Calendar Day, one day late

December 26th is a very important day in the U.S., and possibly all over the world: it is the day that retailers start selling the next year's calendars at 50% off.

I call this day Calendar Day. Sometimes I will buy a calendar or two before Calendar Day, because they are in short supply and I really want them, or because, like the Life In Hell calendar, they are only available through certain retailers and are guaranteed to sell out.

It seems that this year, at long last, either most shoppers or most retailers have gotten wise to Calendar Day. I wasn't able to get out of the house to go shopping yesterday, and by today most of the calendars had been picked over.

My holiday season has been a bit of a blunted emotional roller coaster. This has been a year of tragedy and loss for me and my family. (It has been a year of tragedy and loss for many people, victims of the Tsunami of late 2004 and the hurricanes and earthquakes and bombings of this year, so for me the more natural deaths of my uncle, dog, and father, in that order, seem to pale by comparison.) I have been able to cope in the runup to Christmas, perhaps, because I immersed myself in my box project. The amount of effort involved, both mental and physical, meant that I didn't have much spare time to dwell on tragedy and loss. But once we had our Christmas party at work last Thursday, that was it. I was spent. Exhausted. Done. Not to mention sucking Sterno fumes in an enclosed location, which didn't help my energy levels.

December 23rd I spent flitting from one retailer to another, buying mop-up gift cards for everyone I hadn't managed to get a gift for, and a few extras just in case.

December 24th was non-stop wrapping, followed by gathering together the gifts and food items for vigil supper at my brother's house, followed by Midnight Mass - the last Midnight Mass for our priest, possibly for our parish, and possibly for my aunt, who has cancer. I took pictures.

December 25th was Christmas, and I decided to let it all hang. I was wiped out and wanted to sleep. It was not to be.

I got a call early in the morning (well, around 9:00) from a friend who was on the way back from Northeastern Pennsylvania to her home near Washington, D.C. She had been in the area to have vigil supper with her father, who was in a nursing home and has been for several years. She was just calling to let me know about modifications to her work/vacation/grad school schedule and how Friday would be the optimal day to arrange a visit.

Fair enough. I got up, took a call from my friend in Ireland, exchanged gifts with my family and our cats, had breakfast, and took visitors. Eventually I got a shower and went to my cousin's house to exchange with her and a friend of ours. We wound up watching episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force from my new Volume 4 DVD set. Late that night I got to bed and vowed to sleep in.

I got another call from the same friend early on the 26th, only this time she was on her way up. Her father had died around 7:00 that morning.

The day was a blur. Phone calls, more visits. One of my uncles - for whom this may also be the final Christmas - was in town, visiting my cousin's house. I eventually found my way up there with my camera. We made small talk. I took pictures, both with my camera and with the almost-identical camera I had gotten for my mom. We watched more Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I never got out to go shopping for calendars.

Today got off to a slow start. My sister was heading back down to her place in Maryland, and I wanted to be around to see her off...but as it was, she didn't get out until late, so I didn't get to do the visiting I had planned. Which was OK by me. I would have liked to see my friends, but it felt good to be doing nothing more strenuous than sitting around watching my new DVD of Death Race 2000.

I finally got out to do some calendar shopping late today. By the time I got there, the one independent local bookstore - the one that had the Dogs Playing Poker calendar - had closed for the day. Waldenbooks had been ravaged, but I was able to pick up the Terence Dickinson Astronomy calendar (which is so big it has two holes to hang it up), a Hubble Space Telescope calendar, and a Dick & Jane calendar. The kiosk in the mall had nothing worth buying, and neither did Spencer Gifts or Barnes & Noble.

So, it looks like no MAD Magazine calendar this year (I have purchased this for the past two years at a Spencer Gifts near East Canton, Ohio, but I'm not going out there this year, since my friend has stayed in Ireland for the holidays), no Ireland page-a-day calendar (the 2005 edition had mostly the same pictures as the 2004 edition anyway, just in a different order), and no Marjolein Bastin calendar, either (her design for this year was less nature-studies and more frilly feminine stuff.) I still have a few stores to hit. But, really, there are only so many calendars I need...