There’s something about post-New Year’s January that has always felt weird to me. The holidays are over and I always have to resist the urge to tear the tree and all decorations down in 60 seconds or less. Hard to believe folks used to put up their trees on Christmas Eve and leave themn up through “Little Christmas” (that’s January 6th for those of you born after 1950), but nowadays you see Christmas trees in the stores after Labor Day, so by the time January rolls around you’re just sick of it all and want to get on with the New Year’s cleaning. You never hear any references to “Little Christmas” anymore, but other cultures take it a lot more seriously than we do here in the States. It’s a lovely celebration and worthy of resisting temptation and keeping the tree up for a few extra days.

It was always depressing when I lived back in New England where the holidays (or post-thereof) didn’t change the fact that there was still no green grass or palm trees or golf courses or driving ranges to hit balls on. You had to plan a winter vacation to thaw out or wait until April. Here, it’s very nice to sit out on the patio at 5 o’clock with a glass of wine and watch the mourning doves queueing up like planes on approach to have a drink of pool water at the fountain. Today I had to turn the filter off early and the puddles of water the doves normally drink from had already evaporated, so they were all pissed and trying to figure out other ways to get at the water to drink. They failed.

Guess the post-holidays weren’t so good for them, either.