A Good News January

Well, our huge, white poinsettia went out with the garbage bin, there’s no chocolate left in the house and now, at the end of January, all that’s left of the holidays are some great memories. 

We enjoyed lots of parties and get-togethers with friends.  After our neighbor’s ice maker meltdown flooded their house, we took over as last-minute hosts of the annual neighborhood Christmas party.  (Now that I think about it, however, Jerry and Helen could have staged one of those Roman orgies where they used to flood the Colosseum and wage mock naval battles, except it was probably too late to rent boats.)  Anyway that party rocked, rolled and racked up a record number of recyclables before it ended around 1:30 a.m. and I learned a good lesson.  If you plan a party three months ahead, you have a long time for angst over food, drinks, decorations, etc. If you plan a party three hours ahead, there’s no time for angst about anything. 

Christmas with Paul’s side of the family in Cincinnati gave Willem the ultimate in holiday fun – a chance to mix it up with his cool, older cousins. Ann Marie entertained him by rigging up his big car as a cab so that his last words before he dropped off to sleep and his first words when he awoke the next morning were, “Taxi! Taxi!”  As always, a game of grab-bag Bingo got everyone’s adrenaline going; they snatched away fantastic prizes like duct tape, a plastic ice cube with a bug in it and a fake eyebrows/glasses/nose and mustache combination.  Grandma morphed into Tiger Mom daring anyone to steal away her expandable back scratcher.  Wisely, no one felt up to the challenge.

With Willem on the scene, New Year’s in Florida was a high fashion holiday weekend.  His wardrobe of resort wear featured green striped harem pants, a Hawaiian shirt and shorts outfit, and orange flowered swim trunks.  On New Years Eve, we weren’t sure if the short guy in the black tie, tails, and red sneakers demanding a milk nightcap, “shaken not stirred,” was Willem or James Bond.  I’m also happy to report that John’s girlfriend seemed to emerge unscathed from her first encounter with my side of the family, including a round of take-no-prisoners Charades and an especially painful karaoke session. Joey’s great rendition of “I Will Survive” was very appropriate and stood out as the only on-key performance of the weekend. 

On January 2, our return trip from Florida was my wake up call to get ready for WINTER and, especially snow.  It took us four hours to make the half hour trip from the airport to our house - accidents caused by blowing snow, a little ice and generally bad driving blocked the expressways and the bridges.  We tried four different routes to get home, I felt like the guys in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and I even wondered how hard it would be to swim the Ohio River.  After that experience, I spent a week running all the errands that needed to be done for the month, restocking my pantry with staples like beans, pasta, rice and Bailey’s Irish Cream and filling my freezer with more soup – lentil and vegetable, beef and barley soup this time – just in case of more snow.

Despite that ominous start and a few ups and downs, January has ended up as an all-around good news month.  After a week of blowing my nose and living in a NyQuil fog, I got over the cold that I’m blaming on the airlines, everybody’s favorite villains. Soon after that, I heard a lot of grumbling in the ranks of our technical equipment.  My seven-year-old computer hard drive descended into senility and forgot how to get me into Windows. For several nights, I lay awake wondering what it would take to recreate my Photo library, Paul’s office check register and payroll data, the input to our class reunion website and the emails with all of our travel info.  Amazingly, our computer guy sent the hard drive for an hour or two of time-out in the freezer (yes, you read that right) and was able to access and copy everything to a new hard drive. 

Next, I was printing out New York Times crossword puzzles and my printer choked probably because I jammed the paper in too fast. Unfortunately, pulling out the jammed paper threw the printer into what looked like cardiac arrest.  As it turns out, it had been hijacked by aliens, but only temporarily – the next morning, the output tray contained a stack of crossword puzzles in some strange language (see photo) but after that, it printed like a champ. 

Finally, our aging Sirius car radio turned temperamental.  Some Asian guy named Butch on the Sirius helpline suggested we’d get better reception if we got a new car with the satellite radio built in, but that seemed like a fairly drastic solution to the problem.   We got a new radio instead of a new car and, although it hissed and fizzed its way to Canada and back, it seems okay now.  Maybe the radio had hoped to be put in an Porsche or a Lamborghini instead of a minivan but other people have dealt with that problem too.

The end of the month brought more unexpected good news. I just returned from cross country skiing in Canada (see “Comfort Vacation” for details from last year), and I’m not hobbling around feeling like I was run over by a snowplow. Plus, after six days of big meals, bigger glasses of wine and the biggest chocolate chip oatmeal cookies ever, I still weigh the same!  Go figure.

The best news of all – we made it through the entire month of January with almost no snow in Cincinnati.  Of course, Paul is disappointed that he hasn’t had the chance to break his neck cross country skiing at 40 miles per hour down some steep, narrow golf course cart path; but I’m not, as you’ll understand if you read my post “Snow Day.”  And yesterday, January 31, it was warm enough to hit a few golf balls.  Let’s hear it for winter!