The stillness of after Christmas

I love the stillness that washes over the world (well, my world anyway) once the hustle and bustle of Christmas day is over.

In keeping with my new outlook on life I have foregone the Boxing Day sales. It's not easy, I confess. I really wanted to go and get more solar Christmas lights for next year, but we won't be needing to put any up so it's kind of a waste of time.

I normally buy wrapping paper and cards, paper plates, napkins etc after Christmas for the following year, but I won't need them either. Cards I did buy, though, a few days before Christmas day. The Princess and Little Man always give their school friends cards, so I bought a couple of packs of 24 for 50c a pack. The best I've ever managed was a pack of 24 cards in February at Target for 5c a pack! If the stores were discounting Christmas stock before Christmas was over by 50%, then I wonder if they'd discount them further still once Christmas was over?

I must say, the scenes on television about the post-Christmas shopping has me a bit sad. Why can't people just spend time at home with their families? Or go to the movies? Read books or have a picnic? Family is meant to be there for life; the latest handbag or designer shirt won't.

Christmas was just the four of us this year. I like it that way. Our cold lunch of meats, salads and fruits was changed at the very last minute to hot roast chicken and pork, roast vegetables and baked bread, followed by ice cream and topping. Why? It rained and rained and rained for days on end. I even had to put a cardigan on over my nightie when we got up at 6.30am to open presents!

On Christmas morning I checked the rain gauge and there was 110mls in there. We had another 90-odd mls fall by the end of the day. By Boxing day morning there was another 30-odd mls in the gauge. Yesterday we only had 7mls in the gauge when I checked in the morning. I haven't checked at all today. I think we're free of rain for a little while now that all of the monsoonal trough has headed south. Hopefully it will give the paddocks time to dry out a bit so we can mow again. At least all of this rain has given us a chance to watch and learn where the ground flows, holds water or flows the wrong way. I just wish we had the money to buy the rainwater tanks we've been wanting to get! And to put guttering on the roof!

I've read two books so far since Christmas Eve. I got The Black Echo by Michael Connelly as a Bookcrossing book left at the library. It's a police drama novel. It was really good. Then The Groom read it. I haven't decided where to leave it now we've finished with it. Yesterday I finished The Mango Tree by Australian author, Ronald McKie. It was so lovely. I bought it a couple of years ago at a second-hand book fair and can't believe it's taken me this long to get to it (but then again, if you only saw the amount of books we bought you wouldn't be surprised!). Now I'm back to a book (that I started months and months ago) by Marianne Fredriksson called According to Mary Magdalene, another book fair book. It's an interesting novel as "told" through the perspective of Mary Magdalene before, during and after meeting Jesus.

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and enjoyed what they made of it.