Survival Strategies for the Holidays
By Barbara Dan
()
About this ebook
Recapture the joy of Christmas with family and friends. Working Moms and Dads are really strapped for quality time with family. Here are methods that will help you take better care of yourself and use your time for what really counts. Shopping tips, time management, fun gift ideas, 30 day menu plan and mouth watering recipes that make every day festive, without turning you into a kitchen slave.
Barbara Dan
First published in her teens, Barbara Dan admits to enjoying a variation of life experiences, including working as an actress, model, night club comedienne, comedy writer, puppeteer, theatrical producer in Hollywood, screenwriter, publicist, real estate saleswoman, hands-on-builder of houses, escrow officer, co-teacher of couples communication workshops with her late husband, family counselor John Dan. Other hats she has worn include publisher, editor, adjunct college professor, and—by far her biggest joy and challenge—being mother to four grown children and grandma to five very lively grandchildren and recently to three great-grandchildren. Hobbies: gardening, cooking, oil painting, quilting. She is a voracious reader on many subjects, loves to haunt old graveyards and historic sites. Many of her characters are inspired by family genaeology charts! But the most outrageous ones come straight from her overactive imagination. Her historical western, SILENT ANGEL, won the Colorado Romance Writers' award for Best Historical Novel (1992). She is a member of Western Writers of America and Women Writing the West. Many of her books are available in paperback as well as eBook. Even though she has degrees in Theatre Arts and Advanced Accounting, and an M.A. in Humanities (emphasis: literature) from Cal State University, she insists that real life is far better preparation for writing than academia! (A good sense of humor also helps.)
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Survival Strategies for the Holidays - Barbara Dan
Survival Strategies
for the Holidays
by
Barbara Dan
Copyright © 2012 by Barbara Dan
–
www.barbaradan@yahoo.com
–
Published 2012 by Barbara Dan
on Smashwords
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Warning and Disclaimer: This book is designed to help people create their own time- and energy-saving methods of dealing with holiday stress. It is sold with the understanding that the author is not engaged in rendering legal, medical, professional or dietary advice. The author makes no claim to being a professional dietician or an authority in the area of cooking. All recipes contained herein are shared from the author’s personal files solely for the purpose of comparison and comment. The reader is encouraged to consult any of the numerous cookbooks currently available to develop his or her own repertoire of culinary favorites. Moreover, while the author has realized substantial savings by purchasing in bulk, she makes no guarantees as to the exact savings any individual reader may realize as a result of reading this book.
The purpose of this book is to educate and entertain. Neither the author nor publisher shall have any liability or responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly, by the information contained in this book. If you do not wish to be bound by the above, you may return this book to the publisher for a full refund.
Survival Strategies
for the Holidays
by
Barbara Dan
Preface
Oh, no!
I hear someone gasp. Is Christmas creeping up on us again?
Before you panic, let me reassure you that Survival Strategies for the Holidays has plenty of practical, money-saving, fun tips to help you recapture the true meaning of Christmas without going broke or falling over in a state of exhaustion. Christmas is meant to be FUN, remember?
Oh, but you’ve never met my family,
you say. That’s true, but please don’t write off your chances just yet for having the best Christmas (or Hanukah) ever. My strategies are designed to help you form a cooperative team comprised of those closest to you—family, friends, a jolly neighbor or two—to help all of you form strategies that suit your common goals. This year don’t go it alone. Otherwise you may find yourself once again slaving and struggling, while everyone else sits back, expecting you to pull off a miracle all by yourself.
I believe in miracles, but I’ve also learned that a lot of them occur because people come together and work for a common cause.
Romans 12:1 reminds us not to be squeezed into conformity to the world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. And what better time of year than Christmas to get our priorities straight and rediscover the joys of sharing with family and friends.
So forget the rat race. If the busyness of the season intimidates you, teamwork is just the cure you need! Try a brand new approach.
To start you off in the right direction, select a few people you might like to work with—and play with—over the holidays. Invite their input and help. Believe me, when you share the work and good fellowship with a few adults and maybe some eager-beaver kids, it’ll be easy to make this your best Christmas ever!
Stay tuned. Here’s how I got unstuck
from past mistaken ideas.
Chapter 1
Caught in the Undertow of Activity?
Some smart aleck put forth the adage that when you need something done, ask someone whose schedule of tasks already would choke a horse. The supposed wisdom behind this astonishingly insensitive theory is that this hyper-busy individual must know the secret of how to handle stress, work like a horse, and deliver on time.
The assumption behind this kind of thinking is that anyone carrying such a load of responsibility must have agreed to it and gotten involved in all this busyness because they wanted to. And because they actually enjoy being under constant pressure.
Oh, really! In my experience such overburdened people just haven’t learned to say No!
Their lives are crammed with shoulds
and oughts.
Everyone wants a piece of their time. At first this tends to flatter, but as the list of demands piles up, resentment and anger begin to seethe beneath that perky but frenzied little smile. Rescuers and nurturers are particularly prone to getting in over their heads. (You know who you are! And welcome to the Club!)
The solution is not to blow your cork finally, or throw up your hands and walk out. The problem is that in needing to be needed, you have allowed yourself to take on more and more responsibility for other people. Pretty soon members of the family, intimidated by this dynamo of talent you have become, just settle back and let you take on the world alone. After all, you do it so much better than they do—right?
No wonder you’re exhausted. And it isn’t long before you begin to feel unappreciated. (Actually, your family probably resents you for taking over and shutting them out, as much as you chafe over the fact that they have slowly dropped out of helping!) It’s a vicious cycle, and by November 1st every year, you are really dreading Christmas. You feel trapped. It’s fun for everyone but you. You wish you could just book a cruise—alone—and escape everything!
Only you can’t. The budget’s stretched, you never were a quitter, and so you grit your teeth and brace yourself for another marathon of jolly Christmas cheer.
How many times have you asked yourself, Why ‘do’ Christmas, if it has become such an emotional, physical and fiscal drain? Certainly what you’ve experienced as a frazzled Mom or Dad has little to do with the
peace on earth to men of good will" that the birth of Christ was intended to usher in. No wonder the love and joy of Christ seem buried beneath the tinsel and half-baked frenzy of shopping, endless long lines, office parties, and all the rest of the misery we associate with the tyranny of commercialized holiday ritual.
How do we do it all—at least the important stuff
—without having a coronary?
First, we need to recognize our limitations and time constraints. Prioritize. Taking on more than you can comfortably handle is stressful, and stress is a real killer. Consider the medical statistics. Women who double as homemakers and bread-winners have finally gained near-equality for their male counterparts. Yes, by trying to do it all at the same time, women have increased their risk of heart attack and premature death. It is also not surprising that both sexes experience chronic depression, due to the added pressure of performing and living up to the expectations of co-workers, family members, and friends during the