New Years Eve, Post the First

Like so many people, on December 31st I am prone to rank, rate and ruminate. I don't like to look back and analyze much in detail, but I do take stock. I look at where the accumulated year has brought me. I look at myself in this moment, now, and ponder where I'll be in the Nows to come.

I've just spent the last half hour or so chopping wood. We've been going through the knotty, hard, stubborn stumps that are all that are left of the free cord plus that we were lucky enough to get a couple of years ago. And so my lower back is itself knotted and I have a stinging callus starting on my left palm. But the blood blister from when I chopped with my wedding ring on a couple of weeks ago has finally healed, and the wheels in my head are spinning with the same inspiration that a brisk walk in the hills normally brings. It's one of those times when if I could forsake my family, the dinner the girls are so excitedly preparing, the groceries I need to buy and money I need to deposit at the bank, I would sit and write. And write. Poems, prose, emails, blog entries. I always get the desire to write on New Year's Eve.

But even as I type these very words, R comes in asking me to open a new jar of tomato sauce.

[Here the blogger weighs out whether to insert long suffering sigh or philosophical observation...]

More later.

Is there something my husband isn't telling me?

Yesterday, we received a Christmas box from my mother-in-law. It was addressed:

Mr. and Mrs. P*******
and Becky


Here are my questions:

Where has he been keeping this other wife?

Does the box contain fruitcake? (I've been afraid to look)
If it does, how long will fruitcake keep?

I guess this sort of thing is to be expected from my mother-in-law, the woman who once installed hospital wall colored pastel floral vertical blinds in our bedroom while we were away from our house one day. The woman who gave us a BRASS SADDLE BAG mailbox with "The Patrascu" engraved in it. In black. Come to think of it, maybe she's just confused about who lives at our house. Sometimes it's just one Patrascu. Sometimes it's D., the Mrs., and me. Apparently.


I may have told this story before, but for years we talked about "losing" the mailbox and then reporting to D's mom that it had been taken. I practiced saying incredulously, "Somebody stole our mailbox!" but I just knew I couldn't pull it off. It was only after a remodel when D. built a mail slot into our garage that we were able to justify taking down the saddlebag. I know she meant well. I'm sorry if I sound like an ingrate. But here's my point: there are some items that one should allow a person to pick out for his or herself. You know, items that display prominently by default at one's home.

Pics from the Company Party

You can tell from his hunched shoulders that D is not 100% happy. But for someone in tremendous back pain and medicated, I think he looks pretty good! I hadn't posted a pic of us here in forever, and thought I might as well take advantage of us being dressed up...








...and this is after I let my hair down,
although I didn't even get near the dance floor all night,
and in fact didn't even have a drop of alcohol either.
How tame is that?