So. Christmas is over.

Not really, I know. Christmas is really an all year long thing, as you well realize. But right now, that’s just one Hallmark card short of rubbing it in a little bit. I can’t help it. On December 26 I find myself in a taking down of all the decorations frenzy. Our kitchen seems to offer up only one food group anymore – fudgey items – and I seem to crave… salad. Who knew? If you eat nothing but pie and cheese for a week that spinach might start calling your name?

Also, taking down Christmas decorations is weird. It’s like, I love all the sparkly bits all over the house, but keeping them up just REMINDS me that the sparkly bits will need to come down. It’s like visiting Paris and knowing that in a day or two you will be getting on a plane and ending up in the Newark airport. So, let’s just take down all the sparkly bits now. Let’s squash those hopes of Paris, ca va? Paris is overrated.

My boys greeted me this morning with this nugget: “So, what’s the NEXT holiday we’ve got, Mom? And, are there presents.?”

Speaking of presents, right now I am listening to this:

“Red! RED! Whack the droid with your lightsaber! Use the force. THE FORCE, RED. NO, NOT THAT FORCE, THE OTHER ONE. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY, WHACK THE GLOWING CRYSTAL THINGIE WITH YOUR FORCE!”

USE THE FORCE AND THEN RUN AWAAYYYYYYYY!”

Yep. We drank the Kool-Aid. The boys got a Wii for Christmas (we’re only a few years behind on technology. We take it slow here. Just a few months ago both boys were running around with the BOXES to their dad’s iphone pretending they were their OWN phones. It was kind of pathetic. I wanted to encourage them on being so creative and imaginative but I also felt a bit embarrassed about it all.)

And, I know for a FACT that no Jedi would EVER whack ANYONE with the force and then run away. That’s just silly talk.

Also, there’s this rather illuminating bit of marital knowledge: When you tell your spouse, “Really, there is nothing I want for Christmas. Just skip the gifts, ok?” you must remember this later. You must remember that you said it and you believed it about as much as you believe that elves make cookies in trees and that The Walking Dead is gonna have a happy ending. You need to maybe clarify this statement next year like this:

“Ok. I’m going to tell you that I don’t want any presents. But, when it is 7:35 am and I’ve had about four hours of sleep and the boys have reached a sort of unwrapping frenzy that makes you think of really cute sharks circling in the water, trailing ribbons, I might want a small gift. Just a wee morsel. Something shiny. Like four thousand dollars.”

I told the husband “no gifts.” And then, of course, I got him candy, a Popular Science magazine that he will never find time to read, and a gadget that doesn’t work. And for me? Nothing. Nada. He really actually listened to me.

This is so very rare.

Why is it he does not listen to me when I say things like, “Honey? There is a spider the size of New Jersey in the laundry room?  I tried to friend him on facebook, but he says he’s not on social media and could he just eat me instead? COULD YOU COME HERE AND SMUSH HIM????”

Nope, he doesn’t hear me when we are all about to be ransacked by big, hairy legged monstrosities in the laundry room. But he TOTALLY is all, “I’m the best listener EVER when presents are involved.”

My husband says there are too many caveats in marriage. Too many unwritten rules added to the written rules. I tell him that’s what keeps it fresh. Being married to me is your very own Clue game, only no one dies by candlestick.

The only recourse is to eat some of the candy that I had bought him. I am so over wanting salad now. There is peanut butter in the candy so it’s healthy.

So, my afternoon will be spent with a chocolate hangover and that weird, “there is too much down-time now” kind of feeling hanging over me like a needy roommate. On one hand, I want to deal with the roommate by washing all of her clothes and cleaning house from top to bottom. But the other half of me wants to watch my boys’ bludgeon each other with the Force and run in weird circles in that prancy way that Lego Star Wars characters do.  At one point it looked like Obi Wan Lego guy was doing the Hustle.

And… Lego Star Wars has won the battle for now. The force is strong with this day.