Magnanimity and other insanity

I don't know when last I cooked a full Christmas dinner. I don't think it was anything like a year ago, or even two or three, but... as I am often heard to say, these days "my rememberer is broke"...

I must have forgotten the amount of work entailed in such a cooking spree, because yesterday, in a fit of feeling good to the point of magnanimity, I invited our teenaged grandson and granddaughter,  along with their parents, to have Christmas dinner here.
Here.
At our house.
Dinner for six.
To be cooked in my kitchen.

I can't believe I said that. But there I was, flush from the triumph of getting the house semi-clean and somewhat tidy, then having our granddaughter stay with us overnight, so I offered to turn one of these:













into one of these:


less than a week from now, aided only by my husband, which is often like having no help at all.
Sigh.
Note: The Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of magnanimity is not, as I thought, complete insanity, but is instead "loftiness of spirit enabling one to bear trouble calmly, to disdain meanness and pettiness, and to display a noble generosity"!

Good grief! Lofty me just "disdained meanness and pettiness" and displayed the noble generosity entailed in cooking Christmas dinner.

Who, me?

Who knew?

Now, less than 24 hours later, I have finished writing two lists: a to-buy list and an equally long to-do list, and I am overwhelmed. I don't even have my husband here to help underwhelm me, because he is off playing tennis. No, not in the snow. Even he and his intrepid tennis partner aren't that hardy. In the winter they play on an indoor court somewhere. But I digress.

Fortunately for me, I have an appointment to see our family doctor this afternoon. Perhaps he will explain to my husband and the kids that I am constitutionally incapable of such a crazy feat.

But probably not. It's more likely he'll say, "Kay, you look so much better than you did the last time I saw you. Merry Christmas!" and I will be overwhelmed with the folly of (a) looking good and (b) offering to make a huge dinner.

You wouldn't believe what else I thought of doing...I thought of using the silverplated flatware that I haven't used since since the 1990s. It is clean and shiny now, but who knows? It might need to be polished after exposure to contaminants like orange juice, cranberries, and who-knows-what-all.

But I digress again, and would love to digress myself right out of the whole turkey dinner idea, but I can't. I must get on with my list-making...first on the list: get rid of everything I own which is of no use whatsoever, then clean and tidy whatever is left.

The moral of this story is: be careful what you offer to do, because you just might find yourself doing it.

Linking with Our World Tuesday