Dec 29, 2023 By Beth Dolinar 4 min read

Has anyone else been a bit confused this week? Have you been shuffling around in your floppy pants, wondering what day it is?

What I’ve described there is my own week, this stretch between the holidays that can be disorienting. But this year seems to be even more vexing because of where Christmas and New Years Day are landing.

Christmas on a Monday gives us Christmas Eve on a Sunday. Something about that feels off-as if the two days were shifted forward 24 hours-and Sunday just doesn’t feel like it should be the eve of anything as significant as Christmas.

Maybe this goes back to my childhood when we never missed Sunday Mass, which meant that if Christmas fell on a Monday, we were going to Mass two days in a row. Church didn’t cause my befuddlement this year, so what was it?

Here are my theories: Because of their work schedules and distance, my children did not make the trip home for the holidays this year. If I’d had a houseful of kids, and geez do I wish I had, the cooking and merriment would have placed markers on my calendar. While shopping for the meals, I would be writing notes on my mental schedule (pot roast Sunday evening and pancakes Monday morning) to keep track of time, and even after the kids had gone home, I would have memories attached to those days.

There were some events on the calendar this year. I hosted a brunch for my family, but that was the Sunday before Christmas Eve, so that didn’t provide any structure to this week.

My other theory is about garbage. Collection in my neighborhood is early Monday morning. I know to take the trash cans to the curb on Sunday night. But with Monday being the holiday, wouldn’t that mean a one-day delay in the pick-up? But as I went to take out the trash on Monday night, I noticed only half the homes on my street had done so, signaling general community confusion about the trash, and proof I’m not the only one who’s upside down this week.

And then there’s just the general fuzzy fog of the days after Christmas. We’ve eaten too many cookies, spent too much time watching goofy Hallmark movies, have generally excused ourselves from any activity considered productive, tidying, enriching or cardio-aerobic. Even my furry friend Smoothie slept in Wednesday morning, and he’s never done that.

And except for writing this column and doing some prep work for my next documentary film, it’s not really a work week. Without the 9-to-5 template of work hours, these days melt into each other.

But I did make myself something of a reference point. On Christmas morning, finding myself without family things to do and seeing that we were having an April-like day, I put the rack on the car and went for a bike ride. It was lovely to be out, and the memory of those hours are giving me a bit of a signpost for the week. Oh, right! The bike ride was on Monday. The other days? A wash.

At some point yesterday, feeling puffy and also lumpy, I dragooned myself into actual shoes and clothing and changed my bed linens. And then I saw my Christmas tree in the living room. I recognized in those twinkly lights my tendency to let holidays ooze into late January. I boxed up the decorations and took the tree back up to storage. I was returning my house to the factory settings.

Now, it feels almost like January around here. Get me to Tuesday and I may finally know where I am.