Alone

The last couple days have been busy – the house stuffed with family, presents exchanged, movies watched, far too many cookies consumed. At one point a majority of us had all downloaded a fun little game called Monument Valley to our various phones and tablets and were all playing it, with my niece going from person to person, helping us out when we got stuck. My brother-in-law got a theremin for Christmas and I was SO hoping that one of the cats would show some interest, because reasons, but alas, not a single cat even blinked an eye. Bah.

Last year I found some Christmas Crackers at the 50% off sales so everyone had one of those at Christmas dinner. Each one had a tiny little penguin that you wind up, so the dinner table was full of little penguins whirring around. By chance my brother-in-law discovered that if you angle the penguin just right, it’ll just go around and around a bowl until its spring runs down, at which point every single one of us (11 tiny penguins in all) wound up our penguins and had them racing around the bowl in a tiny penguin conga line and possibly there was a lot of very hysterical laughing going on. Possibly.

We also took part in our yearly tradition of dragging out various instruments (ability to play them, in tune or otherwise, not required) and worked our way through a series of Christmas carols. By the time we got to the last one in the book things weren’t so bad, but the first few – well, let’s just say that we’re a long way from Carnegie Hall and leave it at that.

My mom and my sisters and I all got up too early the day after Christmas to take part in the usual combat shopping (which isn’t so much combat anymore, but it’s still fun). This year we went to Pier One first, which turned out to be a good choice because we all found some really cute stuff, and then we went to Target, and then we introduced my mom and my little sister to the warm, gooey bliss that is Senorita Bread, before continuing on.

This morning I dropped my little sister and her family back off at the airport and hugged them goodbye. The house is empty now – the cats all creeping back out to investigate now that all the strangers are gone, and we’ve got a timer going off every 45 minutes, at which point either Richard or I goes downstairs to swap over a load of laundry from the slowly dwindling mountain. Later this evening we’ll head off to meet some friends for sushi, at which point we’ll have to be social again, but for now, we’re primarily just enjoying not having to speak at all. Holidays are fun and I loved having my family here, but now it’s time for these two introverts to recharge in preparation for reentry into the real world of work and chores and all fingers crossed, cats who aren’t trying to charge out the door at every possible moment.

*****

This is why I was soooo hoping one of the cats would have fun with the theremin. Sigh.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.




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