Let's get this party started

So I’m already feeling quite unmotivated at work this week, and I’m not even past lunchtime on Monday yet. I think it’s a variety of things, but mostly having to do with the holidays. It’s this sort of restless feeling I get every year around this time, a mix of excitement for a break from the mundane and a little worrying about the fact that time passes much too quickly as you get older. I know, I’m only 26 years old, but I’m already starting to feel like the years are blurring together. Vacations that feel like they were just this past summer actually happened two and a half years ago. Dan and I argue about what we did last Christmas because our holidays together are now part of the routine, not all sparkly and new like they were the year we got engaged, or the first year we were married. Weird how that stuff happens isn’t it? It’s not necessarily a bad thing, I even find some comfort in the safe stability of it all, it’s just that it sort of snuck up on me.

As a whole, I’m really looking forward to it this year. I can’t wait to have my brother home, I really truly miss him on those nights we are sitting around the dinner table at my parents’ house. There’s a noticeable void. And as fantastic as it is that he is in Chicago, doing his own thing, making a life for himself, it’s strange to know that we will probably never have the whole family living in the same city again. Except for the holidays. Therefore we all cherish that time that he is back home with us. There really is just something about having the three of us siblings all together, bickering and laughing, sitting around the dining room table. It’s usually inexcusably loud, irreverent, and sometimes we even say really horrible things to our poor mother (and sometimes she deserves it.) I just can’t wait.

Thus, my lack of motivation here at work. One more week of this, and then its family and friends visiting from out of town, heavy carb-laden food from casserole pans, crazy children running frantically through the house with sugar and present-induced hysteria, long leisurely dinners at my parents, followed by coffee, laughing, and plans for late night movies, waking up early on Christmas morning to join in the fun as Dan’s brothers and sisters discover what Santa brought them this year, and After-Christmas Sale shopping and lunching and all that is in between.

This weekend I watched White Christmas and Home for the Holidays, and I wrapped presents and finished most of my shopping. I am ready for this holiday.

This week is so going to drag.