Okay, so I am a little behind, and Black Friday is almost over. [Edit: I’m clicking through on Saturday and still finding the deals active.] But geez! I’d think TWO adults with five children would be easier than ONE adult with five children, but actually it is not turning out to be. We did get the tree up, though, and decorated (with children’s help, so it was an Excedrin Afternoon), and I put lights on a tree outside, and also I ate a lot of leftover pumpkin cheesecake, so I guess it was a productive day after all.

I like to give books as gifts for many reasons. Actually, I’m not going to waste time talking about those reasons, I’m just going to list some of the books that look like good gifts from the Amazon.com sale. Get $25 or more of them and the shipping is free.

(image from Amazon.com)

Castle, $8 down from $20. We have this ourselves, and I also have one on the gift shelf for the next birthday party one of the kids gets invited to. It’s an AMAZING pop-up book: I’m not even interested in knights and castles but I’ve looked through it several times.

(image from Amazon.com)

The Mitford Bedside Companion, $11 down from $27. My mom says she finds the Mitford books very soothing—good, happy, mild reading. I might get this for my mother-in-law, since she likes that kind of book.

(image from Amazon.com)

America at Home, $16 down from $40. Photography books make great gifts, and they’re fun to pass around during awkward family gatherings. Keeps the conversation going. This one looks like the heart-warming kind you could give to ANYONE.

(image from Amazon.com)

New York Vertigo, $16 down from $40, an EDGIER coffee table book than America at Home. Apparently this one will make you dizzy: the description says the photographer “scaled walls and scoured rooftops”—or something like that, I’ve lost the page and don’t feel like double-checking.

(image from Amazon.com)

Return to Fairyopolis, $8 down from $20. Ooooooooooooo, I want this myself. (If the child you’re buying it for hasn’t read Fairyopolis, you can get it for $13.50, so that’s both books for close to $20.)

(image from Amazon.com)

The Annotated Secret Garden, $14 down from $35. This would be great for anyone who loved The Secret Garden as a child. Paul has The Annotated Alice (same idea, but for Alice in Wonderland) and it’s a beautiful gift-book-looking book.

(image from Amazon.com)

Pirateology: Guidebook and Model Set, $7 down from $18. I wish my kids would get into these “ology” books, because they really appeal to me.

These deals are just for today, it looks like, so if you miss them—well, that’s what you get for spending QUALITY TIME with your FAMILY. [Edit: The deals are still working today, Saturday, in the morning.]

Do you realize it is, like, four weeks until the winter holidays? Ha ha, like I know anything about any winter holiday except the one we celebrate in our house (Secular Christmas). But they’re, um, at approximately the same time of year, right? And so all of us can unite in our common panicky feeling, because The Holiday is coming soon for all of us?

I find the panicky feeling MOSTLY pleasant, because I enjoy shopping and I enjoy buying gifts. I spend kind of a lot of time doing it, and feel disappointed when I’m done. I’m afraid this means a lot of SHOPPING TALK around here in the near future—but fortunately, only about four weeks of it! Because there are only about four weeks left! No, sorry, don’t panic!

I have several general suggestions to start with. I do almost all of my shopping at Amazon.com, so I’m afraid the tips are mostly SKEWED in that direction.

1. Visit or subscribe to Want Not. Mir keeps track of the deals and who’s got free shipping and who’s got coupons. I’ve gotten so many good buys because of her.

2. Put anything you’re considering buying at Amazon.com into your shopping cart (or the “saved items” area of the shopping cart). Whenever you go to your cart, it’ll let you know which things have gone up or down in price since the last time you went to your cart. This has gotten me some unexpected good deals: sometimes the price of something drops very low for a day or two and I never would have noticed if it hadn’t been in my cart.

3. A bunch of Amazon.com items (certain books! certain kitchen items! certain other assorted things! there is no way to predict it!) qualify for a “4-for-the-price-of-3” discount: mix-and-match any four of these items and you’ll get the cheapest one free. Well, that means you want to be a little careful not to order items costing $20, $20, $20, and $4, because you’ll get the $4 one free. Furthermore, if you are ordering EIGHT items that all qualify, you’ll get the cheapest TWO free: if you’ve got items costing $20, $20, $20, $20, $10, $10, $10, $10, you’ll get two $10 items free. But if you place two separate orders, one for the $20 items and one for the $10 items, you’ll get one $20 and one $10 free. So LOOK SHARP, people!

4. Many Amazon.com items qualify for free shipping if you have an order totaling more than $25. So, you know, don’t place a $22.47 order and pay $12 shipping on it. Depending on how much shopping I need to do, I might place an order every time I hit the $25 mark—or I might let it pile up so I don’t get stranded at the end with a small order that I can’t get to $25 without adding, say, four pounds of chocolate-covered dried cherries. Just for example.

5. Also, the free shipping option can be slowwwwwwwwww. Like, 2 weeks slow. So it’s a good idea to order early if, like me, you hate paying for shipping.

There. I had one more Amazon.com tip, but I’ve forgotten it. If I remember it, I’ll mention it in one of the next million shopping posts.

Also, this morning I got an email from The Land of Nod, which is Crate & Barrel’s kid store. They have a free shipping deal through Monday on all non-furniture items: use code RUDOLPH. A lot of their stuff is not in my price range ($30 for a “stocking stuffer”?), but I’m planning to sort through anyway. It’s hard to resist free shipping, and this personalized ornament would be a cute teacher gift, and even I like playing with these six puzzles in one puzzles. Here are the gifts under $10 and here are the gifts $10-25, and here are the gifts $25-50. (But watch out: you can buy this Melissa and Doug birthday cake toy from The Land of Nod for $24.95, or you can buy it from Amazon.com for $11.99.)

Urk, I am so full. We had dinner at my parents’ house. They provided turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, french-cut beans, stuffing, cranberry sauce, rolls, drinks, cherry pie, ice cream, and cookies. We provided seven people and a Jell-O salad.

Does this seem FAIR? Does this seem RIGHT? We breeze in with our bowl of Jell-O, leap on the feast like poorly-trained puppies, and then breeze off to meet the bedtime deadline while my parents hobble into the kitchen to manage the mountains of dishes and molehills of leftovers, dry-swallowing Excedrin and wondering if four weeks is enough time to prepare for another holiday dinner with us.

Next year maybe we should try a lunchtime Thanksgiving rather than a suppertime Thanksgiving. After we eat, Paul could take the kids outside to run off some of that, um, youthful energy, while I help in the kitchen by nibbling up the leftovers so they don’t have to be put away. Or maybe we should have Thanksgiving dinner after the kids are in bed. Or after they’ve left home.

I made the Chocolate-Crusted Pumpkin Cheesecake today. I make it every year. I made it this year even though my parents said not to bring dessert because they were making a cherry pie. I won’t bring it, but I still made it. Now the whole PAN can be leftovers!

Tomorrow I’ll make the cranberry-raspberry Jell-O salad. Mmmmmmm.

Hey, listen. Linda and I are going to be doing gift-idea posts over at Milk and Cookies, and I also plan to pass along good deals here on this blog. But what I need to know is, what price range are we talking about? I don’t want to give you a bunch of $10 deals if you think of those as stocking stuffers, but I don’t want to discourage people by talking too much about $100 deals. What are you planning to spend this year for your sweetheart? for each kid? for your parents? for your in-laws? for your friends? $10? $20? $50? $100? As little as possible? If you feel shy talking about money (I always feel shy talking about money), you can go anonymous.

I need to make a public apology. I said some things about steel-cut oats that were neither nice nor fair. I believe I said “YUCK.” Considering I’d tasted them plain, that was as unfair as cooking up a batch of plain spaghetti noodles and declaring them “bland.” I hadn’t yet seen the beauty of steel-cut oats, which lies in their ability to convey other, more delicious substances to the mouth in a Trojan Horse of health and goodness and fiber.

This morning I tried The New Girl‘s suggestion: salt, brown sugar, cinnamon, and milk. And for the first time in my life, I ate an entire serving of oatmeal. Serious!

First I followed the package instructions and brought 1-1/2 cups of water to a boil (I added salt because The New Girl said to—I just went shake-shake-shake, like when salting vegetable water), then added 1/4 cup steel-cut oats. I let them simmer uncovered for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then I added….well, I added a lot of brown sugar. I didn’t measure, because I find that measuring sugar makes me feel bad. But looking at the brown sugar baggie, which used to have 1/4 cup sugar in it, I’d estimate I used well over a tablespoon, and probably closer to 2 tablespoons. SHUT UP! I ate OATMEAL!

Then I added a hearty shaking from the cinnamon-sugar shaker, which I make heavy on the cinnamon but it also includes sugar, so, um, more sugar into the oatmeal. And then I put in a slosh of whole milk.

And it was YUM. I still encountered a few areas of Unpleasant Gooeyness, but not many. And now I feel all energized and cheery from all the sugar whole-grain oats!

I think giveaways are so fun. But I get all CAUGHT UP in the excitement of doing one, and then afterward I think, “Yes, but I could have kept that for MYSELF.” I’m doing a giveaway at Milk and Cookies for a $10 Barnes & Noble gift card. That would be a nice teacher gift. If someone named “Thistle” wins it, you’ll know I had a change of heart about giving it away.

Would you indulge me in a brief panicky rant? I’m getting stressed/excited about gift season. There are so many DEALS to wade through. There are so many DECISIONS to make. I think, “YES, I’ll do THAT!” and I get halfway through the order process—and oh, if I spend another $10 I’ll get a $20 gift card for free. Well, that’s worth it. Except I can’t find anything that’s about $10. Well, okay, so here’s something that’s $15: it’s still like saving $5 and getting the $15 item for free. Well, if I can find a use for the gift card. Then: oh, if I add another $5 I’ll get free shipping, and shipping is $11.95 so that’s definitely worth it. Except I can’t find anything that’s about $5. ACK.

I am trying to COOL DOWN and not stress so much. I’ve read a few articles lately that advise spending more time with family and friends instead of spending money, but time is in short supply as well. And when those articles say “time,” they often seem to be selling accessories: special popcorn bowls, special DVDs, special household decorations, special dishes, special recipes with brand ingredients. I mistrust their motivations, even if their message is a good one.

We tried to lower the stress by getting a Wii as a family gift (I can’t believe Amazon still has them in stock, but as Paul said, Nintendo would be pretty dim if they continued their fake shortage into the holiday season), so technically the kids’ gifts are all taken care of, but Paul and I keep seeing things that would be SO GREAT for one kid or another kid, so that adds stress after all: do we buy more, or do we stick to our plan? What if one of us is more worried about money than the other of us? What if one of us thought the arrangement was that the Wii would also be OUR gifts, and the other of us didn’t think that was part of the arrangement at all and is completely dismissive of that idea?

Plus, the stockings! Last year, three-fifths of the kids were still too young to care, so it was no big deal. This year only one-fifth is too young to care, so if I find a good stocking stuffer for $1, that’s suddenly $4 for only one teeny thing in the toe of each stocking. This could add up.

And the in-laws. GEEZ, the in-laws. Every year I decide I’m NOT buying my father-in-law ANYTHING, that’s IT, forGET it! He never sends us anything or even acknowledges receiving our gifts, so why keep doing it? But then I relent: I think that just because HE’S an ass doesn’t mean I need to change MY behavior, and I think it’s right to get my children’s grandfather a present at the holidays. This year, though, I might seriously be done. I look at our finances, and it seems to me that “present for absentee ingrate” might rank lower than “braces for eldest child” or “heating bill.” Or even lower than “games for the Wii.”

I think I’m just going to do gift cards for my sister-in-law and mother-in-law. I get the feeling I miss the mark every year with their gifts, and it’s getting less important to me for them to think I spent time and thought on them, so I’m thinking gift cards would make us all happier.

Thank you for allowing this panicky interlude. Feel free to do a little panic-commenting if you want: it really does make a person feel better.

Last night Paul and I were sitting side-by-side at our computers, and he said, “GEEZ, there is A-1 sauce all OVER my monitor!” And I said, “?” and he said, “Don’t Twitter that.” And then I said, “?” and he said “Don’t Twitter THAT, either.” So I didn’t.

What I did about the Rob situation (the one where he said he’d completed two out of three in-class writing sessions without yet choosing a SUBJECT) is first I helped him choose a topic, and then I told him to tell his teacher what was going on. My mom’s a teacher and I grew up hearing the teacher’s point of view, so now I’m over-sensitized to it to the point where I don’t even want to COMMUNICATE with the teacher in case I accidentally imply that I think my child’s inborn flaws are her fault.

And in this case, this is an inborn flaw of Rob’s I’ve been struggling unsuccessfully with for YEARS: he’ll sit there trying to think of “the perfect thing,” and so he doesn’t think of anything, and the longer he thinks about it the less perfect all the options seem. His first grade teacher mentioned that he would sit during Journal Time getting increasingly stressed and writing nothing, so he and I worked for the entire school year on “just writing what comes into your head, rather than Questing For Perfection.” We made some progress at the time, but when we worked on it again this past summer (I work on it with him each summer, to keep from losing ground) he was all Attitude about it, writing stream-of-consciousness stuff including all the words to the song “B-I-N-G-O” and the numbers 1 to 100, so I kind of threw in the towel and figured it’s good he’s good at math.

Let’s see, where was I? Oh, yes: so I told him to tell his teacher he hadn’t yet started on the assignment he was supposed to have 2/3rds completed. For one thing, I couldn’t think of a way of telling his teacher myself. For another thing, this is the kind of problem he needs to work on NOW, so that maybe he won’t flunk a college history final because he’s too shy to go up to the teacher and say, “Hey, I don’t understand what you mean by that essay question,” which I’m not saying I know anything about but GEEZ why didn’t I just ASK? I mean, teachers don’t BITE.

He was really nervous about telling his teacher, but I was all “Do as I say, not as I do,” and so he did it, and he came home from school saying he was SO RELIEVED. His teacher apparently said, “Okay,” and then she checked all 20 kids’ work and found that Rob was not the only one who was a little behind, and so she’s giving everyone an extra 45-minute writing session, and also Rob said in one session he got everything done up through the rough draft, so all he has to do is the final draft. Woot. And I can’t donate blood this month because I sweated out too much of it over this.