From Mary Anna--Celebration: The day after...

December 26 is such an interesting day.  It feels so...quiet.  Many people have to go back to work right after Christmas, which somehow feels wrong, but many people are able to take vacation time, so office-type workplaces can feel as quiet as post-holiday homes do this time of year.  (This is emphatically not true for those who work in retail.)

Post-holiday blues often kick in, but I'm more likely to feel that way before or during the hubbub.  For me, December 26 makes me feels sated by the Christmas hoopla and ready to curl up for a quiet contemplative winter day.  It's less of a holiday kind of feeling and more of a solstice mood.  The nights are as long as they're going to be, but they're getting shorter.  The darkness is lifting, imperceptibly.  "Winter" as experienced by Floridians, is hit-or-miss.  We had temperatures in the seventies yesterday, but it looks like the beginning of winter out there.  The leaves are falling and the humidity is so much lower than summer's steamy norm that the air is visibly clearer.

I need to go out and exchange a gift (note to self:  check with ex-husband before buying daughter an iPad) but today feels like a day to brood happily over a new book.  It feels like a day to take a walk on a warm winter day.  It feels like a day to be grateful for my comfortable home and my loving family, spread all across the country.

Happy day-after, everybody...

Comments

[Camille Minichino]

I'm still celebrating -- it's only the second day of Christmas and I'm waiting 2 turtle doves.

[Mary Anna]

And a partridge in a pear tree!

I cooked two ducks last night, but they aren't on the Twelve Days of Christmas list. They sure were tasty, since I conveniently found Julia Child's THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING under my tree and she conveniently included a recipe for duck cooked in a casserole with turnips and I conveniently have turnips in my garden.

Maybe I should try partridges and turtledoves and French hens and geese soon, although it does seem rather horrible to cook and eat the proceeds of the Twelve Days of Christmas. :)

[Mysti]

I'm with you, Mary Anna! Devouring my new copy of Red Harvest by Hammett, sneaking a peek at the hubbie every chapter or so, who's fully engrossed by his pulp fiction critique/history/monograph.

That was this morning, anyway. Now I'm at work, finishing grading & comments on my students' final projects. Well, the idyll was nice while it lasted :)

[Mary Anna]

I'm working on my book on how to write novels, DAY BY DAY. It's a pretty happy and peaceful way to spend the afternoon.