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Let’s do the limbo rock

3 min read

Welcome to the weirdest week of the year. That strange gap between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. The In-Between times. The Holiday Limbo.

Whether you’re home for the week or back at work, it’s strange and stressful.

If you’re home, you’re stuck with the kids. By now, they’ve broken one of their new toys and/or have yelled, “I’m bored,” at least once. There you are, at home, separating wrapping paper into two piles, reusable or garbage, while the little ones are trying to knock each other’s block off.

Side note: My favorite toy as a kid was Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots, probably because you could legitimately knock your brother’s head off without consequences.

But I digress, like I do. There’s a reason Bing Crosby sang, “And mom and dad can hardly wait for school to begin again” in the middle of “It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas.” It’s a song about all the joys of the season with one hard, undeniable truth hiding within. The truth about how annoying your kids are the week between the holidays.

Let’s face it: You went into debt so they could have a great Christmas, and they’re thanking some fat, bearded stranger in the North Pole. Christmas has never really been fair to parents.

Even if the kids drive you crazy all week, don’t panic. You’ll think they are adorable again when they tell you they’re going to stay up and watch the ball drop on New Year’s Eve and they’re fast asleep by 10:30.

You might have to do some unpleasant tasks during the week, like standing in a line the length of the Great Wall of China to return that ugly tie or oversized bathrobe your Aunt Agnes bought you.

You might be forced to take down a dry Douglas fir because the needles are shedding and your living room floor could be mistaken for a footpath along the Montour Trail.

If you think things are bad at home, they are way worse at the office. Some of us don’t have the luxury of taking off the week between the holidays.

If you’re at the office, you’re stressed out pretending to work. It’s impossible to get anything done during the week. You write a series of important emails, and you get a multitude of out-of-office replies.

You try to schedule a meeting. Let’s use hypothetical characters in this scenario named Mark and Susie (generic office people names). Mark is out of the office Christmas week and Susie is out of the office after the New Year. The meeting is pushed back to March.

You wander down the long office corridor and realize you’re alone in the building. Is the Zombie Apocalypse upon us? No, it’s just the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

The only good thing is that the traffic is light, and you get a parking space right by the elevator door.

No matter how you spend it, I hope you make the best of it. Happy holidays.

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