I'm Making a List and Checking it... Never

December? Christmas? I can't believe it's that time again already!

I was reading a novel a while ago that talked about a great custom that the Chinese have for Chinese New Year. No, not the one where you get packets of money from all your relatives... although that one sounds awesome!

The custom I'm talking about is that they make sure that every single outstanding task or chore is done before New Years Day. All their socks are darned. All missing buttons sewn back on. The house swept and scrubbed and spotless. They even make all the food in advance so they don't have to cook on the day itself (although that's because if they use a knife they'll be cutting their luck away for the new year).

So when New Year arrives, they can start completely fresh, with nothing nagging in the backs of their brains, bugging them. Doesn't that sound great? I've been thinking of making a list of all the things I want to get done, so there's nothing worrying at my conscience into the New Year. So here goes...

For starters, there's all that tax stuff the haters from the IRD have been sending me threatening letters about. But to do that, I'll have to climb my way to the very top of my Everest-like mountain of unfiled paperwork. Hmmm, might need oxygen to make it all the way up there. And if there's an avalanche I could get covered in paper cuts.

What about the whole darning socks, sewing buttons thing? Nah, that's what the Boxing Day Sales are for. It'll be in with the new, and out to the Maybe-I'll-Wear-It-Again-One-Day box with the old. (By the way, that box has been untouched in the back of the closet for so long that I suspect unique and unusual species of flora and fauna are flourishing in there, in much the same way as they do in remote uninhabited areas of the Amazon rainforest. Maybe I should file some sort of blanket ownership patent, in case scientists eventually discover the cure for cancer lurking inside that box's murky depths?).

Okay, next on the list... house scrubbing. The very thought has me reaching for the wine bottle. If God wanted us to clean, why did He create domestic helpers? And if He wanted houses to be scrubbed-up for New Year, why did he then give them days off over Christmas?

Then there's the Drawer of Shame containing five hundred half-finished manuscripts. I'll need more than oxygen and alcohol to finish any of those off.

Forget The List! I'll just pretend it's already 2010 and all the stuff I haven't finished are things that can wait until 2011. The way this year went galloping by, it'll be true soon enough.