I took advantage of a sale on wrapping paper and tape today, and once again it occurred to me that it’s time for me to start doing some shopping. I haven’t made any more progress than I had last week at this time. This is not good.

One thing I have to do every year is get that holiday gift list started. Then I have to find a place to hide the list. It was great when all my kids were little and couldn’t read yet. I could leave that list in plain sight, and no one was the wiser. Then I had a year or two when I could write the list in cursive and leave it around. But now all my kids can read, and two out of three of them can read cursive (he’ll be learning it this year).

I thought about writing my list in Spanish, but there are too many Spanish dictionaries and textbooks around here from my language-teaching days, and my kids are nothing if not resourceful.

My planner is usually open on my desk, and while I doubt that anyone looks in there for anything, there’s always a first time.

All the kids know the password to my computer, and so does my husband. As the resident Tech Genius, he has to know my password–otherwise, he can’t fix it when things don’t work right. So keeping the list on the computer won’t do the job. Same goes for my iTouch. Even though I threaten them with the loss of home-cooked meals and clean laundry if they touch it, they still do, and they’re not shy about leaving me messages on there that read “Hi mom I’m on your iPod so yeah” (someone in this house needs to brush up on capitalization and punctuation, I think!)

I’m quickly running out of options, and I really need to get started on my list and then my shopping. Maybe I’ll pick up a copy of a magazine that specializes in vegetarian cuisine, and keep my list stashed in there. No way would my kids think to look there for my list!

See you Monday with a whole new batch of Weird Holidays–plus the start of “Tech Week” here at Ultimate Coupons.  Each day, a different category of technology gifts will be highlighted, with the greatest coupons–of course!