["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published January 18, 2026] 2026
Now that the holiday season is over, I am going to address a topic that will be familiar to many women: the fact that 95% of holiday planning, cooking, newspaper cancelling, hotel and airline reservation making, airport transit, pet sitting, gift buying, gift wrapping, gift returning, house preparing, guest bed making, post-guest laundry, Christmas card sending, and most especially contingency making is done by women.
And of course, your response is, "well, duh."
Yup, we re the ones who write the holiday letter, address the cards, stand in long post office lines, iron table cloths, create tablescapes, borrow chairs and china (and return it all again), query the daughters-in-laws as to what the grandkids might want this year, buy the tree, decorate the tree (except for the lights; even I have limits), undecorate the tree and put all those ornaments away, all the while creating massive food shopping and to-do lists.
The night before we left for L.A. for Christmas with family last month, my husband Olof pulled out his suitcase, dropped some clean clothes (that I had washed earlier) into it, and plunked it by the front door in seven minutes. "Well," he announced, "that's done!" and proceeded to go back to his computer where he had spent most of the holiday season when he wasn't watching sporting events.
While this is hardly a new event, I found myself feeling unduly surly. OK, downright hostile. Possibly the teeniest bit homicidal.
Now, I will confess that there are a lot of holiday chores that I listed above that I no longer have to do, partly because a daughter-in-law in L.A. hosts the Norman Rockwell Christmas at her home. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day have always been my two favorite days of the year and my daughter-in-law not only decorates her home like a shoot for Sunset Magazine but puts her incredible baking and cooking skills to work in creating two days of phenomenal meals. I feel so grateful that I just sit back and enjoy it although Olof and I do sign up for Christmas dinner cleanup.
Now, there are people who will query: Are women even asking husbands to help? In my daughter-in-law's case, she is clearly the mastermind of the whole operation but my son is definitely observed stoking the fireplace, tending bar, grilling all that meat for Christmas dinner, ordering gifts, and probably all manner of chores behind the scenes that I don't even see. Actually, it s fairly impressive.
My husband Olof, not so much. I honestly think it would be more work getting him to do any of this stuff than its worth. It's not that he can't follow directions - and he is a phenomenal dishwasher - but holiday planning is not his wheelhouse.
This past Christmas, it was the contingencies that broke me. Our beloved 16-year-old dog, Lily, has been dying in slow motion for months now. She is literally on her 25th life. We can't even imagine life without her so obviously want to have her with us for as long as her quality of life is good. But since last summer, she will have episodes when she just completely stops eating, in spite of heroic veterinary intervention and every test and med you can imagine. Our pharmaceutical arsenal includes, antibiotics, appetite stimulants, anti-emetics, anti-nauseas, antacids, anti-diarrheals, and multiple pricy prescription diets. Just when we think it's the end, she rallies and starts eating again. Well, sort of. Unfortunately, not enough to sustain her weight or more importantly, to regain any of the weight she has lost. So she is thin. And frail.
The hotel we stay at in L.A. does not take pets. Particularly incontinent pets. Our son's house already has their two dogs plus other relatives' visiting dogs. We could never leave her there. In the two weeks leading up to Christmas, Lily was in one of her major declines. What to do with her?
In a true Christmas miracle, one of the people who work at our veterinary office offered to take Lily to her home over Christmas. Would Lily be too sick to leave with the pet sitter? Die at the pet sitter's home? Contingencies needed to be made.
Meanwhile, the weather promised to be absolutely abysmal in L.A. for the three days we would be away, including and especially Christmas Eve morning. As much as eight inches of rain was forecast for L.A. with likely flooding and mudslides. There was no way I wanted to be on the road in Olof s (2004) BMW 325i which is approximately five inches off the ground. After we were hit by an impaired driver at 85 mph on New Years Eve in 2006, I don't even like to be on the freeway even in the sunniest of weather. So I booked a car service. An actual town car with a driver. Best money I ever spent.
Did my husband spend two nanoseconds worrying about any of this? When I wrung my hands about the weather forecast, he calmly (he is quintessentially calm) said the weather people always exaggerate. As for the dog, if it was her time, it was her time. I, meanwhile, was packing up Lily's bag with her multiple medications, assorted food selections, seat belt, bed, blanket, and the War and Peace of instructions, warnings, caveats, etc. (She is 90% deaf! You need to make eye contact to get her attention! She only has three teeth so make sure everything is in teeny weeny pieces! Her back legs are very weak so you need to lift her up on beds or sofas or she will fall on her back!)
Olof s point is that he doesn't have to worry about anything because I am such an accomplished worrier. How ever much he worried, he could never come up with a nano-fraction of possible catastrophes as me. So therefore, he doesn't.
The weather prediction meant that the neighbor who normally feeds our outdoor aviary birds when we are away needed special instructions on battening down their cover in anticipation of high winds that did indeed materialize.
I concluded that we needed to leave extra-early on Christmas Eve morning given how bad the forecast was, so I persuaded the pet sitter to come at dawn to collect Lily, and our driver to move up our leave time to 7 a.m. I packed a bag of snacks in case this turned into a six-hour trip. This early departure turned out to be a very wise plan as the roads were as harrowing as forecast both there and back. Sometimes those weather people are right on.
As it turned out, Lily made it through Christmas, although she never ate, and emitted excremental effluvia all over the pet sitter's house. Even under the best of care, she finds a change of environment really stressful.
We had a wonderful time, as always, at our son s house which as usual was full of a congenial group of people, grandkids, gifts, and the usual amazing food.
And my husband Olof remarked afterwards, See? I told you it would all work out.
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