Now that there aren’t any little kiddos scampering around the parental abode, Christmas has become a much more relaxed affair. I’m the baby of the family, and since I’ve moved out we’ve gone back and forth between completely ignoring holiday ado in its entirety, and making it as big a deal as it was when I was still knee-high to a grasshopper. I think this year we may have hit upon the happy medium; we did minimal present-exchanging but not the obscene mountain of stuff from days of yore. We made piles and heaps of cookies and the dinner itself left us all in a food-induced coma, but we refrained from a big Christmas Eve breakfast. By eight o’clock last night the extended family were on their merry snowstormy way home, and the rest of us read until dozing off from excessive cranberry pie.

My cold has blossomed into the mighty and fearsome Goo Stage, which (I do hope) means that it’s on its way out, with any luck. Today’s agenda calls for more lying around and reading, much consumption of leftovers, and washing of a serious quantity of dishes.