Christmas is nearly on the doorstep, or the roof, ready to bring oodles of joy into your house. Joy is all well and good I've always thought, but it's the wrapped presents under the tree that make your heart thump in anticipation. At our house, first thing, there's sticky buns for breakfast (just a modicum of calories, so don't fret), then it's into the living room or den to rip into beautifully wrapped presents, over in three seconds, and here it took at least 10 minutes to make each look perfect. I know, I know, you can't help yourself.

Can you believe it -- Thanksgiving is just round the corner. Of course I was fast off the mark and changed out Halloween for Thanksgiving decorations November 1st. Because of the wicked decoration house goblin you never find every single ghost or witch hat or black cat pillow.

If you are curious about Bad Kicker, I'm referring to that poor person who missed two field goals for the 49ers on Sunday (versus the Browns), the final one this poor person missed should have been the game winner-kicked in the very last second. Now, all of you know football is a team sport, and so I wonder how did everyone act when the poor person slunk in the facility on Monday morning?

We've now gotten through the first week of the NFL football season. Those of you who happen to care about football, the Jets were so excited — they'd built up the team, great defense and they signed Aaron Rodgers from Green Bay, a veteran and a Super Bowl quarterback, needless to say, for very big bucks. Excitement filled the air, fans filled the stadium Monday night, everyone was excited over the moon.

As many of you know, my husband and I were in Maui, five miles north of Lahaina, when the huge fire hit. The winds were incredible, the smoke so black it was night. We'd been in Lahaina, our favorite town on Maui, on both Sunday and Monday, out on a dinner cruise from Lahaina harbor and back some six hours before the devastation.

The amazing 4th of July is now in the rearview. I won't forget the incredible fireworks we saw (Sausalito, Oakland and San Francisco) -- always awesome. The cities compete to see who can light the sky up with the most dramatic displays.

Organized chaos is just around the corner, leaving this Saturday for the OBX (The Outer Banks, N.C.) for our yearly family reunion with 40 relatives, maybe more this year since people keep insisting on procreating and so the list gets longer and longer and there's so much laughter and eating and ping pong and movies and yelling kids all you can do is go shopping.

Happy May: Lots of fun things this month: Cinco de Mayo, Mother's Day, Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day - lots of celebrations and gratefulness and maybe even some margaritas or Diet Snapple with a shot of Grey Goose.

Yep, that's right, we're calling it Super Bloom — what with all the rain in California, the flowers and wildflowers are going nuts, bursting out of their leaves or buds, depending on how persnickety you are, painting the hills red and blue but not black, thankfully.

We go from flowers and chocolates and mushy Valentine's Day cards (thank you, Hallmark) to green beer and parades and drunken orgies for St. Pat's Day on the 17th. Lots of folks visit Savannah for St. Pat's Day and believe me, it's a huge deal. Talk about wild parties and drinking your brains out, Savannah beats out Boston as the place to be and yes, been there, done that. You know, if you don't look, you really don't taste the green in the beer, like drinking non-fat milk, if you don't look at it, it tastes the same.