almost back to normal
wenesday, december 26, 2002

for two months before christmas we're inundated with commercial christmas cheer. sometime around thanksgiving, the rest of the world gets into the act and the lights and decorations go up along with a lot more commercial christmas cheer. the eve of and the day are quiet. well, relatively - christmas spam was still hitting my inbox with annoying regularity. if anyone needs to take a holiday, it is the spammers.

then comes the day after. yes, there's the after holiday commercialism, but over all the holiday is over and things settle back to "normal." almost. decorations start disappearing, the christmas cheer turns into something else as people try to exchange gifts for something they'd actually enjoy. even the commercialism is only different from the rest of the year because of the words "after christmas" placed before the word "sale." to me, this is sad and a real indictment on how we really feel about peace on earth. still it's not quite normal, at least not at my house.

the kids are home.

in our house, this is about the only time during the year all four kids are home at the same time (i think we also get about a week in the summer, but i'd have to check on that to be sure). year-round schools suck that way. however, with the exception of shebop and taz - both who are almost 2 young to be quiet - it's almost relatively normal because there's not a lot of activity. i believe both the older girls have made it a goal to get through their books before the end of the holidays so they can complain about having nothing to do or read by the time their next school break rolls around. it also means there's a lot less fighting going on right now, and most of it is between shebop and taz, which is highly unusual. generally shebop and jewel just can't seem to do anything but bicker and fight.

so it's not quite normal around here. and if saxy weren't sick, it would actually be plesant. not that it's unpleasant, but saxy being sick means things have to be really low key and taz's perpetual humming can get on the most patient person's nerves after awhile.

so maybe it's closer to normal than i originally thought.