where are your gloves and your helmet?

All the masks are in the mail, with the last one to go out currently sitting in my mailbox waiting for today's letter carrier to pick it up and start it on its way to Wisconsin. Yesterday's two were priority mail, so even though I'm currently waiting for their tracking numbers to show up in the click-n-ship interface, they're slated to arrive in Michigan and Queens before the 25th. (If I am very lucky the Queens ones will arrive before the end of Hanukkah but with the way things are postally I cannot be sure of that.) The ones going to Maine are due to arrive sometime today, although the tracking interface hasn't been updated since the 14th. Same deal for the one to my mother. The ones going to Virginia are due to arrive tomorrow but reached the Richmond distro center this morning around 3 AM so who knows. The ones to Boston and Washington State are already delivered.

The Christmas card to my sister and her kids is in the mailbox with today's mask package. The gifts I ordered for her kids on Redbubble and Etsy have mostly arrived at my parents'. The ones I ordered from Target arrived at her place. Dad's gift was shipped, although I should probably order him one more 'cos Mom suggested it and I may be able to get it to him on time.

I should package up that necklace and send it to my mom. I'd been considering it even though my sister and I already bought her something like a month ago.

I have a Christmas gift for a friend in New Hampshire but there's the slight problem of getting the thing packaged and sent as it's a fairly large box and I don't have the shipping packaging for it, much to my sorrow. I'll apologize to her later. Also I'll give her the silver-filled and turquoise necklace I made her a while back, it's got a central piece that's a bit tricky to fit in a standard necklace box. I may buy myself a little time by sending her something from potatoparcel.com if they can deliver by Christmas, because nothing makes a Christmas splash quite like receiving your holiday message engraved on a potato.

Made a contribution to the Boston Globe's Globe Santa fund this year. Soon as my new bank card arrives (some knob stole my number and used it on Priceline) I'll make another one. Probably one to the Home for Little Wanderers, too, and just to be fair, make a donation to Masbia back in New York.

I'll call my other family members if it's feasible to do so (Dad has seven living brothers and sisters, virtually all of whom are married and have kids, many of whom have kids of their own) this weekend, since in non-plague years the weekend before Christmas is the weekend when Dad's family celebrates Family Christmas. This allows the individual siblings and niblings* to go to their spouses' families or have Christmas at home with their own families as they choose.

Think I've got everything more or less settled. I might actually be able to see about working on learning to sew knit fabric now.