Christmas Crunch Time
When my beloved came to bed at 1:30 a.m. last night after I had been asleep since 9:30 p.m., I felt relatively wide awake for a spell. This may have something to do with sleep patterns—I've always heard that waking after four hours makes it hard to fall back asleep—but probably has more to do with my high level of anxiety at the moment.
I found myself spinning my wheels thinking about the Christmas cards I needed to write, the Christmas cookies I needed to bake, the Chex Mix I wanted to prepare, the shopping still left to do, and the story I have due on Monday that's about 30 percent complete. As all this was rolling around in my head, I asked him what he'd been up to. He went for a run, he told me, shortly after I went to bed. And then he caught up on some websites he likes to read, watched part of a movie, and basically bummed around for four hours.
Despite the fact that this is completely just—I spent a couple of hours after school visiting with two friends while our kids played with their sons—I found myself wishing I'd given him a list. Perhaps he could have baked some cookies or started addressing envelopes since the cards aren't ready yet.
It seems that any hard feelings I harbored ran pretty deep, because I had a dream after I went back to sleep.
I dreamed I was rushing into a store to get some last-minute Christmas-related thing I needed. And there was an elf with a giant jingle bell at the entrance. And he was ringing that bell and hopping around in front of me and wasn't going to let me by until I turned jolly. And that wasn't going to happen.
I don't know who got aggressive first, but the elf and I wound up tussling, with me eventually pushing him to the floor. Once I had extracted myself from his limbs, I stood up to see Santa standing on a platform some distance away. He was looking at me and was obviously poised to take up the elf's cause of spreading good cheer.
But I was not taking the bait. While he Ho-ho-hoed away, I shouted at him, "Now I know why you can enjoy Christmas!"
And this next part I said aloud—and loudly—as I sat up in bed awake: "Because you're a MAN!"
I think I need to lighten up.
I found myself spinning my wheels thinking about the Christmas cards I needed to write, the Christmas cookies I needed to bake, the Chex Mix I wanted to prepare, the shopping still left to do, and the story I have due on Monday that's about 30 percent complete. As all this was rolling around in my head, I asked him what he'd been up to. He went for a run, he told me, shortly after I went to bed. And then he caught up on some websites he likes to read, watched part of a movie, and basically bummed around for four hours.
Despite the fact that this is completely just—I spent a couple of hours after school visiting with two friends while our kids played with their sons—I found myself wishing I'd given him a list. Perhaps he could have baked some cookies or started addressing envelopes since the cards aren't ready yet.
It seems that any hard feelings I harbored ran pretty deep, because I had a dream after I went back to sleep.
I dreamed I was rushing into a store to get some last-minute Christmas-related thing I needed. And there was an elf with a giant jingle bell at the entrance. And he was ringing that bell and hopping around in front of me and wasn't going to let me by until I turned jolly. And that wasn't going to happen.
I don't know who got aggressive first, but the elf and I wound up tussling, with me eventually pushing him to the floor. Once I had extracted myself from his limbs, I stood up to see Santa standing on a platform some distance away. He was looking at me and was obviously poised to take up the elf's cause of spreading good cheer.
But I was not taking the bait. While he Ho-ho-hoed away, I shouted at him, "Now I know why you can enjoy Christmas!"
And this next part I said aloud—and loudly—as I sat up in bed awake: "Because you're a MAN!"
I think I need to lighten up.
posted by Lisa Strandberg at 7:14 AM
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