The Week That Isn't Really a Week

December 28th.

There is a specific quality to the days between Christmas and New Year's that I cannot find the right word for. Not sad, exactly. Not lonely, exactly. Just, thin. Like the week doesn't fully count and everyone knows it, and you end up doing strange things like sitting on your kitchen floor at nine in the evening eating crackers and staring at your pothos plant and thinking, vaguely, that you should call someone, but not quite picking up the phone.

I talked to my grandmother on Christmas Day and it was fine, it was good, actually, but there's a specific feeling that comes after, when you're back in your own apartment and the phone is back on the counter and the call is over and you're just you again, in your own four walls. The apartment looked nice this week. I cleaned it before Christmas like someone was coming over, even though no one was. The collapsed bowl is still on the windowsill.

Gerald and the bowl. Still here.

Gerald is still alive, which I choose to count as a win.

I keep doing this thing where I almost call home and then don't, for no real reason. Not because anything is wrong. Just because the moment passes and I can't figure out what I'd even say, 'hi, it's me, I'm just sitting here, it's the weird week', and somehow that doesn't feel like enough to justify a whole phone call. Which is ridiculous, obviously. I know it's ridiculous. I'm writing it down so that maybe tomorrow I'll pick up the phone before the moment passes.

The in-between week.

The sketchbook is on the coffee table. I drew the bowl on Thanksgiving and I still haven't decided what to do with that photograph. Small things. The week that isn't really a week.