HAPPY NEW YEAR!

WINDING UP 2005

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Okay. Now let's blow this Popsicle year and get going into 2006 -- destined for extravagant good luck and breathtaking blessings. Worldwide!

BURIED--but not deep enough.

It's been a month since I've posted. Not to be a complainer, but some mind-numbing life phases have hit and so I decided to hell with it; I'm giving myself a break. So therefore, my mind's become even numb-er (which, I guess, is better than dumber). In trying to crack through the ice of the mental frozen zone, I've continued my lifelong project of cleaning up my environment. I so doing, I'm sheerly appalled at the amount of CRAP around this house. I mean, we are sooooooo over-tschotked! Do I really need to keep my dead Mom's little glass bluebirds and that garishly ornate German pitcher? What about all those the half-used candles? My sister, beloved snapshot freak, gives me new family photos all the time. Do I have to hang all of them?

Recently our neighbor came over to help us with a small repair and he had to go into our garage. Embarrassment overcame me like a tsunami, nearly dousing me with as much agony. A tsunami through the garage would not be a bad thing. Don refuses to let go of the old paperbacks he's been collecting since grade school, and a variety of useless hardbounds, including textbooks. Anyone who knows him knows that INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNTING is not exactly bedside reading for him. As for me, I can't seem to part with anything I can throw on the bed or on the torn-up sofas we have. (Dog owners please note: keep cheap furniture!). That includes a ragged afghan that Don's dead Mom knitted. Dead mothers: They're hell on the minimalist design sense.

The attached pic only evokes my general mood, not the house (though it does resemble a corner of the garage). Gotta go do the dishes now, to assuage a little of this dumpy mood. I'll try to be back before another month passes. But just in case: Merry Christmas!