The dreaded return

This morning at 7 am my alarm went off and my first reaction was surprise. Then my brain connected the dots and I realised I had to get up and get ready for work and I almost cried. I did not have time to cry however because I was putting my alarm forward half an hour and then going back to sleep reasoning that I didn't really feel like eating breakfast anyway. Unfortunately I don't really trust my alarm so I would say I spent 5 minutes of that extra half hour sleeping and the other 25 worrying that the second alarm would not go off on time so I was remaining alert to keep checking the time. I dragged myself out of bed and made myself look vaguely human and threw some items that looked like food into a bag as a half assed effort at lunch for later. 

 Here it is the dreaded return to work after the Christmas break. I am told it's worse the longer you are off but at this point I wouldn't really know because it's been a few years now since I have gotten more than two days in a row. To be fair two days cooped up with my whole family is probably enough as we would only start to gripe at each other but I wouldn't have said no to a day at home in comfy clothes and yummy food and a really nice book. So if I am to be honest about it, the bit I object to most is the return to work rather than the end of Christmas. 

 The trouble is that Christmas in retail is harried and hectic and stressful. There is this onslaught of people into the shops desperate to buy almost anything that isn't nailed down and it takes more than two days to mentally recover from that so I was not in the right head space for it today. I only got myself to work today with the promise that I could have a coffee on the way and the the threat of the trouble I would be in if I was to call in sick (because calling in unwilling is generally not seen as socially acceptable) and you know it's a sad state of affairs when you find yourself using the carrot and the stick ( motivation techniques as opposed to bizarre and kinky practices) on yourself.

 I got there in the end in time to put my game face on and deal with every bizarre query and the disbelief that we hadn't gotten any stock in between Christmas Eve and Today ( apparently holidays are only for the consumers and not those who service them) and every oddball in the town was in to haunt the place. I think I deserve a prize of some sort for resisting the urge to crawl beneath a table in the children's  section ( it has a cloth that would hide me) with some chocolate and a book and stay there until it was safe to come out. I survived it and now have a day off to hibernate and mentally prepare for the week that lies ahead. 

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