How about a rambling little post today to follow the onslaught of a long weekend spent mostly at home and the chaos that follows Christmas with a large family?

I hope you all are cool with that, because it’s about all I’ve got in me.

Christmas was lovely and sweet.

We read The Hobbit before bed tonight and this quote felt true of our Christmas actually.

Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.

Actually, now that I think about it, that quote fits all sorts of parts of our lives right now.

Anyway, Christmas was well spent, a puzzle is taking over our dining room table and I can honestly say that I don’t care to eat (or see) another cinnamon roll until April, at least.

I convinced the kids to help me undecorate the Christmas tree today (call me Scrooge if you must) and they dragged that needle spilling space taker upper right out the front door.

Maybe if I had a larger living room.  Maybe then I’d be a sport and leave the tree up for weeks after Christmas.  Maybe.  But as it is, I am quite content to see it gone and London is quite thrilled to add the dead tree to her fort in the woods.  We’re all happy about it.

We are still celebrating a few Christmas festivities though.  We never did make it out to see all the lights this year and I’m glad some people leave them up until the new year for people like me.

There are too many sweet desserts in our house right now and not enough fruit and vegetables.

Some of the kids received bath robes for gifts this year and it is pretty cute to see them drinking their coffee/milk in the morning and sporting their robes around the house as they draw and read and fight like a ninja.  Also as they sleep.

I’m not so much a fan of endings, but I sure do like beginnings.  I mean, you know,  GOOD beginnings.  Not bad beginnings.  Who likes bad beginnings?  It’s hard to wrap up 2016 well.  I’d rather just forge ahead to 2017 and start fresh – new calendars, better schedules, a game plan that is sure to work this time – am I right?

But then there’s this whole week in between.  The one we are living in right now.  Christmas is over.  The new year begins next week.  It’s like this week is a Clean Up Your Act week.  A Get It All Together People week. Except, of course, I can’t.  We can’t.  I mean, we can’t really Fix It All in this meager little seven ish days.  I can’t wrap a neat and trimmed up bow on 2016 and call it A Good Year.  Shoot, you guys, when was my last good year?

Alright.  Alright.  I know that’s not entirely true.  But a lot of bad stuff went down this year.  And last year.  And the year before.  So.  You know, I’m sort of on a roll.  But not the kind of roll I’d like to be on.

This week – all the in between weeks of life – are certainly a struggle for me.  I don’t know if I am really a glass half empty or a glass half full person.  More like a – that glass has water in it – kind of person.  Some things are what they are.  Some things I fight until my fingers bleed.  Or my heart bleeds. Or whatever.  Some things I just don’t choose to battle at all.  Sometimes I don’t show up for skirmishes and sometimes I’m fighting at all of the wrong ones.

Real life is real hard work, friends.

And if you have human children I bet you find that all these free-for-all days don’t exactly lead to free-for-all attitudes.  Wait – they DO lead to free-for-all attitudes.  Suddenly chores seem impossible and why on earth can’t they do whatever they want when they want and how unreasonable it is for a mother to think you might make your bed or feed the dog on your break from school??

Hard work, I tell you.  Being alive is hard work.

But – you know – it’s loads better than the alternative and that’s what I’m going to work to remember this week.  This in-between week where I know I will be tempted to brush a broad stroke over this last year or to bemoan its sorrows.  (I’m a pendulum swinger sometimes.)  This in-between week where I’ll want to rush through it to get the next week which starts the next year which I’d like to change in all sorts of ways.  (But then I’ll vacillate between wild hopes for change and slumped shoulders at the prospect of more pain.  Pendulum swinger, I told you already.)

Maybe I’ll aim for steady.  Feet planted.  Nothing to prove because all that needs proving has been taken care of for me.  How shamefully quickly I forget and set aside my knowledge.hope.belief of what a weary world is actually rejoicing in this month.

So – cheers to the new year, for certain.  And – cheers to this in-between week that’s already half empty or half full or just sitting on the counter with some water in it.

May we all know which battles we are supposed to show up for.

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