The End of The Season Of Sparkle

I came home last night from Boston, a day early, to avoid the blizzard they ended up getting today. The parent orientation at Carter’s school needed up being canceled as well as the student orientation so it was a good call on my part. Russ stayed for work, but no meetings were held today as the twelve plus inches of snow fell. Carter is a little bored with no school work and her room already full organized.

I had only been gone one night, but it felt like a week. Since today ended up being a snow day in Durham and I had nothing on my calendar anyway, since I wasn’t supposed to be here, I decided I would make the most of it and take the Christmas down alone. This meant that I went to the attic and retrieved the 20 crates for all the non-tree ornaments that I put up. If I had put the tree up there would be no way I could do this alone.

Undoing Christmas is the least festive thing in the world. There is no “Christmas is over” music. Unstringing lights is a thankless job. Cleaning off the glitter and snow from tabletops where Christmas villages once sat is a pain. Vacuuming up needles is soul crushing. Ok, maybe not soul crushing, but not fun in the least.

After it is all undone, and put away and the regular furniture is back in place the house is dark and dull. The sparkle is gone. Even Shay seems to mope around, but perhaps that is because both Carter and Russ are not here and I am just her regular human, not her lover pies.

I hope that tomorrow when I wake up I will see the spartan regular house as clean, rather than lifeless. To think I only have to wait eleven months until I can do it again.