The big day is tomorrow, sort of, maybe...

I can't sleep. After several hours of not being able to sleep, I get up and try to do something quiet. If I had the place to myself, I would just watch some TV until such time as I feel like trying to roll over and sleep again. But I don't have the place to myself, so it is either try to be quite in bed and hope that I will fall asleep again, or get up and try to find something quiet to do someplace else in the house.

And for a bit I tried to knit, but as it turns out this early in the morning I tend to make mistakes, and I have now spent more time trying to correct those mistakes than I have spent actually making progress on the piece.

I have run out of yarn. I have new yarn that I thought matched, but now that I have it on the machine I can see a slight difference between the old yarn and the new yarn. Maybe no one else will notice. Before I put it on the machine, it looked the same. Maybe on the finished piece it will look more the same? Anyway, it would be difficult to find any yarn that matched more than this one. I don't know what else to do except keep knitting with what I have.

I am not going to finish this on time anyway. I don't even know why I am still working on it.

And I still have to finish the scarf for Miss Allergies today. I still have several hours of work to do on that. Today I also have to make and wrap a fruit basket.

Other than that, J's gift is wrapped, R's gift is wrapped, and the gift for another friend is wrapped. The gift I will probably give for the official gift exchange is now painted and mostly dry, though it still smells. I will wait a bit more before I wrap that, and I will find something else to take and wrap, just in case I am talked out of giving this particular gift, as homemade gifts are not encouraged in the official exchange.

Anyway, all this stuff needs to be done before about one o'clock tomorrow. At least, I think that is when it needs to be done, but I can't get a straight answer on the exact plan for tomorrow.

In most of the years that this little group has exchanged gifts, we have gone to dinner as usual and then given each other gifts after dinner. Once in a while, this doesn't work out for everyone, as sometimes someone is sick or out of town or something. So maybe the rest of us go on as usual, and the missing person gets their gifts later, maybe at the New Year's Eve party. That has always seemed a bit awkward to me, to give gifts to one or two friends while the rest of the group is there, and the rest of the group isn't part of the gift exchange. Just sort of screams, yes, we are all friends, but I don't care enough about the rest of you to get you a gift. So I would prefer not to give anyone a gift during the meeting or during the New Year's Eve party or anything like that.

So exchanging gifts apart from the rest of the group is best, and we would usually do that after dinner. Except that this year J and R probably won't go to dinner with us, since they have invited the whole group to their place later that evening, and they probably just won't have time for dinner with us.

So, I need to know what we are doing. After much discussion on the subject earlier, we did confirm that the seven of us would be exchanging gifts this year, though if things do not get better, it might just have to be an exchange of cards next year. (I don't do cards, but that's another story.) So I am quite sure that we are all going to exchange gifts, I just don't know when and where. And I need to know that, so I wrote an email, and so far only one person has answered. She didn't really know, but she thought maybe we were just going to dinner as usual without J and R.

I don't like that idea.

It seems to me that we could all be at the meeting place early and exchange gifts before most of the other people get there. Or that we could stay at the place a little later than usual and exchange gifts after most everyone else has left. Or, since J and R have invited everyone over to their place anyway, maybe they can just invite a few of us to come over before everyone else and do it then. But it isn't my place, so I can't suggest that and invite myself over.

Anyway, one of the gifts that I am giving is a fruit basket, and it needs to be given tomorrow, and if necessary I will give it to the person at the meeting and in front of everyone else, cause fruit baskets just don't keep til later.

So I don't know what is going on, and I don't know what to do. And I don't suppose that it is really a big deal to put all this stuff in the car just in case, except that I'd worry about someone breaking into my car in an attempt to steal presents.

In addition to all of this stuff, I was planning to put a bunch more scarves in the car, so that the pilot can pick out one for me to give to his wife. I don't think that I have ever given her a scarf, and if we are probably not going to give gifts next year, I guess I should give her a scarf this year if she is ever going to get one. I just don't have a special one in mind for her. I just have a few that look good, and he can pick which one he thinks she would like best.

Anyway, I wish the rest of them would answer the damn email.