Well, the new year isn't getting off to a very good start. My Aunt Wanda passed on December 31 around 10:30am. She had been in and out of the hospital several times in recent weeks with severe COPD, so it wasn't a complete shock, but still.... My parents took off for Michigan like they'd been shot out of a cannon, and arrived New Years Day after driving for 23 hours straight. They called us when they arrived and informed us it was smooth sailing, other than getting lost twice, going the wrong way once, and oh yea, there was that white-out that lasted for several hundred miles. Smooth sailing....
Obviously, our New Years Eve celebrations were a bit subdued. We had tickets for a party here in the park, so we did go and do that. New Years Day was a movie marathon combined with cleaning up some of the Christmas decorations. We decided to leave up a string of clear lights we have inside. It was nice to come home to them anytime we got back to the trailer after dark. The way the light switches are laid out in this place means we have to walk quite a ways before we get to one; that string of lights in the front window will save some wear and tear on our toes. The outside lights are still up mainly because all it has done for the last couple days is rain. The schmutz is supposed to blow out tonight, so maybe tomorrow I can get those things taken down and put the Christmas stuff back out in the shed.
Other than that, not much going on. I've been trying to wrap up yard projects before I get disappeared for the duration of tax season, but the weather has been decidedly uncooperative. I need to make a big push this weekend, and maybe even have some photos to post here. No promises, but it could happen.
It's a new year, and so it's the traditional time to make resolutions that we won't keep and predictions that generally won't come true. Last year, our only resolutions were to not end up living in a dumpster and not kill our bee-otch neighbor. We lived up to both of those, which goes to show that being a success is mostly about setting the bar extremely low. In fact, we did so well on both of those that they will remain our New Years resolutions for 2014.
w00t w00t; low expectations!!
As far as predictions, I was 100% for 2013, only because they were such wide-sweeping generalizations that nothing short of the Apocalypse or New Jerusalem would have proven me wrong. And yet, that is the point; we are rerunning the 1970's malaise, the next step down in the catabolic collapse of the US and our economic allies. That means we can look forward to big shocks, followed by periods of stabilization, and even modest recoveries. What it doesn't mean is that we can party like it's 1999, or wait for Jesus to come and save us (either the Jesus of the New Testament, or our new, replacement Jesus of infinite progress). We're stuck dealing with the consequences of our own actions; consequences which will most-closely resemble Ol' Aunt Mertabel doing her annual, slow-motion tumble down the stairs after getting a snoot full of egg nog. It starts with a loud, "Oh Lord!", crash, bang, thud, then a pause where she almost regains her balance, then a "Help me, Jesus!", thud, bang, crash, rinse and repeat until she finally hits the bottom of the staircase 25 minutes later. What we're living right now is that second round of bang-crashing which will be followed at some point in the future by a pause in the general downward trajectory, maybe even a slight bounce off the bottom, then another God-have-mercy moment sometime in the 2020's. The final splat will be witnessed by the grandchildren of the grandchildren of everyone reading this.
Have a happy 2014!!
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