Goodbye, Cruel Year!

Well, hello and whoop de doo, blogees!

I'm now in the final hours of what has officially become the worst year of my existence. Until this year that dubious distinction belonged to 2003, but 2003 was much different. A lot of what made it so bad was internal, my own psyche. This year was not.

It was mainly my mom's many bouts of illness, but that was only the tip of the iceberg, really.

Anyway, let's not rehash the awfulness. In fact, let's talk about new awfulness!

I was looking forward to getting Christmas out of the way and getting on with my vacation, which was this week. On Christmas I wrecked my car - into my house - when I was repositioning it in the driveway so I could load all the Christmas Crap into it, and it slid off an ice chunk in my driveway (car scraped, house, small dent in siding). That of course started the Great Christmas Meltdown, where I had a nice rant to Milo about having no one in my life to do all those things like scrape driveways and remove snow and fix locks and cracks in the ceiling and load Christmas Crap into cars.

I got over that in short enough order and headed over to the folks' house, where I immediately proceeded - to get sick! Oh, yes, a car wreck wasn't enough, friends, I had to get sick as well. I slept downstairs for hours, barely remember dinner, and discovered my temperature was hovering at nearly 101. I came back home, feveredly ranting again about unloading Christmas Crap, and went to bed so I could do it all again at Mr M's house the next day.

Which I did, minus the car wreck.

It was a day I wish I could get back in a few ways, mainly because I was so sick all I did was sleep, and because both Mr M and the DeepFatFriar bought me such nice and thoughtful gifts there was no way mine could match up.




















See? The Friar bought me Lincoln Logs! Real, wooden Lincoln Logs!

Anyway, Sunday, home convalescing. Monday, convalescing, Tuesday, got dressed long enough to go buy cough syrup and Vaporub. Wedsnesday, convalescing. And when I say convalescing, I mean not leaving the house, not even getting dressed.

On Tuesday night, I found 2/3 bottle of penicillin from where I almost cut off my finger this summer. (Remember - shitty year.) I started taking it religiously, and by today I actually started to feel human again. Trip to the doctor averted! I got up and dressed and headed to the grocery to get things for tonight and for tomorrow's Sauerkraut Band party. And I'm snotty and coughy but feverless and able to walk more than 50 yards without feeling like I've run a marathon.

In other words, I'll be all better just in time to go to work Monday. Dammit.

But before we look forward, I do have one small piece of business to clear up.




















Look what Duke sent Milo! A whole damn stocking full of toys! He has had a ball (in fact, one of them is a ball) playing with these, I gathered them together for the picture, but in actuality they're all over the house where he has one to play with wherever he lands. Of all of them, only the really tough-looking one, the ball with rope, has seen better days. All of the really soft chewies are as good as new. Milo has this thing about rope toys. Loves 'em, can tear 'em all to hell in an afternoon.

Anyway, I thank you and Milo thanks you, Duke.

Now what?

Now I'm waiting to ring in the New Year with Stennie on the Hucklebug. And I think I can safely go back and quote exactly what I said at the end of 2003, only change the year. That would go as such:

And I'll be celebrating. I'll be saying a few words to 2009. And to 2009 I'll be saying, "Fuck off! Go to hell and die, and carry thee from my life! I hope I never see your like again, and if I do, I hope I see you coming so I can smite your ass and get on with life. So go. Go fuck off. Now."

And to 2010 I shall be saying, "Hello, there! Hi, my new friend. Come in. Have a cookie. A drink. Let's get acquainted. Do you like TV? I have three - you can watch anytime you like! You need a loan? I'll spot you a few bucks anytime you're short."

You know, I did that, and 2004 was a damn good year. Hopefully lightning can strike twice.

A few goals for the year? I don't like resolutions, too defeating. Hell, I don't like goals, either. How about, "What I'd like for this year."

- I want to go to the dentist. I am totally ashamed to admit this, but I haven't been to the dentist in almost three years. It started as one of those "I just don't have the time" things, and "my dentist just doesn't have the time," but it's gotten to the point where I'm embarrassed to go now. I even bought a little kit with the pointy thing and a mouth mirror so you can do your own dentistry. But I know I must get back, and all those out there poo-pooing me, feel satisfied in how much it's going to hurt after all that scraping.

- I want to change the locks on my dennette doors. Yes, I'm living in a dennette with two broken doors. The front door broke this year, first night of Oktoberfest, just like my clarinet mouthpiece broke that night, when the key came off in it. I now come and go by locking the deadbolt and it's damned inconvenient, and I know one of these days I'm going to be in a hurry and lock that knob lock. The back door - well, the deadbolt is broken, sprung in the locked position, and I've had for some 3 years an unopenable back door. This is not a good thing. Everyone needs a front and back exit.

- I have cracks in my ceiling I'm convinced are going to cause my ceiling to crash on my head one night when I'm watching television. I honestly don't know if they're much to worry about, but, well, I worry. If I can find one person in this town who'll look at them for me, well, I'd like to have them looked at.

- Dream? A small section of fenced-in yard for Milo. I ended the year with a little cache of cash, and I'd love to use it to give Milo his very own playland. Then his BFF Lincoln could come and visit him!

- Drink, drink, drink! Yeah, I know, I do enough of that already, right? But not that kind. I made a very smart discovery in September, or else I was incredibly stupid to only discover this in September. Just about every nagging physical problem I have can be traced right back to the fact that I don't drink nearly enough liquid. I try. I pour glasses of water and green tea and lemonade, then they just sit and stare at me all afternoon. I've been having a little more success with that this month, but plan to step it up.

- And don't forget your vitamins! I'm so lax in vitamin-taking. Just horrible. I need a machine that manually opens my mouth and pours them in. Any ideas for a system?

- Hey, let's cook! I eat way too many cheese-on-breads and things from a box. I'm determined to cook actual food with actual vegetables in it. Stennie bought me two really good easy/healthy/for one or two people cookbooks for Christmas, and I'm putting those babies to use.

- And finally, more blogs. This year's been hard, but I've used that hardness as an excuse to be very lazy about blogging. I want to be better. I'm going to try to keep a running notebook ("hey! my notebook's running away!") of topics.

So that's about it. Let's by-God get on to 2010, and hope all of you have a safe and happy and friend-filled New Year!

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Go Hokies! Of course, I'll miss the kickoff because I'm deviling eggs. Have I seen a Hokie kickoff in the past three years?