Wynken, Blynken, and Nod

I've been sleeping for the last two weeks. I've been spending long nights happily lost in dreamland, grudgingly awakened by Peanut's incessant, "Mamaaa? Mamaaa?" I've been napping under the pile of clean laundry on my bed that I'm too discouraged to put away, and reading regency novels under my covers since I had nowhere else to go. We'll call it early hibernation and I was in need of a spring.

Well, gone is my excuse to nod off because our big gaping living room hole is FILLED - mind you, not by windows and a staircase getting installed as planned (thus sealing off the winter air rushing into our home from the great outdoors). Not that, but by a puzzle of poly-styrofoam blocks covered in a plastic sheet and stuck in the opening as a temporary measure. You see, (now steady yourselves), the construction work on our house has suffered a bit of a delay.

In this case, we can't fault our workers for the delay because it was due to a flood on our newly parqueted floor that will necessitate them ripping apart the floor boards and lifting the parquet up to let the insulation underneath dry out. Well, truth be told, we can fault them a bit since they were the ones who squeezed the tubes to the water softener as they moved it, causing the reservoir to overflow enthusiastically. (To their credit, they rushed to survey the problem on a Sunday afternoon insuring that they stayed in our good graces, and they have continued to receive their daily carafe of coffee). But it is a little disheartening to walk on the floor and hear "squish squish," and watch the water overflow at the edges and spill back onto the floorboards. It gives a whole new meaning to the term "floating parquet."

In spite of my early hibernation brought on by the big gaping hole, I did manage to notice that our home was lovely to be in, lovely to come home to, especially in the dark grey afternoon light that accompanied the winter drizzle. Cramped and chaotic, it was still home - dry, warm and ours. With the living room sealed off and dark, the only light that reached the outdoors emanated from the large kitchen window, causing the house to wink at passerbys. It winked at the workers as they headed to their own homes at the end of their working day, and it winked at Darling Husband as he came home from his.

Now that the living room is ready for use with light spilling out from both front windows, our house is once again bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready for our next endeavor, which is Christmas preparation. Darling Husband is less than enthusiastic about digging through kilos of boxes to fish out our decorations, but once I threaten him with the alternative - snowman stencils sprayed on our beautiful french windows with the fake snow spray - he will reach deep down within himself and find the motivation to unearth our more simple decorations.

We have elected to host two visiting families for Christmas Eve - one from South Africa and one from India who are both spending the holidays here in France very far from their loved ones. This has put a fire under me to start thinking of the holidays. Gone are the illusions of our first Christmas in the new house boasting stockings hung by the chimney with care (our chimney doesn't yet function and is covered by the clothes rack in our makeshift bedroom). I have given up expecting polished hardwood floors or big open living room spaces. I'm even ready to welcome people in our 55 sq metres of space if we are unable to move our bedrooms into the finished downstairs.

All I know is that it's time to spring out of bed, stretch my limbs and open both eyes, as we get exactly one chance to celebrate the holidays with our children aged 5, 3 and 1. We get one chance to celebrate Christmas in our 9th year of marriage, one chance to celebrate with the friends who are here on short stay from far-away lands. We get one chance to celebrate our first holiday in our very own house. Blink, and the chance is gone.