Can we talk?

Enjoying your in-between days, as a friend calls them?

I am frantically trying to but they are moving too damn fast — it’s as though I’m watching the hours slip through my fingers.

This is the only halfway decent Christmas picture I could get out of these jokers. From left: Mom, Basil, Dad and Catherine, taking the edge off with some snacks before dinner on Tuesday.

Still, it’s nice to spend time with family and friends, have a little time to breathe, a little time to sleep, start to corral some of the chaos, organize some of the too much stuff that has managed to jam drawers and closets around here. (After all, nothing screams “Happy Week After Christmas” like a perfectly arranged sock drawer.)

One of the biggest eye-openers of the week so far?

The fine art of conversation.

With Basil home — all the time, ahem — there is no need for email or text message communications. We can actually SPEAK to each other.

I’ve quickly determined this is a mixed blessing.

The highlights so far?

He has

• read me various excerpts from the newspaper (some of which I’ve already read in the hours before he rolled out of bed) and from a never-used barbecue cookbook that is destined to be tossed;
• kept a running commentary on his search for new phones to replace the ones here in the house that are dying (call me if you’d like to know what the guy at Radio Shack said); and
• asked me the same three questions at least five times each.

It might be time for one of us to return to work.