And so this is Christmas....

Alas, I find myself pondering Christmas in the last 45 minutes of its existence. I have been poisoned with sugar and my little brother is currently shooting darts at my head with his new NERF gun.

"And I've got refills! Three refills, actually!" Weston gloats, a pinched twinge of levity in his mezzo-soprano voice--- while loading yellow spongy darts with purple suction cups.

Seconds later, my room turns into a circus.

My mother enters and splashes onto my water bed in a glorious fanfare, ruining the tautness of my tidy blankets.

Ansel, my older brother enters. Tossing his puzzles pieces in the air, he says "I finished it!! Ooops..."

Erika exeunts to my father's stentorian beckons, with a dangerous flicker in her eye and a low threatening growl.

Alone, and surrounded by the commotion of my family, I determinedly peck at my key board and will vocabulary to flutter through my fingers.


*********************************

Alas,
nearly twenty minutes have passed since ere the asterisks. Ansel challenged me to put together a 3-D puzzle, in which the quizzical wooden zig-zags warped and wrapped about my brain, both frustrating and delighting me (but mostly the former), in my attempts to fashion the thing into its spherical conclusion. Every now and then I felt pulled to give into my primitive lust to cast it upon the ground and shout unintelligible troll curses at the obnoxious puzzle pieces, but I retained this urge--if only to prove to my family once and for all that I am not altogether lacking in my left-brain capabilities (for which I have been ruthlessly labeled).

It is 12:02 am.
In my puzzling reverie, I let slip the remaining remnants of Christmas Day and have passed unknowingly into the realm of post Christmas.

This side of Christmas holds much danger and mystery: My ACTF acting competition, my new work schedule, a new semester...the year 2010.

I watch the shimmers of red and green smear into nonexistence as the magic of Christmas is rubbed away by the mere separation of two minutes.

Fare thee well, Christmastide; oh sugar filled glut of holiday, with your joyous laughs and lingering moments of revelry and laziness. I shall think of you later with a greater fondness, whence you harden in my memory, and drop like a ruby --my 20th Christmas-- into my mindful collection.