January's Little Joke
The following whine isn’t too serious a whine, as whines go, and should be considered in said not-so-serious vein, but it felt the need to be expressed nonetheless.
It’s about January.
If November and December are wintry wonder and holiday good cheer, colorful and sparkly and merry and warm and smelling like things baking and gift wrapping crinkling and ribbons unrolling, January is “Ladies and gentlemen, we now return you to your drab, wretched lives.”
My birthday is in January.
And I know there are crappier times to have birthdays-on major holidays, on leap year. But I still think about the legacy of my birthday every time it presents itself. The hallmark of my month is all the decorations coming down. It’s everything reverting to the usual. It’s *sigh* back to work. It’s trying not to tangle the lights when you put them away this time and suspecting you won’t succeed. My birthday itself is the day when all the coupons expire, when all the special offers are over, the last day to get the forms in.
January is 50 miles of frozen Kansas plain. January is everybody look busy, the boss is back from vacation…and beware, he had a crappy time. January is sweating inside raincoats while cold rain pounds your head and you wrestle a wind-contorted umbrella. January is starting diets and resolving not to spend so much. January is December’s hangover. January is no more holidays to look forward to till February, and those are just meaningless dead guy birthdays and the minefield of Valentine’s Day.
January is “You don’t have to go home, but you CAN’T STAY HERE.”
And then my birthday comes around, to make everyone all “Oh yeah...we gotta do that still, don’t we? Let’s make with the haphazard tossing of wishes...we do love ya, really, and we’d do more, but we’re fat, hung over and broke.”
I wish we had January before the holidays. It’s January we need a holiday from.
It’s about January.
If November and December are wintry wonder and holiday good cheer, colorful and sparkly and merry and warm and smelling like things baking and gift wrapping crinkling and ribbons unrolling, January is “Ladies and gentlemen, we now return you to your drab, wretched lives.”
My birthday is in January.
And I know there are crappier times to have birthdays-on major holidays, on leap year. But I still think about the legacy of my birthday every time it presents itself. The hallmark of my month is all the decorations coming down. It’s everything reverting to the usual. It’s *sigh* back to work. It’s trying not to tangle the lights when you put them away this time and suspecting you won’t succeed. My birthday itself is the day when all the coupons expire, when all the special offers are over, the last day to get the forms in.
January is 50 miles of frozen Kansas plain. January is everybody look busy, the boss is back from vacation…and beware, he had a crappy time. January is sweating inside raincoats while cold rain pounds your head and you wrestle a wind-contorted umbrella. January is starting diets and resolving not to spend so much. January is December’s hangover. January is no more holidays to look forward to till February, and those are just meaningless dead guy birthdays and the minefield of Valentine’s Day.
January is “You don’t have to go home, but you CAN’T STAY HERE.”
And then my birthday comes around, to make everyone all “Oh yeah...we gotta do that still, don’t we? Let’s make with the haphazard tossing of wishes...we do love ya, really, and we’d do more, but we’re fat, hung over and broke.”
I wish we had January before the holidays. It’s January we need a holiday from.