TheBanyanTree: In Between

[Margaret R. Kramer]

The week between Christmas and New Year’s is an awkward time, I think.  It’s
awkward at work, because so many people are on vacation.  The decision
makers are gone and everything kind of mellows and the edge from the work
day disappears.  My coworkers who stuck this period of time out and didn’t
go on vacation and I spent more time in relaxed personal conversations and
we let our work drift along at its own pace.

Everything will rev up again on January 3.  Meetings will be scheduled.  The
phones will ring again.  Offices will be full.  The energy will be back.
Our time of goodwill will fade back into the intenseness of January.

Traffic is awkward during this week.  The morning traffic is light, with
many people having the week off and staying home with their children.  But
the afternoon traffic is heavy, since by then, the homebound children have
driven their parents nuts, and they need to take them to malls to distract
them.

Shopping is awkward.  We clog up the Christmas aisles, looking for that item
that is reduced to a ridiculously low price.  We jam the customer service
counters, returning gifts for cash or for something that we really wanted.
As the New Year approaches, we feel a need to organize ourselves and buy
hundreds of plastic totes and file cabinets for our wayward stuff and
papers.

It’s a week of awkward blah, blah, blah.  I spent so much time getting ready
for Christmas, making sure each activity, each gift, each cookie, each
ornament on the tree had meaning and significance and fun, that once
Christmas passed, I felt let down and acted almost grief stricken.  I didn’t
want to go to work, to exercise, or eat right.  I just wanted to sit like a
blob on the couch, eat chocolate, and slam down the high calorie eggnog.
The hell with everything!

But as New Year’s approaches, my energy level is gradually coming back.  I
went to work out early this morning.  I’ll have lunch with my son and his
family and then Ray and I will go out to dinner and movie this evening.  I
doubt I’ll be awake to greet the New Year, but I’ll welcome its freshness
and hope when I get up in the morning.

Ray and I will take down the Christmas decorations tomorrow and put
Christmas 2004 away in the proper boxes.  We’ll clean the house and get
ready to take on 2005.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net

http://www.polarispublications.com
Be a star!

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time; a kind, forgiving,
charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of
the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up
hearts freely.
~Charles Dickens