After all the build up, all the weeks of anticipation. . . 

After the frantic hours near the deadline, wondering if there ever really is such a thing as enough. . . 

For those of us in the appallingly bad-gift-giver end of the spectrum, wondering just how badly we've flubbed everyone's expectations. . . 

Gleefully waiting to see the smiles on their faces. . . 

Stuffing ourselves with stocking sweets. . . 

After all that. . . 

It's over.

Just like that.

She Who Must Be Back At Work is, in fact, back at work. The relatives have moved on, back to their own lives and most of the trash and recyclables are in the various differently colored containers.

Even the quiet feels differently than pre-Christmas. Before, there was a sense of hushed anticipation. Now, that same lack of noise is more like the exhausted silence you hear in a locker room full of a team that just got soundly thrashed at a sport.

Still, even with the exhaustion, and the overeating and feeling like an overcaffeinated chimp mated with a speedfreak hummingbird and they both spat out a squalling horror that shambles on two legs and has your face. . . Even with all that, I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Mostly because I don't have a place to put it, but the sentiment is the there all the same.

Now all we have to do is survive the horrors of amateur night (also known as New Year's Eve, when all the idiots pretend they can hold their alcohol and start getting dangerous(er) out there on the streets) and we'll be safely in the new year and ready to start all over again.

And, brother, is it moving fast, fast, fast.

Racing by is the time and, yet, here I sit at the computer, full of vim, vigor and gumption. . . Wasting time, procrastinating and just plain fooling about when I should be working.

Or, at the very least, actually getting Christmas gifts purchased and wrapped and trees trimmed and lights hung.

(I'd make a juvenile joke about hung, but I'm not that immature.) [although it was a close thing] {heh. he said thing.} ((damn))

They say that the first step in solving a problem is recognizing you have a problem. Which, despite the funny glasses and fake mustache, I am having no problem recognizing, means it's time to sign off and actually get some work done.

I mean, it's not like there's anyone but me that will ever read this post, so why am I even bothering?

Unless. . . 

Yes, it turns out that I can notify people about these posts merely by sending out an automatic tweet. 

Consider it sent.

Sorry.