shadows

It’s been full on, 24/7 with the kids.

I’m coming down with something akin to man-flu, only real. Or maybe I’m just finally letting all that stress seep out of my pores.

We’ve adventured, visited, watched, sat, played, eaten. And now it’s enough.

Today, Boo!’s behaviour has been nightmareish. He’s tired and hungry and has had too much excitement to be reasonable.

I can’t even be bothered to get angry with him anymore. After a final, final warning, he was sent to bed without tea, sobbing into his pillow because, finally, he realised that I meant it.

I’m tired. Christmas has been a curates egg of times and experiences. So much good with so much indifferent. So much the same and so much as before.

It feels ungrateful to suggest that it just isn’t enough. That at the end of the day, with friends and family wishing me well, all the best, a wonderful life, that there’s something missing; something that would make the days better, or at least the evenings when even the arguing noise of the kids has gone quiet.

The candles are lit, the TV is showing something bland, but with a happy ending.

Too many happy endings. That’s the problem.

Real life never comes wrapped in expensive paper and tied with a ribbon. Unless you do it yourself. 

And then it doesn’t count.