By now you are beat. You have gone beyond sleep deprivation into the land of sleep as a moment between doing the million things you still have to do. You don't sleep. You nap and then get up and start buying and wrapping and planning and cooking and attending and drinking and eating. You are so over saturated with food now that it is a drug. A drug of sugar and oil and fat. But it just keeps coming. It seems everywhere you go there is chocolate and cookies and fried food and those beers and cocktails that seem to keep popping up. Christmas exhaustion is upon you and it is only the twenty third of December.
When did it become like this you wonder distantly. Certainly Christmas is for kids. And they don't appreciate the drive down to see Santa at Macys or the drive to see those windows on State Street or the drive to see the decorations or the drive to get the tree go to he hundredth family get together, the neighbor party, the Christmas movie at the old theatre in the city. And you wonder who you are doing all this for and maybe next year you wont do half of the rituals that bleed you dry of money and time. But you know you will.
And then it is Christmas Eve and you begin the wrapping marathon. You are by now two punch drunk people going through the motions. You have taken to wearing the same clothes. You have gained weight from mega caloric intake. You are slightly hungover from drinking every day. You are exhausted because through all this you are still working! Have to get that last email off to the boss. And now it is the final drive to the goal line of Christmas morning.
And you fall into bed into dead sleep. Six AM and the kids are on you. You stumble out hollow eyed, pasty faced and watch the frenzy unfold. The house is trashed. You sit through it all with a half smile and finally find a cold cup of coffee. You go outside to breathe the cold air and stare at the Christmas day, muttering like that Chevy Chase character in National Lampoons Christmas movie...I did it.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
When did it become like this you wonder distantly. Certainly Christmas is for kids. And they don't appreciate the drive down to see Santa at Macys or the drive to see those windows on State Street or the drive to see the decorations or the drive to get the tree go to he hundredth family get together, the neighbor party, the Christmas movie at the old theatre in the city. And you wonder who you are doing all this for and maybe next year you wont do half of the rituals that bleed you dry of money and time. But you know you will.
And then it is Christmas Eve and you begin the wrapping marathon. You are by now two punch drunk people going through the motions. You have taken to wearing the same clothes. You have gained weight from mega caloric intake. You are slightly hungover from drinking every day. You are exhausted because through all this you are still working! Have to get that last email off to the boss. And now it is the final drive to the goal line of Christmas morning.
And you fall into bed into dead sleep. Six AM and the kids are on you. You stumble out hollow eyed, pasty faced and watch the frenzy unfold. The house is trashed. You sit through it all with a half smile and finally find a cold cup of coffee. You go outside to breathe the cold air and stare at the Christmas day, muttering like that Chevy Chase character in National Lampoons Christmas movie...I did it.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
