1 step beyond

To everyone in my life that ever acted like I wasn't in the room with them, to the women in my past who walked away because you were too good for my type, to the hypocrite members of my extended family who threw me under the bus this Christmas Season, to the editors who didn't take what other editors did, to the over-rated neurotic who fired me last spring, to anyone who ever turned their back, hung up on me, bad-mouthed me when I wasn't in the room, thought you could get away with disrespecting my wife or my daughters because they were somehow too innocent or naive for your overpowering sophistication, or to anyone who decided to post mean-spirited and filthy anonymous comments on this blog because you knew me at another internet venue ten years ago and still go around hating me for something you imagine I did to you, here's what you're missing by deciding I wasn't worthy to be in your company...

This is the salad I am making for myself and the woman who stayed with me no matter what. We're talking fresh, organic spinach which will be accompanied by mandarin oranges, escarole, just a touch of shallots, all topped with a balsamic vinagrette.

On the left is my porterhouse and on the right is her rib eye, with the fresh asparagus hovering above saying "Don't eat me! Don't eat me!" And there's the onions that will go along with the potato slices I am going to fry up with cracked pepper and olive oil. Oh and lookee there on the left! One of the knives I got for Christmas! How'd that get in there!?

And here's the bottle of Perrier Jouet that's in the bottom of my refrigerator even as we speak that will go along with it all. Yes I make an exception to red wine on New Year's and there's plenty of "experts" who say not to have champagne with steak but... you'll notice they're not invited anyway.

So that's what those of you named above are missing out on. You will probably be very self-satisfied not remembering any of the misery and hurt you caused others in your pathetic little lives and you'll be quite happy tonight I'm sure. But if living well is the best revenge - you can all just kiss my dick.

And then - to everyone out there who stops by to read as often as they can whether you comment or not, to friends in my life who accept my rough spots more unconditionally than certain people in my family who need to get over themselves, to my wife, and to our daughters and the men in their lives, to my grand-daughter who is everything, to the people who answer my emails, and especially to the sweetheart couple that hired me this summer, and to all my blog friends all over the country, as well as to the publisher who doesn't know just how lucky he or she is going to be this year... I wish you the best possible New Year. And may your rewards exceed your dreams. You're all getting the invite to the big party when I'm rich and famous. Or words to that effect...

ON EDIT: Let's get this New Year's Tradition back where it belongs. (This gets truly hot at 3:27)

LINK TO VIDEO

Labels: Drinking, Food

Why posts are sporadic. From "Cartoon Music"

My alarm clock is gentle. Just a wind-up clock with a metal bell I'd muted with yarn. Strong enough to do the job but not so wild and obnoxious as to scare me right out of my bed when it went off. Perfect for a man of my nature, as I am studious and reserved. It was a studious and reserved alarm clock. A concise and unobtrusive piece of precision equipment modified by a gentleman of refinement and taste. It was a reflective, scholarly, academic sort of a device. And the man in the morning mirror was but a momentarily disheveled squire of elegance and delicacy.

Another Monday morning and I prepared for work like The Great Man. Fine mornings in calmness and serenity. Finely at ease with myself. This was my finer, truer nature. Generous and affirming control of everything fine around me. Master of my fine thoughts and emotions. I live for this feeling. It is fine. I let the world rush madly about and let its people knock heads with themselves. Every movement here in my universe was slow and calculated. Here is the glorious razor. Here is the delicate washcloth. The perfect hair brush. Deliberate and wise movements to prepare for the solemn day of a distinguished man of letters in the perfectly warm water on his noble face after the intellectual alarm clock. A clean shirt and soon ready to face the usual loudmouths that rule the universe. And to hell with them anyway. I would pass through the day and return to my sanctuary and resume my important work. The world outside was only temporary. It wouldn't prevail. I made my coffee, already thinking about the work that awaited me when I returned that evening.

The quiet of the morning, and the stillness of it, like warm and enveloping cloth beside my clean skin, was solace to me. I reveled in its luxury even though I knew hard reality was just outside the door. Yes, I knew it. I knew what awaited me out there in the street.

But for now, the smell of the coffee and the mellow cocoon I'd invented for myself, my appointments of careful grooming and genteel manners, my outrageous talent for sitting at the kitchen table with steaming cup in hand as I gazed disdainfully out toward the shadowy city morning beyond, were all part of the fantasy. The affectionate severity of my glorious isolation. No one could possibly comprehend my world. And that was perfection itself.

That was the moment. The very moment in which, from upstairs, came an exaggerated voice muffled by the floor between us, prattling away while some of the words seemed to be being punctuated by occasional horns and tubas for emphasis. There was a sound like the ricochet of a bullet and then a horrendous thud. A trombone with a mute, as if taunting. Tubas. A kettle drum pounding a series of invasive thuds. Shouting. Something like a piece of iron crashing on a steel table, then another ricochet. More tubas. More embellished voices. Snide laughter. A thud.

It was a ridiculous, insulting thing. I began to feel the blood rushing to my head and my splendid little daydream was finished.

Still thinking it's "over your head"? I don't think so. Yes I should have my head examined for doing this because it could be a hundred times different by the time it is ready but, what the hell.

Every year, more and more, I especially find that the only things that keep my interest in the "Holiday Season" going are centered around my wife, my daughters and my granddaughter. I have other family that we see and they're fine, but the truth is I really don't care much about what they're doing. So if everything fell apart and I kept "my girls" about me I think I'd be just as happy - if not happier - to have my Christmas and my New Year's centered around them and nothing more.

The turmoil around here pre-Christmas has dissipated and probably everybody kisses and makes up and all-better very soon, and that's how it should be. Not that I'm investing a lot of personal emotion or private time to it. That kind of stuff really just comes and goes and we'll be fine until the next relative goes off half-cocked and that'll be my fault too.

This last part of the holidays is much more sensible. Sometime during the day on New Year's Eve I will take a trip out to the market to get my wife a rib-eye steak and myself a porterhouse along with some fresh asparagus. I'll get a bottle of real champagne (French and who gives a shit if it is 40 bucks). I'll be making my own recipe of fried potatoes and then I'll cook everything up (I know just how she likes her steak) and we'll have a big feast for just the two of us and we'll pop in some Fred Astaire flick and maybe some Marx Brothers and act like a couple of old fogies who couldn't be happier to be just that. Let amateur night swirl on around us. On January 1 we'll wake up and still be alive.

I know there's a lot of people who think resolutions are silly but I like to make them anyway just because it's an excuse to get some things right. Yeah they're dumb but I've actually had some things work out through it so - so long as it helps - why not.

Mine are going to be mostly simple except for one but that "one" has an important sidebar. First, I'm going to get back to my vitamin regimen. I'm creaking around waaaaay too much here lately. Second I think MrsRW and I need to expand our "goin' out to eat" routine. We used to do it a lot more and we loved it. Lately we just do it when our other couple-pals are available. I think we need to get back to just the two of us, regularly, like we used to. Third and Third And A Half, this is the year of publish or perish. I haven't submitted any work to anyone on over 10 years and I'm about 15,000 words away from having something worth showing. One way or another I'm getting back in the game. The "And A Half" part is I'm not going to let that kind of work turn me into a preening schmuck as happens to some folks who start to think of themselves as "writeurs". If I start to get the least bit pretentious - just give me a good swift kick OK?

Do you do any resolutions, or is that just too 20th century for your modern worldly, too nerdy to be uncool, little world?

Labels: Society

LINK

Merry Christmas!

Labels: Benny the Bookworm, Drinking

No go ahead, you'll dig. Really.

Labels: Stuff you don't even need to hear

OK the whole world is against me.

That letter I sent to the family letting everyone in on my decision to not do any big Christmases at our place anymore (edit; after this year) has finally gotten a reaction and apparently I am the Asshole of the Year now. Last night I got a call from a cousin (the good one) saying we have to have a beer and talk, everybody's pissed, this is a very emotional thing, people are threatening to not show up at all and so on. I was even told some in the family read the part where I said "I love you guys" as if I was being sarcastic. Holy Mother of Jesus and a God damned half. I'd like to know what kind of a cynical bastard it takes to come up with that read. My take so far is that my letter can't be the cause of everything that people are feeling right now, and that there's more crap underneath all this. Damned if I know what that could be. But if my letter insulted people it seems to me there are some folks out there who really need to get over themselves. Ain't family life great? Anyway I'm going out for a beer tonite and probably get a primer on how to behave or something. But really - you know - I can't force people to come to my Christmas party so... oh well.

We had internet problems last night and it is the typical Comcast bullshit. Gal on the phone "Oh my! Your connection is terrible." Bingo, potato-tits, that took all your training huh?

I had a Polish contractor guy read me the riot act about a late arriving order the other day. I tried to tell him I'm waiting for it to be delivered from the guy I got it from myself and there's nothing I could do about it. But if you've never been reamed by a Polish contractor you haven't lived. Yashjezemmy motkobosku yashendovicj viaktommay visko jisko stupid American-made shit bialesky tam biwah jeshejeshijuski George Bush no tak yeden mozhiwah! Yeah OK dude I'm Polish on both sides of the family so you can kiss my yak tom squeegie while you are down there rolling around on the floor flailing your arms all over the place, K?

Got a little notice from the IRS Monday asking MrsRW how come she never filed a 1040 for last year and I'm like excuse me? How did I get that refund? But a quick glance at my copy of the tax return revealed that our lovely new accountant got my wife's social security number WRONG. All over the place. So I am expecting my over-priced new service to cover my ass for me. "This is going to be an easy fix right? I mean... RIGHT?" Sez I.

I am working very hard to have a special Christmas Eve video for you all but trying to revamp my long dormant theatrical skills is proving to be a bit of an ordeal. I shall do my best but if I don't post it don't YOU go hating me too!

Labels: Kiss My Ass

I usually manage to keep this a meme-free zone but sometimes tag happens. The fourth step of this particular thing is to tag some other folks but that is where I draw the line in the sand and start shooting at the Indians surrounding the wagon train. However, if you want to borrow this let me know and I'll come by and give you some moral support.

This one is hard and I can't find a way to make a joke out of it so I'm just going to go right into it. Of course you realize, Tug, this means you will absolutely have to become a member of MINI-nation now. And because I'm doing this I won't take no for an answer. Sad to say, a PT Cruiser is - cough - you know, a MINI-wannabe anyway. Cough. I mean, you know?

1) Post a note about a blogger you would like to see something wonderful happen for. Maybe one whose posts have touched your heart in one way or another. Include details as to why you admire them and what you wish for them. Be as supporting and affirming as you can. I want this girl to wake up one morning and not have to think about coming apart ever again. I want to learn from her heart and character and I'd settle for just half the valor she has. When she laughs at herself and her condition I want to adopt her. I want her to become rich and famous. I get really pissed off that bad things happen to people like her. I want there to be a way for her to live forever.

2) Post your favorite memory around selflessness, giving, or doing for others. Something that has actually changed you. This was impossibly hard. It hasn't been acts of kindness that changed me, ever. It's usually being a witness to quite the obvious. And probably the only good thing I ever did was take in two girls, friends of our daughters, who were kicked out of their houses. One was thrown out because her parents didn't like her friends (yeah, duh, throwing her out of the house will cure that huh?) and we let her live with us until she reconciled with them. The other girl had a Mom who was like a junkie or something, anyway she was a mess and stayed with us a long time. In fact she was living with us when she graduated high school with our younger daughter. That didn't change me I don't think, but it did make me tell our daughters that no matter what happened, if things didn't work out, they could always come home. Still, to be honest, it was seeing the opposite side of things in the world that had the larger effects on me. On the receiving end I would have to say the greatest thing that was ever done for me that was selfless and giving was forgiveness. That's all I'll say about that.

3) As a postscript, name one thing you will actually do for someone in your life before December 31 that is born out of joy. OK don't get mushy on me – but since I have this new job and am home so early every day I have willingly taken over the bulk of the dinners. So it is making dinner every weekday night after work. Mrs RW has a job that can sometimes take her into the night and the least I can do is have dinner waiting for her when she finally gets home. I've found that I actually enjoy doing it, and I feel like doing back flips when she gives what I've made a "thumbs up." Next year we are married 30 years and I find that I want to do this little thing every day. I really do.

Alright alright what are you gaping at? Move along now!

Labels: Life

Where have I been no where just practicing what I preach re; shutting up when you have nothing to say. We are in the middle of a customer service nightmare being provided by your loving fumblenuts at Sears - having ordered a new dishwasher and above-the-range microwave at the end of November our first delivery was canceled because of an ice storm and the second delivery revealed a smashed microwave so we have the dishwasher installed and now we are getting the new microwave today but no one at Sears bothered to set up the install - which we've paid for - so it's going to sit there until, what, I don't know New Year's and nobody seems to give a crap and Mrs RW has now spent two days of PTO dealing with their unmitigated stupidity and compared to the service centers in India these white people locally at Sears are complete idiots. Christmas is coming and why do I find Elizabethan music appropriate to the season when there's no real reason for it. The guy that replaced me at my old job stopped by work last week and I find it kind of funny that everybody else in the business will tell me how things are going for them in this tight building market I can't get anyone at my old place to tell me how they're doing, they're holding their shit in about that like it is made out of gold. The other day I made the greatest oven-roasted potatoes you ever saw and someday I'll post the recipe but, you know, the Christmas rush is on. Did you finish your shopping? Isn't this better than bullets?

Labels: Other

That thing about Descartes? The bit about Napoleon? It's all part of the thing I'm doing. Here's another part...

When added up through the course of a lifetime a person will create an enormous pile of excreta. This human dung will be forced on the rest of the world and the world will have to come up with an answer for it. It has to come up with a solution for it because right nearby there are any number of people making their own separate lifetime piles of excrement and if the world didn’t come up with an answer to all that, life would be a miserable thing. So they build mile after mile after mile of pipes and there’s water and gravity and confluence and chemicals to take care of all the accumulated refuse you generate. Then most people in the world just walk away from the idea that something is actually having to happen to all that waste and, like ignorant slobs who never look at themselves in the context of what is really going on, go on their merry way and never give it another thought.

You leave a trail of a lifetime’s worth of it behind you and the poor suffering world has to do something with it. So you would think, if people had any outward hint of an inward conscience, it might occur to people that they ought to contribute something to the world in exchange for its having to deal with all that. But the truth is hardly anybody – probably nobody – actually looks at it that way. They look at what the world has done to take care of the garbage they leave and figure that’s what the world is supposed to do. They somehow have it coming to them, so what’s the big deal?

I think the thing is coming along.

Here's the soundtrack. Stay with it, it gets very, very beautiful...

Labels: Inside RW's Head

As I read through my blogroll (yes I am old fashioned and don't have a reader thing whatchamacallit) every once in a while I read people who are spilling out their guts about things going on in their lives and the considerations that they make under the influence of stressful things happening to them. And it is one thing to talk about the job, the car, the weather or such, and tell folks the problems you may be having with those things. But it is quite another to talk about one's deep, emotional, personal life.

I can't hide behind the convenient excuse of that kind of blogging not being a guy thing because it isn't really just exclusive to women to open your veins in full view of the public - and an unlimited potential public as well. I have read plenty of guys who have done it.

I'm talking about the "gee, do you really want to let us in on that? kind of vein-splitting.

And I suppose people are going to assume - because I'm such a freakin crank sometimes - that I am now going to say a few words about how wrong that kind of blogging is, but I'm going to fool you now. The fact of the matter is that I just don't have the balls to open myself up like that. And I'm not sure that's just an internet thing either - a case could probably be made that I'm the same old bottled-up and stifled moax who doesn't do it in ACTUAL LIFE either.

To be honest I'm not sure I have anything that would interest anyone. All my bad acting is buried in the past as far as I'm concerned and I have substituted any feelings of being let down by the world or people with alcohol an older point of view that says we're all bozos on this bus to begin with.

So this is just to say I have a ton of respect for people who are that open and up front about things going on in their lives and in their heads, and that I don't expect you'll see anything like that from me anytime soon because I either couldn't bring myself to do it or - more likely - I am actually a dried up husk inside and don't have those kinds of things.

I guess time will tell. I just hope everybody I'm in touch with out there knows that if I didn't care I wouldn't keep reading. And if I don't comment it could also mean I've got nothing that could help you, not that I'm making some kind of judgment.

Labels: Life, Reality Check

The bromide runs like this - "I think, therefore I am." So if one needs proof that they exist all they have to do is think and their thinking will prove they exist. Bingo, there you are. And people say that all modern philosophy began when Descartes wrote this phrase.

But there's a problem here, and I can't possibly be the only one to see it.

Let me start out by asking - which came first, the thought or the thinker? No - this isn't anything like a chicken/egg thing, and if you duck out of this by shouting something over your shoulder about angels dancing on the head of a pin as you run away - don't come back here. There's an answer to the question and it is obvious.

There can't be a thought without someone to think it. There is no such thing as a disembodied thought. A thought cannot generate itself and it cannot generate another thought. Nor can it generate a thinker. Before you can have a thought, there must be someone to think it.

So the idea that "I think, therefore I am" is wrong. It should read "I am, therefore I think."

So not only was Descartes a boob but the entire foundation, the whole basis of philosophical thought in all of the knowledge and history of the universe is just wrong. Just thought I'd point that out.

OK, you can go back to dinner now.

Labels: Inside RW's Head

When they first came out a few years ago everybody hailed them as a convenient idea that was the cool thing to do. Years later it's not the cool thing to do anymore and all the article writers and behavior bots mavens tsk their tongues and look up to the sky in abject revulsion.

That's the way of things for some reason. What's a great idea today is tomorrow's old hat. Societal bullshit is always coming around the corner and changing up. That's how the market forces operate. C'est la vie. Dat leven. Whatever.

I'm talking about gift cards.

I can't go three screens down without finding a recently written article by someone washing their hands of the practice and calling it down as a horrible, soulless thing to do. Well, screw them.

If someone is going to give me a gift card whether for Christmas or a birthday or anniversary or UFO day, I am happy to get it. Gift cards for book stores are particularly prized, because I rarely know what I'm going to get in one of those before I get there. And I generally disfavor clothes I get as gifts unless its the everyday stuff because - that's right - I want to be in charge of what I wear. I have good taste in clothes. I pick and get fitted in my own suits. My shirts are my business. Same with shoes. I'm not one of these guys who needs to have Mommy along to go clothes shopping. In these cases, and in any other you can mention - the CD store, the computer stores, anything at all - you don't know what I want because I never know what I want before I want it. So what am I supposed to do... sit there with a battery charger I have no idea what to do with or a card to let me get what I need when I need it?

And on the opposite side, when I give a gift card to someone I'm saying "Here's a ticket to get something you want but would never buy for yourself. Here's a Get Out Of Jail Free Card, knock yourself out. Here's me respecting the fact that you have a brain and I love you and if I could get you anything you want I would but I can't so here's the RESOURCE to grab it."

Why is that an insult?

I know I know "oh it wasn't personally selected out of loving care and personal, intimate knowledge of the person you are buying for." Well dump a load of crap on that noise, Chester. My gifts aren't all gift cards. In most cases gift cards are found in the stocking stuffers or given to some relative's kid because I have no idea what the hell to buy him and let him collect these and go nuts.

Gifts for my wife and daughters are what I select carefully. Along with a gift card if I think of it. Everybody else will just have to deal with it. But if I had my druthers, I'd take nothing else if that's what was being offered. I don't have the kind of hubris needed to sit there and pout about what people did or didn't get me or how much "thought" they put into my gift. Christmas is for kids anyway.

People who think gift cards are a bad idea are made out of cardboard. Just following the newly pronounced trends.

Bah!

Labels: Society

One day in 1812 the Emperor Napoleon decided to attack Russia. To get to Russia he had to come through Poland and while he was there he picked up some really great cavalry to add to his army. Before they left to go fight, Napoleon met with some young Polish officers and their wives at a little suaree. During the introductions the Emperor's eye caught a captivating young woman who was holding her baby son in her arms. She and her husband were introduced and, before receiving the next officer in line, Napoleon took the baby's small hand in his fingers and wiggled it in a mock handshake.

The invasion of Russia was a miserable failure and Napoleon's army was beaten badly.

The little boy grew up and eventually married when in his 30's. He, in turn, had four sons - the last of which was born in 1861 when he was 49.

In 1901 the youngest son of the man who as a baby "shook hands" with Napoleon came to America with his family and settled in one of the Polish neighborhoods in Chicago, where he lived to be 99 at the time of his death in 1960.

A few months before he died he was walking, with the aid of a heavy black cane, down an alleyway in the city and came upon three boys playing stickball. One of those boys was me.

When "Adamek" (our neighbor from next door who was working on something in his garage) saw the old man he happily greeted him and shook his hand. they talked for a while and my neighbor called us over. Each of us, in our turn, shook his hand as well, as some great introduction was being made.

I had heard the story of this guy before and since from my friends in school at the time and our neighbor told the tale as well. So I believe it to be true. Who knows, really? Hard to say.

But, when I think about it - it occurs to me there are two people standing between me and Napoleon. There's me, a grizzled old man, his father, and Bonaparte.

Not altogether sure what that means, if anything, but a neat little story on a cold winter's day.

Labels: Other

Once upon a time a very nice young lady named Helen sent me a great big, honkin' chocolate chip cookie that (to be honest) was very difficult to put the breaks on once you started eating it. This seemed to have caused a bit of cookie-envy in another person I know, who lives somewhere in Florida, and the next thing you know he sent out a plaintive plea to all the bloggers out there to send him cookies. As in, if I remember correctly, "Waaaah, you people never send ME cookies", which was followed by boxes of cookies sent by a lot of people nobody ever heard of and then he actually ate them, regardless!

I would like to point out to those who look at my ONE cookie and compare it to the veritable THOUSANDS of cookies sent to this miscreant hornlicker in the limp dick of America (go ahead, look at Florida... you tell me what it resembles), that mine was unsolicited. I was given an unsolicited cookie, which trumps a million cookies from anybody you could imagine who just sent them to shut up a beggar. It wasn't a natural development that was born of genuine civility. Like mine.

That's right, I didn't ask to get one. It was sent to me, out of the chocolaty goodness that is Helen's serene little candy-coated heart. If I had put a call out for people to send me free stuff there's no telling what would happen - this crowd, my readers, being among the most eclectic you are bound to find at one blogging venue.

And, lo and behold, I show up at the curb to get my mail yesterday after work and - what to my wondering eyes should appear - but a box with two cigars inside a well-wrapped plastic pouch, which were promptly set carefully into their new home (temporary home, as all the inhabitants are transients), alongside their fellow puros.


And - I should point out - the gifter this time was someone from the totally OTHER coast by the name of Gino (who I have known in an online sort of way since before there even were such things as blogs), who also - well la dee dah - sent them along as a free will offering. Sacrifices to the gods, as it were. A gift without prompting. And thank you so much, Mr Gino!

I know this is going to send somebody into a realous jage. I know he isn't one who partakes in cigars, so I can't imagine what he's going to BEG people for this time.

Let's watch, shall we...?

Labels: Blogging

It could possibly have something to do with the fact that years of driving in Chicago after a good but not heavy snow ("heavy" snow is 10" - not this paltry 5"-6" we have now) teach lessons unique to the time and place. It could even be part of a yearning for some ultimate justice in the world, a leveling of the causes and effects people have and enact on one another. Whatever it is, there is a certain satisfaction in watching the same people whose testosterone has poisoned them beyond any usable energy on normal days, end up with their cars buried nose-first in a drift at roadside because they refused to be realistic about what is on the road and what their wonderful, kick-your-ass car is capable of... whether or not the driver is capable of controlling it.

The only right way to approach the sporadic plowing service that denotes you are in the western suburbs of Chicago is to proceed with caution near places you may have to stop, and keeping a nice distance between you and the car in front of you.

The only real justice in the world is when a man (boy?) going 15 miles an hour faster than the 5 miles an hour over the limit the rest of the world is traveling, happens to be followed by another pushy fellow (child?) who has a nasty habit of driving 3 inches behind the car in front of him every chance he gets, and to have the front car swerve into a snow drift and the guy behind him smash into him. That's the most fun you can have besides being naked in the snow.

The night before you take the driveway shoveling at a steady, reasonable pace and even the wet snow is pushed aside without too much strain. If you do it right it becomes a nice bit of exercise rather than a life and death struggle to finish before the guy across the street does. And after a warm shower you pour a small, warming libation, snuggle under the feather comforter with something by Bruno Schulz or Gombrowicz, and accept the fact that in the morning you will still have to clear away what is still falling around your house, it being no surprise somehow comforting. In the morning the whole scene before your eyes is covered in the idyllic frosting of the season. At this point in your life there is no clock to punch and the workday can start when you want it to - this after an entire worklife of the opposite being true - so urgency is replaced by thoroughness. Don't be too smug because, when you return from work, the plows will have buried the end of your driveway and there will be one more round. Knowing it ahead of time, though, somehow makes it funny rather than tiresome.

When you arrive at work and click on your radio there is something by Chopin. And maybe a small tickle begins to urge your mind toward Christmas. And so, to work.

Sheesh. At least today he has the heat above 62. Life is good.

Labels: Inside RW's Head

You remember last time the plucky squirrel sent a letter out to the family informing everyone that after 20-some years of hosting the Christmas Day get-together we were begging off after this year's party and throwing it out there for the family to decide what to do about it?

And you remember just a slight tinge of anxiety involved in that decision and a general questioning wonder about how it was going to be received?

You remember all that? Eh??

Well here we are just over a week later and... oh lookee here... we haven't heard a word about it from anybody. No one's said a thing. There was a serious health problem for one portion of the family so it's pretty obvious they've been distracted and this wouldn't exactly be a priority issue, but everyone else is like blinks and crickets.

And it remains true that the only RSVPs we've gotten are from people who are coming in from Scotland. Which of course means that everyone invited will show up because that's how RSVPs work don't they? And so it goes. And then at some point, since we haven't talked to most of the family since late summer (which is always my fault), someone will wonder out loud why I haven't called them or come over more often. Because, you know, phone lines and roads only go in one direction.

I sometimes sincerely believe in my wife's oft-stated assessment that the truth of the matter is that I'd be most happy as a hermit on some island. And, I have to say, if you find one with enough fresh water...

Labels: Life

Labels: Inside RW's Head