Today is the day in the UK, where things start floating back down to earth and you look around you and take stock.

Christmas day is spent in a fervour of family, food and fun.

Boxing Day is much the same. We visit family, or they come here. We eat the aforementioned Bubble and Squeak, turkey sandwiches and chocolate. The kids play with their prezzies. The grown ups snooze. Some venture forth into the sales and come home laden with yet more stuff, and the day is over in a flash.

So today, I have woken up and it is as though a mist has lifted from my eyes.

Well almost.

Although when I was reading Miss M a story this morning I think the mist may have still been there…

Rod Campbell’s Dear Zoo has been read so many times in our house that Miss M has known it by heart for well over a year. It is short and sweet and always makes us smile.

I picked the Amazon link as it lets you look inside and see the basic story, which is something like,

‘I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet. They sent me an…elephant (under the flap)…he was too big. I sent him back.’

The book goes through various animals, from camel to snake, until the epic ending where you lift the flap and there at last, is the perfect pet.

As M and I peruse this work of literary genius, I am on the very edge of sleep. She turns the pages, prompting the words we both know so well, and I am kind of getting away with a snooze at the same time. Until, suddenly, my dream like state breaks into the real word, and I say this…

Me: “So they sent me aaaaaa….”

Miss M lifts the flap, and I shout the following word with confidence and enthusiasm…

Me: “Vase.”

We both look at each other confused.

Her because her calm, sensible (hee hee), intelligent maternal parent is speaking complete nonsense.
Me because I realize that I must have dropped off and been dreaming about a book I was looking through last night which involved a vase.

This book actually. I treated myself too it last week, but to be honest it has just led to further confusion so
far, as I have no idea if I am an apple, a vase, a cornet, a brick or well any of them really. Bugger.

Anyway, I digress.

M and I were looking at each other askance.

Miss M: “Dat a monkey mummy.”

I shake my head and sit up, willing myself properly awake.

Me: “Silly Mummy. That is a monkey M. You’re right.”

Arghhhh.

I think Santa may have stolen my brain.

So I come downstairs and I look around me, and I see…the mess.

Oh my God.

I need to:
1. Clean the house from top to bottom
2. Scrape play dough from the carpet
3. Find the floor beneath the piles of paper, gifts, sweet wrappers
4. Sort the paper into blue recycling bin, and green general rubbish – what fun
5. Try to decide where all the new stuff will fit
6. Wash my hair
7. Put away the shopping that I ordered in advance from Schmesco. (Ask Holly.)
8. Make a nutritional, non-left over based meal for my family
9. Entertain two small children, admiring each of their gifts in turn, including the scary My Little Pony Newborn thing with the big plastic head,

..and the lovely, high school musical doll of Gabriella, a.k.a Vanessa Hudgens who also became famous for some erm, nude picures that ‘mistakenly’ got released to the masses.
10. Decide what body shape I am before I actually put on any clothes…

Bugger.

I am lost.