1:55 a.m. The crunch is on. The week is upon us. Today seemed awfully short -- at this rate tomorrow is going to be the shortest day of the year. Too many things to do.

Too much has been promised ...

Logically, I know if I could just give up on certain over-ambitious items on my list -- does anybody really care if I iron all my ribbons? -- if I could just cross stuff off undone, then the merry-go-round will stop and I won't go insane.

But that's not what they want from us -- no. They want us to suffer. For every single person who's keeping this holiday in her own way, there is a TV commercial that speaks directly and pulls on that one ragged heartstring and unravels the whole, entire warm cozy comforter and you feel exposed, vulnerable, troubled.

For me, it's the Lexus commercial ... different vignettes of people being surprised with a really expensive gift. I'd love to be able to give someone a car. My bonus hasn't arrived yet -- has yours?

And then there's the one with the really stupid guy trying to buy something for his equally stupid girlfriend and he braves the horrors of shopping among real people who are, each of them ... ugh. Old People.

Old foreign person trying to sell him a diamond panther pin. Old lady with perfume trying to spray him in the face. Poor young stupid boy. I forget the last couple of people, but believe me -- they, too, were Old, Old, Old.

Our guy, of course, goes to his handy trusty computer, fires up his sub-par modem, and orders a bit of crap for the girl from, get this: The Internet. It's a cheap-o heart necklace -- the kind that is advertised in every Sunday supplement magazine in every city in the world since the beginning of time ... but they got off easy because they have their gems without having to deal with Old People.

I'm going to fall off my chair in a rage -- I can feel it coming. No matter what the topic, I will begin to rant. These days are too short to get anything done. The big full moon tomorrow was nothing more than another email spam scam. Terrorists are massing on the Canadian border, planning to blow up the Seattle needle at midnight.

I've got too much work to do here -- deadline work and holiday merriment and by God, I'm going to get it all done and ...

I've really got to calm down. Igor is hiding. He calls this pre-panic. He tries really hard not to make any new messes -- but he fails. Just the other day he wrecked my fluffy apricot butter presentation by actually trying to use it before company came.

Oh! The work I have! The tasks. The list. And every time I think about it, I remember something else. And the toilet seems to have sprung a leak. That's not good.

I will become deathly calm in a few days. It's just that right now, right this minute, I must face that fact that everything will not get done. My plans were too Martha. I am too old. I am one of the Old People! I need a dot.com to calm me down.

Maybe buy more time dot.com? Or bag o' money dot.com? Or sleep-in-a-tube dot.com? How about plumbers who show up dot.com -- but now I'm just being silly.