In With The New - Welcome 2014

Lots of bloggers do this end-of-the-year recap thing. I suppose I could write about the highs and the lows. I can tell you, however, that the most interesting experience of the year had to be breaking my arm and the subsequent surgery, an experience I would prefer not to repeat.  And that was just the first week

The rest of the year was pretty much a learning curve. Not too much of it was voluntary. I did try my hand, albeit briefly, at blowing glass, which was definitely one of the high points. I finally learned how to make a flaky biscuit...or at least one that doesn't morph into a hockey puck thirty minutes after it comes outta the oven. I also learned how to change the spark plugs in the tractor. These were the fun ones.

The less fun ones were the pacemaker lessons, the hip fracture surgery and rehab lessons, the long distance worrying lessons, and the running to the hospital lessons. Those were definitely not the fun.

Nor were the lessons about how screwed up our Congress is. Up until this past year, I believed (G-d help me, I really did) that people who are elected to Congress had good in their hearts and the desire to provide good planning and forethought to all citizens of this nation. I believed whole-heartedly in checks-and-balances, and that our Congresspeople were able to see past the smoke and mirrors to enact legislation worthy of our nation. I even believed that the Supremes were above politics, function in the rarified atmosphere of the courts where purity of heart and soul were primary requirements for even being considered for a seat on that august bench. 

Well, so much for my being smart. 

The reality is that over the last 12 months, we learned we are saddled with a congress that cannot even pass sensible guidelines for owning guns. Our congressclowns can not only agree on nothing, they will do everything possible to sabotage the other side and stop any legislation from occurring. I write to my very own personal Congressclown John Kline with great regularity asking him the same question over and over: what is your position on gun control? and I have yet to received an answer, although I did get a weird message from some woman who said she was in her office and I could call her if I wanted. 

Anyway, I don't believe any of that stuff any more. I believe the Congressclowns, pretty much without exception, are in it for their own aggrandizement and little else. Gone is the idea that congress's first function is to establish laws that are for the betterment of this nation, not for directed at a wholesale destruction of the lower economic echelons that make up the backbone of this nation. 

I also leaned a lot more about anti-Semitism this year...mostly that it's alive and well and apparently living in our university system. I leaned that the boycotts have little or no impact in Israel, but damage the very people they claim to want to help economically. We won't even talk about that part where Jews have been living in the land for over 3000 documented years. Before you come talk to me about who has a right to be where, tell me your plans for returning what we call America to its rightful owners, the Native Americans. 

As it turned out, the last quarter of the year was truly uncharted territory for me.  The frailty of my cadre of 90+ year olds came screaming into view. Mortality was an open topic of discussion. I was asked multiple times by different, interested parents about "Plan B." Suddenly, I was giving great consideration to Plan B, Plan C, and Plan D, all of which were really from Outer Space. All of them contain options I do not wish to consider at this time, yet I know time isn't always how long we want it to be. 

Tomorrow night, I shall watch the ball drop in Times Square from the warmth and safety of my study where no doubt I'll be sitting working on a new book. No, I have no plans to go out. No, I have no plans to cook dinner for anyone but my father-in-law and me. And I am perfectly okay with that. 

That said, if you are going into the city, please give my regards to Broadway and do remember me to Herald Square. And keep for yourself my very best wishes for a happy, healthy, and wonderfully adventurous New Year!

Wifely Person's Tip o'the Year

Planning on drinking?

Plan on a designated driver.