Broken Candy Cane

I guess I took a bit of a holiday break. I didn't really mean to. It was just one of those things. Christmas came rolling at me like a big cartoon snowball and there I was with my head and legs sticking out rolling down the hill.

By Saturday there was nothing left to eat in the house but the peanuts from Colin's chamber of commerce bag*, a broken candy cane and a dried out piece of lefse**. When they saw there was no more food, the older set of Big Daddy's children packed up their trusty Ford Tempo and headed for another Christmas. Big Daddy had a gig with his band The Velvet Brass (yes, really) and so the boys and I were left in the dust and the ribbons by ourselves.

I moved the younger boys back to their own beds and we all passed out cold. The holidays can take a lot out of quiet people like we are.

Santa brought a Wii. It was purchased before we realized the recession was going to hit us personally, which was a beautiful thing. My little Wii person cannot golf or bowl much better than I can in real life, but I am having a really fun time trying. It's keeping us very busy.

It was such a fun thing to be all together. Living in the same town as our parents and siblings, I guess we see each other quite a bit anyway, but not very often in a deliberate way. We pass one another on the way to church or we drop a grandchild off or we meet for a quick Caribou because we're in town. We managed to play a few games together and shop together and sing together and eat, of course. (No one touched my beleaguered fruitcake at my in-laws but my family scarfed it down. I'm not sure what that means. It turned out pretty good.)

Is it wrong to say, I am a little bit glad it's over, though?

* Maybe, dear friend or loved one, you've never had a chamber of commerce or Sunday School bag at Christmas time. Poor you. You must have grown up in the cold, hard city. It's a brown paper lunch bag filled with peanuts in the shell, candy, a candy cane and an apple. I don't know what to tell you, they are always the same. I have yet to see a kid eat the peanuts out of that bag.

** Perhaps, dear friend or loved one, you live in an area that does not eat lefse at holiday time. Really and truly, poor you. I have heard that Scandinavians no longer eat it and it really is too bad. It is a thin potato pancake of sorts eaten warm or cold. Honestly, it is just a vessel for butter and sugar. Out here in Boondocks, Minnesota, our Swedish grandmothers made it. We buy it at the store.