AHS

It must be the holiday season starting up, but lately I have the uncharacteristic urge to tackle serious cleaning projects. Rather early in my marriage, my husband diagnosed me with AHS. He claims it is a disease shared by my mother and my sisters. Accardi Holiday Syndrome presents the following symptoms:
---the need to have an immaculately clean home, one that will pass the dreaded MOM inspection
---the need to decorate every room in the house, tastefully
---the need to produce a bakery shop full of pastries, Italian cookies, pies
---the need to cook all the traditional dishes of our childhood, including the marshmallow and sweet potato casserole, stuffing with Italian sausage & pignoli nuts, and broccoli with roasted garlic
---the tendency to walk around with a pocketed apron filled with tools, rags and cleansers and smelling of Murphy's Oil Soap
---the tendency to walk around muttering things like "If I paint the spare room tonight, will the paint dry by morning?" or worse, from a husband's point of view, " if I get Bill to paint the spare room..."
---the tendency to shop for the most unusual and most tailored-to-the-person gifts possible
---the need to wrap all gifts so that the seams match, rather like perfectly installed wallpaper
---and, finally, the need to fill the house with people who mess everything up and start the cycle all over again.

So ... if I don't post as often as usual between now and the New Year, know that I will return to my regular pace when the holidays end with our Jan 10 wedding anniversary and I have resumed my normal life, preferring some quiet stitching to obsessive compulsive channeling of Martha Stewart. By the way, please note, AHS predates Martha Stewart by a decade or two! Martha is really channeling my mother!