dual personalities

Well, good Wednesday morning. It is Daughter #1 back again after a two-week break. I know my last post had no pictures and left some readers concerned about my mental state. But, never fear. I’ve been back at work two-days and already quoted in the paper once in an article where it was necessary to use my full name and title and that of the other five spokespeople who all replied with slight variations on the word “no.” Gotta hit that word count.

Nevertheless, I persist.

The big news in my neck of the woods is that I bought a new car! Yes, I know it’s the worst possible time to buy a new car but I’d been thinking about it for awhile. Plus, when my old car was damaged in the severe weather several weeks ago, I was curious about if the trade in price would be way less than the value or just the value less the amount of the damage. Turns out, the value was just fine. The dealer had the exact model and color I wanted (out of the two cars on the lot) and it felt like providence. I’m very happy and feel much more secure on the highway in my small SUV than I did in my zoom zoom car.

It looks much bigger from this angle, but she’s real cute.

In other big news, while home over the break, I started reading the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett and I must admit, I can’t put the first book down. Some of you may recall from prior posts that I’ve had trouble reading for the past two years. My mother and I were talking about how little we read in 2021 and I jokingly suggested my list was like four books…and then it was like four books. So, it is wonderful to be reading again. This book is full of subtlety and has many characters plus it takes place in 16th century Scotland, so, it’s light reading. Just kidding. It is not an easy read–but it is really enjoyable.

One of my goals for the year is to take my mushy brain and make it rock hard again. (Seriously, if you haven’t been clicking the hyperlinks in my posts, you’re really missing out).

I’ll wrap this up with some funny things from the internet to get you ready to face the day.

Happy New Year from all of us to all of you! Here’s wishing you a healthy, happy and mask-free 2022!

“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.”
― Benjamin Franklin

All three sons have arrived home safely: one came up the highway through a white-out around Tug Hill; one came from an ice storm in Maine, and the youngest wound through the Adirondacks in clear weather. We are all together for Christmas for the first time in four years! To celebrate, we feasted on bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs and pancakes until not a crumb remained. Here, the older brothers yuck it up with the DH, while Tim gives the photographer the side-eye.

After dinner, we spent a raucous evening playing music on our laptops and phones. We listened to everything from Tyler Childers, Blanco White, and Tom Petty, to Bill Bailey (watch from beginning to at least 4:54) and The Hu (Mongolian biker metal – start at 1:30). I bet you can’t guess who chose the Hu (not I). Since we shared music for hours, these selections barely scratch the surface, but you get the idea. Finally, this Christmas medley should put you in a festive mood.

You have to admit it’s quite special. I particularly like the “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” sung to the tune of “Jingle Bells”. Do listen to the whole thing!

Today I need to write the cards for my gifts but otherwise I have no real plans. There will be no church service due to New York’s latest Covid rules, but we will do just fine reading poems and singing songs on our own. Merry Christmas! God bless you all and bring you cheer!  

Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I had my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heard. He should!”

Scrooge in A Christmas Carol

Back in my New York days, I was walking down a street in Soho one sunny weekend with a friend when we passed a man with a cat on his head. The man was charging $1 to take a picture with him. And people were doing it. I turned to my friend and said, “We are such chumps for having jobs.”

This feeling has never really gone away. Working hard, having standards, being responsive to emails, calling people back, it all feels like wasted effort. Few people reciprocate. And certainly fewer people appreciate it.

It is hard to believe Christmas Eve is this Friday, because, boy, I am just not feeling festive at all. And I probably won’t feel any festivity until I get to Kirkwood, crack open the first bottle of the house wine, and put my work phone away. Because it is only when I am away from the internet and everyone else’s incessant opinions about everything that I am able to focus on what is happening right around me. I look back at the year and it seems like it actually went pretty fast. But that’s probably because I barely remember any of it. It’s one long blur of me talking about how stupid everything is (because it kept getting stupider with every passing day).

Or maybe it is that for the whole year what I was being told didn’t match what I saw around me. And my brain is just mush now.

As I look ahead to the new year, facing the daily struggle of finding the desire to continue working hard, be responsive to emails, call people back, have standards and hope that others will raise theirs to meet mine, feels like the manifestation of a heavy sigh. I don’t like feeling like Arthur in The King of Queens all the time.

Each year at Christmas, I try to read A Christmas Carol. I enjoy the language and identifying the lines I recognize from Gonzo’s dialogue in ‘A Muppet Christmas Carol’. But also, the story is a great one for setting one off for Christmas in a good way. It should be required reading for everyone with an opinion on anything.

The temptation to be like Scrooge is a strong one. And giving in is easy. The struggle, then, is not to let that temptation win. To be joyful is important. We need to focus on finding joy in responding with a smile, working hard, and even little things like the UPS driver who says ‘Merry Christmas’ as he drops a package at the door and runs back to his truck.

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round–apart from the veneration due to its sacred origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that–as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-travellers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, ‘God bless it!'”

Scrooge’s nephew, A Christmas Carol