent away to boarding school. This lack of a male role model will prevent optimum 'plan' for their lives from unfolding and they will become available to one-sided living trend depicted in myth of Phaeton.