Officially My Least Favorite Day

Today is officially my least favorite day of the year so it’s nice to get it out of the way so every other day this year can be better.  This is the day that I strip my house of all things glittery, shinny and twinkling bright, and put the Christmas ornaments away.  To be truthful I am not done putting it all up yet so tomorrow will be my second least favorite day.

See, with 31 hinged-toped crates, nine giant bags, six odd-shaped specialty boxes and seven larger-than-a-piano Christmas tree bags it is a lot to put away.  That does not include the flowerpot soldiers, large lanterns, The Happy Birthday Baby Jesus wire glitter tree and the larger and more tasteful wire tree.  I also have not taken down this year’s addition to the Christmas extravaganza, the needlepoint garlands.  I am not sure I have enough hinged-top crates and this may mean a trip to Costco tomorrow.  If our attic ever caves in and kills us in our sleep the headline should read, “Crushed by her love of Christmas.”

The other thing that just happened to occur today that adds to its sadness is the postman returned four Christmas cards I sent as “UTF.”  Sounds like a sexual disease, but it means “Unable to Forward” or, as Elvis would have said it, “Return to Sender.”  One of the cards is my fault, I had two addresses for my friend Tom and his wife Ev and I chose the wrong one, but the others are for friends whose only contact was the Christmas card.

These people who are not Facebook friends, or that we even have valid e-mail addresses for are probably lost for good.  I also got two misdirected pieces of mail that were for neighbors.  One was for a neighbor who passed away and the other was for a neighbor who had moved about 16 years ago.  Neither of these envelopes had return addresses and I guess that the postman figured I might know where they should be sent since after living here for 20 years we are the longest residence still around.  Sadly, I have no idea where these cards should go, so the senders will go on thinking their well wishes were received.  Maybe that is better than getting them back “UTF.”

Since this is my least favorite day I finally got around to getting Carter and myself our flu shots.  I know it’s late, but I was waiting for the joy of the holidays to be over so I did not ruin a good day.

Good-bye holidays, good-bye the glow of the lights of the tree, hello darkness and cold of January.  At least the days are getting a few minutes longer now and I can begin to dream of spring break and summer vacations.  Time to start researching foreign lands and new memories to make.