random thoughts – Day 1,742 – (Monday) – half-day

It was an un-Monday Monday. It started like a normal Monday remote work day with coffee and the lengthy login process, emails, and a team touch base meeting. The difference was that this morning, I booked the afternoon of Christmas Eve-Eve as vacation time. It was a “use it or lose it” situation, with just over three hours at risk of forfeiture if not used before year end. Most of my colleagues have been in the same situation to varying degrees and days.

Rice and beans and stuff.

At the designated hour I logged off the system. There was a quick lunch of rice, beans, pretend beef crumbles, grated cheddar, and fake Fritos left over from Sunday's big batch cooking. Then it was off to the living room for Hallmark holiday movies, commercials that make me cry, attempts to avoid thinking, and list making. 

There was time in the kitchen organizing assorted sweets into tins and containers to go to a few households. There was the slicing, boiling, and baking of kielbasa in a ketchup and brown sugar sauce for Christmas Eve at my sister’s. The recipe is one Mummu always made and has been a Christmas Eve food tradition for as long as we can remember. 

And then, boom, the day was over. The sun was down and it was dark. 

Despite it being Festivus, the Seinfeld celebration for “the rest of us,” I failed to host a Festivus dinner for the family to air grievances. The was no Festivus Pole, just like there is no Christmas tree this year. Not that there has ever been a Festivus Pole at The BungaLowell. The only feats of strength were minor domestic chores like rearranging things in the refrigerator to accommodate the sweet treats and the pot of soup that was started and folding some laundry. Whatever. Maybe next year.