My Week in Haiku — week 9

Christmas with the in-laws and Valentine’s Day at Target

Linda Kowalchek/L.K. Smithe
3 min readDec 30, 2023

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Utility worker squirrel busy hanging a red ball for Christmas. Photo by author.

If the holidays are good for one thing, it’s for disrupting established schedules and injecting an additional dose of stress into life. I have become completely disoriented, and as I write this, I have no idea what day of the week it is.

I recall that my husband and I spent Christmas evening with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and her enormous family and group of friends.

There I sat in a room full of people I knew absolutely nothing about, and they knew even less about me.

Everyone was really friendly, trying to include me in their conversations. We stayed the obligatory two hours and then headed home. I am more hopeful for next Christmas since they served cranberry jelly shaped like a can this year. I believe this is a trait of down-to-earth people like myself, so I think this could be the beginning of more enjoyable holidays in the future.

Of course, I’m the only one who ate the cranberries shaped like a can, but I’m trying to be optimistic about future gatherings.

I remember that the day before Christmas, I ventured to Target for necessities like a $6 (used to be $4) pillow to rest my head on when I sleep, toilet paper, and chocolate.

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Linda Kowalchek/L.K. Smithe

Writing about real life. Proponent of the passive voice and bringing “that” back. Member of the typewriter generation. Reach me at Linda.kowalchek@gmail.com