WELCOME ’09!

Happy New Year, Loved Ones!

Well, the holidays have ended, but the year is just beginning. Hooray! The moisture of this past week has cleansed the air, eased the drought, and beautified the world. Looks like we’re going to have a white New Year.

What a wonderful opportunity to move forward from the past year and celebrate renewal and a re-commitment to the lovely things of this life. 2009 is barely a week old, and I have already made – and brutally broken – numerous resolutions. (Oh, the carnage!) However, I take pride in the fact that I had monumental success in keeping the resolutions I made last year…there were actually 22 on my Top Ten list. I was able to not lose weight nor gain character traits that might hold me hostage for living an exemplary life. I vowed to lobotomize my inhibitions, indulge my bubble-gum addiction, and eat jelly bellies after 9:30 a.m. and p.m. I have even driven 40 m.p.h. on freeways in spite of numerous “birds of protest,” for driving my age. These accomplishments compensate for the fact that I have not yet earned my advanced degree in rocket science. All in good time, my Pretty.

We liked the holidays a little better this year than last. Time is a remarkable commodity. It mercifully shrinks our capacity to take in all the events of this last year, and yet it has expanded our conduit to the finer, more transcendent things of life. This is all good.

Christmas Day was the usual mixture of chaos and confusion. This lethal combination produces the anesthetizing properties equivalent to a tranquilizer dart…merciful and painless. It can actually be restorative to the adults who just pulled off the biggest felonious act of unconscionable, uncompromised, and unjustified indulgence of the holiday season.

The grandkids have made the dubious discovery that their behavior during the time prior to Christmas has absolutely no effect on the amount of plunder Santa stuffs down our chimney with such relish, in spite of oft-repeated and decibel-increasing empty threats to the contrary. We spent the greater part of the week between Christmas and New Year’s performing hazardous waste management clean-up, and vowing that this disgusting display of conspicuous consumption will never again in the annals of history be repeated…and then going to all the after-Christmas sales to pick up stocking stuffers for the ’09 heinous encore.

Our New Year’s Eve celebration consisted of just the two of us. This year was a whole different animal than last year. But, nevertheless, we adhered to the strict observance of the usual traditions as in times past. We celebrated our brains out…which mercifully, of late, doesn’t take too long. Then, we retired at midnight…New Zealand standard time. (That’s just about 6:00 p.m. in the Salt Lake time zone.) This is sooo OK.
In spite of, and, perhaps, because of, suffering from the affliction known as PTHSS(Post-Traumatic Holiday Stress Syndrome), we have decided to make a fraction of the resolutions we made last year. We had considered not making any resolutions, empty promises, or commandments we really do not intend to keep, but guilt is a relentless despot, so we go on record for posterity.

So, here goes:

1. Although it seems apparent that I must live life in every insane and logically defiant episode of “I Love Lucy,” I am committed to anticipating and trying to avoid as many gratuitous “Lucy and Ethel” moments as possible. I realize this might make life a little boring, but it will also severely reduce moments of great humiliation and chagrin.

2. I hereby swear to curb my swearing…in multiples. After realizing how clean and pristine a single obscenity properly pontificated can be, (thanks, Margaret) I understand that multiples are excesses that lack creative forethought, impact, and imagination…and can lead to verbal stagnation. (The concept that less is more.) Artistic expression should never be subordinated to spontaneous, uncontrolled regurgitations.

3. I promise not to go rogue. I will try to stay on message. And I will maintain my stilletoes and mascara as my main power cosmetics. (I also plan to throw my panty hose in the political ring in 2012.)

4. We vow to reject the proverbial “golden parachute,” but we’re sinking fast. So we have altered our financial expectations just enough to reject the iron anvil and hope for some sort of miraculous magical gas…similar to helium…that will keep us aloft, but not launch us into the stratosphere! We’re thinking of petitioning Congress (that great flatulent institution) to offer us a bail-out similar to the ones provided for the Chrysler and perhaps porn industries.

We rejoice beyond expression for Dennis’ health and continued progress. We are committed to living life from miracle to miracle, something we have learned through our experience of 08. And we are most thankful for each one of our family, friends, neighbors and dear ones, for blessing and enriching our lives, and being constantly by our sides. You are truly God’s sweetest angels.

Love,
The Clot