12 Months of Lent: Championing My To-Do List, Week 3, A Mini-Breakdown & Christmas

Firstly, I'd like to report that I successfully crossed off every single to-do from last Sunday's marathon of a list. Every. Single. One. When has this ever happened to me before? Probably never—it was awesome (and a little exhausting).

Secondly, as far as my week 3 progress report goes, I fared pretty well. I hit my 4 yoga classes, I meditated every day, I practiced yoga nidra twice, ran twice, cooked 2 meals, didn't use my credit card, but...this is where I failed—I cheated on my no sweets rule. Dammit. It was a crazy day at work, a co-worker brought in a huge batch of my favorite kind of cookie ever (oatmeal butterscotch, omg), and...I just couldn't resist. So close—yet again—but still, I was feeling good. I was conquering the Christmas season.

And then, just like that, I had a mini-breakdown. I had left finishing up Grammy's family history book until the last minute (of course) but luckily the Staples gods were on my side and when I went to have it printed and bound, they were super accommodating and said they could do it right then and there for me. Perfect. No last minute Christmas Eve scrambling for me, phew.

But then the awesome guy I was working with had to help someone else and I got stuck with a lady who really couldn't have cared less about helping me put together a book for my 92-year-old grandmother, and suddenly things changed to "oh, we can't do this for you now, you'll have to come back tomorrow". Hello mini-meltdown.

It was fine though, I knew we had time to swing by the next day before heading down to the Cape, but it definitely threw me into the cranky-Christmas-sucks-stressed-out mood I had successfully avoided until that point. F. And then it certainly didn't help that after leaving Staples, Trader Joes was out of the cat litter I had driven there specifically to get. The mini-meltdown continued on until I yoga-nidraed myself out of it (but it did resurface a bit when I was bleary-eyed and up past midnight wrapping presents).

But everything ended up being fine of course, and I hope I don't sound too whiny—believe me, I'm counting my blessings that those were my biggest problems. I had a great time on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with both sides of my family, the book turned out perfect (it made almost every member of my family cry), and I got one of my all-time favorite Christmas presents (which may or may not be the theme of my January lent—stay tuned).

Mini-breakdown aside, it's been a relatively low-stress holiday season and I'm almost to the finish line of surviving it. One holiday to go and I'm in the clear. Woo-hoo!