It's Christmas, dang it.

We're back to the timeless debate about whose family gets to see most of us over the holidays, and how on earth do you squeeze in three families, plus the extended families (or do we?) into four days? Oh, with eight-hour drives in there.

Our first plan was priceless: Quit our jobs, then spend all the time we wanted hanging out at home. Then, we gazed over to our mortgage payment booklet and sighed and went back to the drawing board, hoping the lottery numbers would work out for us someday (that is, that someday when we start playing the lottery. That's just details).

Next was more feasible: Drive Thursday night, stay at my dad's on Friday, his mom's on Saturday, my mom's on Sunday, drive back Monday.

But wait -- that leaves the inevitable Christmas Monday morning open. I was thinking "Let's take the dog to Wisconsin and pout about having to go back to work and talk about how much it's going to hurt to take down all the holiday decorations."

He was thinking "Let's drive three hours south, after just having driven said three hours to see your mom, stay for two hours with my extended family, and then make the eight-hour drive from there to Oshkosh."

The dog whimpered. I whimpered. Eight hours. Plus three. That's 11 hours in the car. In one day. The lack of time is already bad enough, as it's practically a "AW! Merry-Christmas-Thanks-for-the-gift-We-have-to-go-Bye" affair.

Back to plan C. Only we don't have a plan C; that's our problem.

I know, I know ... Compromise, compromise. Ugh. It's Christmas, dangit. This is supposed to be fun. "RIGHT? AREN'T WE ALL HAVING FUN," I say through gritted teeth.