Christmas in February

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When I woke up this morning, I knew something was different about the day. It was Monday, but that wasn’t what made the day different. Suddenly, for the first time in a year, it was February again.

After Nate and Iz went off to school, I thought it was time to do some things around the house. The tasks at hand were laundry, vacuuming, bed making, and grocery shopping. Unfortunately, at 8:30am, the couch called to me as I poured my second cup of coffee.

“Hey, Jean. Take a load off. Law & Order: Criminal Intent is on!”
“Well, I am really trying to get some things accomplished today. Maybe later, okay?
“You’ve got the whole day to do those things. Come on. Sit. Just for a minute?”
(Is anyone else’s sofa as needy as mine is?!)
I said, “Um, err, ah….”
The couch sniffled and said, “I’m so lonely. You never spend any quality time with me anymore. The only one I ever see lately is that dog who sneaks up here when you’re not around. And, by the way, you might consider changing his food; his flatulence is killing me!”
I sighed. I knew I wasn’t motivated to do much for some reason, and then I said, “Well, okay. but, just for a bit.”

After 30 minutes of watching an episode of Law & Order, for which I already knew the ending, I suddenly realized I was on the Road to Perdition once again. I got up and said, “It was nice visiting you, Couch. I’ve got to go!”
Couch said, “But, we’ve only just begun. Stay!”
I turned off the TV, and as I dashed off into the kitchen, I yelled, “No. Must go!!!! Now!!!!”

After shaking whatever that was off, I headed upstairs to collect the dirty laundry. I picked up the basket in my room, brought it out to the hallway, and then I put it down. As usual, I knew I had to go into Iz’s room and Nate’s to scan for discarded clothing that had not quite made its way into the general laundry basket.

Then, much like a military maneuver, I went into Iz’s room, viewed the perimeter, and deemed the area clear. Well, it was clear of clothing on the floor; the floor was full of land mines in the form of toys; I especially hate those little plastic animals, having stepped on more than a few of those in my bare feet!

Nathan’s room I likened to North Korea. His door, halfway opened, showed a partially visible area where nothing much seemed to be going on; this was the demilitarized zone. Once through the door, well, you could never be sure if you would make it out. Surely there were things in there that could form a small army, like his empty Barq and Fresca cans or his chocolate wrappers, and keep you prisoner for life on the grounds that you were trying to access his laptop to get more information about his Junior Prom date when you were really only there to collect his stinky laundry!

I opened the door and peered around it. I viewed the perimeter. There were used socks under the bed, used socks tucked in between the comforter and the sheet, and then there was a line of jackets, shirts, and pants strewn all over the floor. I had a different clothing retrieval rule for Nathan’s room than for Iz’s.

I had learned a long time ago, about the time Nathan used deodorant every three days instead of every day, that everything on the floor of his room went into the laundry. Yes. There was to be no sniff test. Even if it looked like it was partially folded on the floor, meaning it had probably fallen from the chair on which I usually placed his clean laundry and then landed on the floor, it still went in the laundry. Every item was guilty, and only prisoners were taken.

After Mission Dirty Laundry was completed, I enjoyed several cat smooches and kitten nuzzles. Eventually, I made it down to the basement to throw a load of laundry in. Then, I went back upstairs where I put clean sheets on both beds. Let me clarify. I placed clean sheets on top of both unmade beds; yes, it was as if the clean sheets were a yellow Post-it that read, “Change the sheets and make the beds.”

Of course, I could not pass by the kitties again without loving them up. I love cats, and some might say they’re useless; however, they are a great excuse for procrastination. And, after seeing them in snooze mode, it was quite easy for me to say, “When in the company of cats, do as the cats do.” Nothing!

So, after I walked by my bedroom, ignoring the glaring yellow Post-it, I sat down in front of my laptop. Ignoring laundry, vacuuming, and everything else, I surfed the web, checked the job boards, and sent a few emails. I then looked at the small to-do-or-to-don’t pile on my desk. The status of that pile depends on my mood, of course.

In the pile, I saw something I had printed out from the Massachusetts Department of Workforce Development two weekends ago. Oh. Yeah. That. I had highlighted the portion on the paper that read, “Your claim expires on Saturday, February 06, 2010.” I had to call for yet another extension.

I guess I knew all morning and most of the afternoon why I had gone into the low motivation zone. In two weeks, it would be the year anniversary of my unemployment. And, does the Massachusetts Department of Workforce Development send you a t-shirt for that honor?!

Then my stomach growled. Instead of having a small snack and heading to the gym, I thought, “I’ll go to the gym later.” Did later ever come? Nope. Did the laundry get done? Nope. Did I change the sheets and make the beds? Nope.

It was destined to be one of those rare “lost days,” until 2pm when I heard a truck rumble down the street. Brakes squealed. I looked out the window. A UPS truck had stopped in front of my house.

I knew I hadn’t ordered anything, so I was puzzled. As I saw the driver travel up the walkway, I bolted downstairs thinking, “OMG, is it a box from Zappos? Did some secret admirer send me shoes?” As you can see, this was my first bit of excitement all day.

I opened the door with a great big smile just waiting for that lovely shoe box to fall into my hands. Instead, the UPS driver handed me an envelope. An envelope? Whaaaaaat? As he turned and began to walk down the front steps, I wanted to shout after him, “But, where are my shoes?!”

I turned the envelope over. It was addressed to Iz, and it was from Amazon. It’s funny how one little envelope from Amazon can answer a multitude of questions.

At Christmas time, the Aunts and Uncles send gift certificates to Amazon, which both Nate and Iz love. When it came time to write thank-you notes, I made a list of the ones each child had to write. I couldn’t remember Iz getting something from my brother and his wife.

I pondered asking them if they sent something earlier last month. “So, did you send Iz a present?” I knew they wouldn’t forget her, but I still couldn’t remember anything arriving for her. It was kind of an awkward situation to be in. Anyway, as of last week, Iz still had a few thank-you notes to write, and I guess I was holding out to ask the inevitable awkward question of my brother.

When I opened the envelope, it was a Amazon gift card in a Christmas card from my brother and his wife. Then, as any good crime scene investigator does, I started to carefully examine the envelope it came in. The current address label listed the date of February 1st.

I then noted an older looking address label at the top of the envelope. It looked somewhat like the papers my high school history teacher, an activist in the 60s, received from the FBI when he asked for the files that they had on him. The label was all but unreadable due to someone's handiwork with a permanent black marker!

I flipped the envelope over. The once white address space was a dull brown. And in the left-upper corner, it looked like something damp had sat there for days and then dried, leaving a very visible puddle print. If I had access, I would have run that puddle print through the crime lab’s puddle print database right then!

Alas, I’m not a real crime scene investigator; I just play one when I’m not playing a technical writer. My novice guess was that Iz’s envelope had gotten lost by UPS, and it was only recently found. “Elementary,” I said. Thus proving, time spent on the couch is not wasted when watching Law & Order or C.S.I.!

At that moment, I was relieved. The envelope’s arrival had allowed me to avoid asking my brother an awkward question. It also meant that Iz and I could go shopping when she got off the bus! And, it was kind of nice thinking that she would get a present, in some way for no reason, after the Christmas fact.

When she got off the bus, I said, “Guess what? You got an Amazon gift card from Uncle Jack and Aunt Lisa!”
She asked, “What’s Amazon?”
I answered, “It’s this great place where you can get pretty much anything you want!” (Well, when that place is not Sephora.)

At 3:05pm, she was in my lap, and we were shopping from my laptop. We perused American Girl clothes and Liv Girls. When she couldn’t find anything of interest in either of those categories, she said, “Let’s look at Barbie stuff.” We had numerous Barbie dolls, but I thought it was her gift card to spend as she pleased. She decided on a very lovely Barbie that celebrated her birthday month, which is this month.

Immediately after ordering, I said, “Let’s make a thank-you card for Uncle Jack and Aunt Lisa now.” We got out the paper, the ribbon, the stickers, the scissors, and the glue stick. Iz wrote a lovely note all on her own; it was flawless.

She wandered off into her room to make yet another card. I read her note over and over, looking at her neat handwriting and her perfectly spelled words. It wasn’t so much that they made a note; it was that I realized that the card and every moment I spent with her since she got off the bus was so precious to me. Out of nowhere, I said, “Hey, Iz. Want to help me vacuum downstairs? From her room, she shouted, “Sure!”

We went downstairs. We picked up toys. I vacuumed. She vacuumed. And at 5pm, we decided that we would treat ourselves to Chinese food.

In a past life, I would have beaten myself up for not finishing the laundry, making the beds, and doing whatever else the house needed; but today, that was all secondary, including being unemployed, to the afternoon I spent with my daughter. And, it would seem that when you’re dragging, doing anything is always better when you have someone, especially your BFF, along for the ride.

After we picked up our Chinese food, we headed home in the car.
Iz said out-of-the-blue, “Mom, don’t tell Nathan or Dad what a good afternoon we had! They'll be jealous.”
I smiled and said, “We did have a good afternoon, didn’t we?”
She answered, “Yeah! And, I really liked the vacuuming.”
Today, in addition to belated Christmas presents, unemployment was a gift, of sorts, that kept giving to me even almost a year later. ♥