Exhausted

Weary. Fatigued. Drained. Pooped. How can a person be this tired and still be alive? I actually fell asleep in the bathtub. That's right, I dozed off in a tubfull of hot water scented with white tea and ginger bubbles. And have lived to tell about it. In the last four days I have shopped to the point that a mere human would have dropped, worked 21 hours (ten of them today), visited Colleen and cats for an evening, fed my son leftovers too many times, and put away the Thanksgiving/Fall decorations. I have not yet begun the Christmas decorating madness, that shall have to wait another week or so. Though I'm not annoyed by those who have already begun lighting up the festive seasonal displays outside their homes. Yesterday was a perfect, mild day to do outside decorating and in these parts you must take advantage of such a day. I love this time of year. I love holiday baking. I love how all the various cultures and religions around the world put their own spin on the pagan solstice celebration of old. So many rituals, so many wonderful stories. There is room for them all!! I love all the lights and decorations from the garish to the elegant. But mostly I love the trees, evergreens decorated in every possible imaginable way. I put up as many as a dozen trees in my home, most of them small, only a couple of them large enough to sit on the floor. I wonder if Newton and Einstein will cooperate and leave the large trees alone. Last year I didn't put up the big trees thinking that the cats were really still kittens and would climb and plunder them. One of Steinie's favorite toys is an old tree ornament, a blue plastic faceted ball about the size of a tennis ball. I fear he may have made a generalization from the fact that I allow him to play with this ornament. That perhaps my tacit tolerance extends to all holiday decorations. I believe, however, that this would require a complex thought process even a cat named Einstein is not capable of. And this most definitely is the year that I will go through all of the holiday decorations, throw out the broken ones, give away the ones I'm tired of, and pack them all away at the end of this season in appropriate, labeled totes. At least that's the plan. But first I need to sleep. For a longer stretch and in a drier environment than my little nap in the bathtub.