2023 the prequel…..

I’m tired. I don’t often admit I’m tired. I’ve always had a bit of an Energizer Bunny personality. I tend to go, go, go until I can go no more. However, I seriously have been going non-stop since the beginning of November and my batteries are beginning to run low. About a week before Christmas, my body was sending up urgent messages it was time to slow down and recharge.

After Santa’s job was done, and the sleigh housed in the shed for 2022, I decided to listen to my nagging inner voice and take a few days off to hit the refresh button. During the 48 hour period following Christmas, I had no company coming and encouraged none, stave for my sidekick and BFF (best furry friend), Miss Boo, the Queen of Cats. Before allowing myself to settle, I had some catching up to do with my to-do’s. The day after Christmas, I dismantled the tree. This is tradition at my house. The tree goes up the day after Thanksgiving, and comes down the day after Christmas. When the tree was in it’s zippered bag, I boxed up all the ornaments and decorations, stored them in my recently acquired storage unit, and proceeded to clean my house spit-spot from top to bottom. Whew. Boo slept in the corner most of the day as I worked, only opening one eye from time to time to watch in mild curiosity as I passed by carrying the much hated vacuum cleaner or an armload of laundry. Lazy to the bone, all this work, work, work energy floating about the house must have been upsetting the normal sleep, eat, and poop routine she generally adheres to.

Once all the busy work had been done, I reserved one more day in which to do absolutely nothing. I silenced my phone, put on not one drop of makeup, left my pajamas with the penguins on them in place in lieu of getting dressed, and vegetated the entire 24 hour period. It was glorious, I tell you. Door Dash was good enough to deliver lunch, an enormous burger paired with a mound of fries, half of which I ate around noon, saving the rest for my evening meal. Perfecto mente dice. Loved every decadent “aren’t you wasting your life” minute of it. Yay. As part of my day of rest, I binge watched a series called “1883”. Every time the query “watch next episode?” came up on the screen I enthusiastically pushed “yes, yes, yes” and continued to watch. What a great show. I was hooked from the first episode. Apparently I am the only living human in the U.S. who hasn’t seen a single episode of Yellowstone. 1883, and I believe 1923 are part of the whole Yellowstone franchise. I’m not sure if I started at the beginning or whether I opened the book in the middle. However, I do know now I will have to watch all the other moving parts. I don’t take the time, or have the time really, to be a dedicated TV viewer. When I do get involved in really good television though, I will find the time. When Downton Abbey concluded, I was so devastated it was like losing members of my family. I felt like I should host a Celebration of Life for the cast.

On the subject of family, I had a lovely Christmas with my daughter and her brood. I hope you did as well. Well, not with my daughter and her brood. They wouldn’t have room at their table for all of you, but I hope you had a good Christmas wherever the day found you. This year we didn’t prepare the usual huge formal holiday dinner. My daughter and her family have been dealing with some health problems the past month, and all members of the family went through a bout of COVID in November, so nobody was up to making a fuss. Instead of turkey with all the trimmings, we had white chicken chili, garlic bread and salad and fresh guacamole and chips earlier in the day to keep us going until dinner time. This was fine and double dog dandy for me. I had a party Christmas Eve I went to where I consumed enough food to hold me over until spring. Still full from the last piece of pie I’d put away, I was happy to find a comfortable spot to park myself and watch as everyone opened presents. Our youngest member, Zeppelin, now four, must have been very good this year, for there was a bumper crop of gifts under the tree from Santa with his name written on the tags. From the looks of the front room, the reindeer and the jolly old elf had left quite a mess the night before. Muddy hoofprints stretched out across the floorboards. Alongside the hoofprints, snowy images of boots marched along leading from the fireplace up to the base of the tree. In the corner next to the tree on a small table was a festive holiday plate holding two gnawed raw carrots and the remnants of three holiday cookies, several bites missing from each. Looking around, it was obvious if Santa hadn’t had time to clean up after himself, at least he and the herd had stopped for a little snack before proceeding on their appointed rounds. Eyes wide as Frisbees, Zeppelin took it all in obviously enchanted. At four, with little question all things are possible. The elves had done their work well in setting the scene beautifully, to make it magical for him to enjoy. In the end, isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

Tonight is New Year’s Eve. At the moment I am at work. I am writing a blog because there is no work for me today. All the directors are out for the holiday and the phone has needed my attention probably three times since I walked in the door. If I had anything less to do, I would be in a coma. On days such as this, they allow me to do whatever I need to to pass the time. This is what I need to.

Where or where does the time go? I can’t believe another year is coming to a close. I feel like the character in The Time Machine watching the world flying by just beyond my reach and finding myself at another crossroad every time I step off the bus. Outside, the rain has been steadily falling since yesterday. Driving in, I hydroplaned several times while going through deep troughs of water on the roadways. Weather in one form or another is slated to continue in the area for at least another week. You won’t hear me complaining about precipitation here in drought plagued California. There are so many dying trees starving for hydration, I consider every drop a blessing that falls to the ground. I find myself wondering why it is someone isn’t out there madly constructing more reservoirs. If we’re short on water, wouldn’t it make sense to make extra receptacles to capture the water we do have falling from the sky or to store up some of the snow runoff? The last large dam project in the state was in 1979, and yet we continue to be plagued with droughts and lack of water and do nothing to hold on to what we have. Makes no sense to my mind, but then I guess I can just add that to the list of things I wonder about.

I am going to a New Year’s Eve party tonight. I may have mentioned, New Year’s Eve does not rank among my favorite holidays. Number one, I am definitely a morning person. The likelihood of my seeing the ball drop wouldn’t be something I’d place a large bet on, was I a betting person. Secondly, most previous New Year’s Eve celebrations I’ve attended haven’t been what I’d call memorable. Well, let’s say they may have been memorable, but not for the right reasons. More memorable like, “oh yeah, don’t want to do that again”. Some have actually bordered on disastrous. For me, a good book, or a great movie, a hot toddy, and some excellent company would make my evening a success. Richard, however, my squeeze du jour, likes to go out. You can’t be in a relationship where the pendulum doesn’t swing both ways, so I’m slipping on my dancing shoes and making a go of it for him. I will slap on my very best “party face” and try to summon up the appropriate enthusiasm to make him feel his evening was worth the price of admission.

I pulled my “little black dress” out of mothballs and stopped by Macy’s to see if I could pick up some black hose to go with. I didn’t want to display my winter legs without covering them. The ethereal “uncooked chicken” color emanating from them could well detract from the band entertaining on the stage. Unable to locate the hosiery section in the store, I stopped and asked a salesperson where I might find it. To my surprise, I was told they don’t sell hose anymore. It seems people either spray tan, go to a tanning booth, or go commando in 2022. Really? The lady said there was simply no demand for hose anymore. She went on to tell me she was asked at least once a day where to find the nylons. Hmmmmm. Well, then there is a demand to my mind. She is one sales clerk getting asked once a day. Likely other sales clerks are getting asked as well. Is it just me? I guess I can add this to the why don’t they build new dams pile. However, it became obvious whether it made sense or not, there were no hose to be found under Macy’s roof. Soooooo as the helpful clerk suggested, I went to Target. Target and Walmart have cornered the market on lady’s leg coverings I was told. I bought two pairs in my size in case they discontinue to stock them completely somewhere down the road and an unsuspecting public is forced to be subjected to my wan looking appendages out the open raw and uncut. To be honest, I’m a little leery of spray tans or tanning creams. I’m sure they have come a long way since I was a kid, but still. Back then the offerings were slim to none to achieve the perfect golden color we all attained to. If you chose not to lie in the sun and bake till you were cooked to a nice golden brown, your only other option was to slather yourself with Coppertone Tanning Lotion. Supposedly whatever ingredients were in the tube created a natural looking tan without benefit of the sun. Their slogan was “don’t be a paleface”. Definitely the product lived up to the hype. You were not pale after repeated applications, more it turned your skin a lovely shade of burnt sienna. They suggested on the label you wash your hands immediately after applying. We were teenagers. We rarely did anything suggested or otherwise instructed and most likely never read a label. For a week after I used the product, my hands looked like I’d recently attended an Indian wedding.

I am not particularly sorry to bid farewell to 2022. It was a year with a lot of hard corners imbued with a frenetic kind of feel to the days. I have a feeling 2023 is going to serve up some interesting and fun surprises. I have no idea why I feel this so strongly, but my intuition is fairly accurate, and in this case all my happy alarms are going off. I do hope so. I am ready to embrace fun adventures, new faces. happy days, and treasured family moments. I want to do something I’ve always wanted to do, see something I haven’t seen before, put something new and different on my plate, and introduce new faces into the the lineup I am currently familiar with. Sign me up for all of the above.

Someone paid me a lovely compliment the other day. She said she enjoyed talking to me because I always held on to the belief in the end things would turn out all right. Interesting. I had to think about that after she said it. Was it true? Well, in an odd way I think it might be. Perhaps more accurately, I believe things will turn out as they are meant to do. I am truly a fatalist at heart. If it is your time to go, I think it is likely you will do exactly that. For me we are given a certain amount of time to thrive, experience, and exist. Sort of a “so it is written, so it shall be” way of looking at things.

It’s like people who are late for a plane and miss their flight only to learn the plane they had tickets for went down after takeoff leaving no survivors. Or, the woman who gets in the car in the morning then realizing she’d left her phone on the kitchen counter. Running back in to retrieve it, she narrowly misses a deadly pile up on the freeway that she would definitely have been involved with had her phone been in their purse. Things like that lead me to believe where it might have been the other people’s time to go, it was not the person missing the plane or forgetting her wallet’s time. You may have a totally different take on the world than that which I respect. That is only how I feel about the whole thing. This brings to mind, the plane that went down with Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and “The Big Bopper” in 1959 killing everyone on board. Tommy Allsup, a guitarist, was also supposed to fly with them. Not room for everyone, he flipped a coin with Ritchie Valens for a seat, and lost. Also Waylon Jennings, not yet the huge star he was to become, didn’t go on that doomed flight instead giving up his seat “The Big Bopper”. Life can be, as they say, a bit of a crap shoot. I look at the many times I’ve hung on the precipice of disaster, yet here I am stepping into 2023. Who knows what the future holds. That’s the delicious mystery of it all.

Happy New Year to you and yours. Catchya next year. Stay Safe.

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