The holidays came (in about September 1 believe) and the holidays whooshed past us like a one hit wonder on the radio.  We shall see it come again, (due next August in your local department stores I’m sure) and with it, the excitement of the season.
Now, however, we must deal with the dog days of winter.  Boredom has officially started to settle in at the Jakubowicz household.
The build- up during the Christmas season is like lighting a slow fuse on a line of the best fireworks money can buy. You spend money on a lot of fireworks, you light the wick, watch the sucker flare up and burn, wait in high anticipation, and briefly picture how exciting and beautiful it will be. The firework display that you worked for goes up in a blaze of frightening glory.  You ooh, you aah, you whoop and holler.The kids go crazy, pictures flash at the sight of the explosion in the air. Glasses click for a toast, everyone jumps up and down in praise of the lights in the sky.  Then….it’s over. The family looks at each other dumbfounded that it has ended.
Now you must face the fact that there must be the return to normal. All that lingers is the colored smoke wafting through the air. You walk away wanting more, but yet, there is no more.  Not until next year.
So now we feel empty. Not just my wallet, but our psyche has been stripped of excitement and stimulation. We’re officially bored.
You don’t realize it until a few weeks after Christmas.  Christmas day fizzles out of the hearts of our kids. The presents that were ripped into have been played with, put together, looked at and worn enough to receive a sigh when we think about them. Now we search for exhilaration in our mundane routine once again.
We do things like stare at the ceiling and try to follow the blades of the fan rotating around and around.  After we get a headache from doing it, we decide to stop. So we may do something like walk into the kitchen and open the refrigerator door. We stand there for several minutes, looking at it’s contents – again.
Then we shut the door, realizing there is nothing that jumps out at our taste buds, so we pace a little bit back and forth. A voice from the other room calls out to us.
“Daddy, do something with me, I’m bored!” bellows the ever present child that has been put in the same position you have.  But wait, you must stand firm, you are the mature parent.
You have to give them a speech, a life lesson if you will.  You tell them they need to find something to do, they cannot rely on Daddy to entertain them when they are bored. They have an imagination and an entire outside playground to go play in. Then you decide to put them to work, you tell them if they’re bored, then they need to get a broom and start cleaning. They whine a little. You fetch the broom. They sweep reluctantly. You then sit down and watch the blades of the fan turn again.
As the blades of the fan go, so goes the seasons and holidays.  One thing I do know, we are greater than these early winter after Christmas blues. The Jakubowicz family shall overcome them, and so shall you.  Who am I kidding anyway? I have two kids that desire my presence in the least likely of times, a dog that follows me everywhere, a regular day job taking up my week, meals to prepare because for some odd reason people like to eat, house cleaning chores, laundry to constantly wash…and a partridge in a pear tree.
Yes, I’m a house husband.