The Old Year Ends

Well, well, well. Look at this. My last post was on December 13 and this one will be on December 31. The two numbers are the same, just reversed. SO WHAT! You say. Hey it's the kind of thing I notice.

And it is the last day of the year 2009. Next year is 2010 and I'm looking the big 6-0 right square in the face. Don't look too bad unless I use a mirror. (ugh! especially in the morning. Rearrange that mop on top of your head girl!)

This is when we are supposed to make resolutions to do better next year. I decided some time ago that the best resolution for me to make is to not make any resolutions. It's one of the few, other than to eat when I'm hungry, that I have a chance of keeping.

This past year has been as ho-hum as any other. I don't lead an exciting life. I did help my friend Peg by doing some drawings for a kids book she might get published next year. I've gotten a bit better at moving around. But I doubt I can ever again spend an 8 plus hour day walking or standing around on a hard concrete floor. Heck even sitting still at a computer like I do to read my e-mails, mess around on Face book, and write these witty (he, he, he!) lines gets to me when I have to get up and eeeeyow! my left knee doesn't want to work and tells me about it.

Next year will, hopefully be better.

Next year maybe I will get my seeds started in time to have a decent harvest of something besides cucumbers. ( Though my refrigerator bread and butter pickles were awesome if I do say so myself. And I should as there isn't one little chunk of those tasty things left!) Perhaps I can even convince myself to plant a fruit tree or two for harvisting a season or so down the road. I'd really like to plant some asparagus as well. Love that stuff but can't afford it much at the store. Which is understandable as the plant just won't listen to the big food combines and insists on doing things it's way. (It's usually two to three years before you can get a couple of asparagus spears from one plant and it doesn't take to replanting very well unless you are far more careful than a machine can ever be.)

I've spotted some big plastic, wire encased, square shaped 'barrels' that, if I can come up with the cash, I could turn into 'rain barrels' or cisterns. Of course then I'd have to find a way to catch the run off from my house and barns to direct it into them. Yes, I'd want more than one.

The problem, as always, is money. sigh. Now that I can no longer do a lot of the stuff I want done myself I have to ask, beg or hire others to do them for me. Be great if I ever win that big money from Publishers Clearing House but you know how that goes.

As for tonight and the New Years Eve celebrations. If I weren't a member of the local Vol. Fire Dept. I'd be setting here at home in front of a flickering TV snoring through the ball dropping in New York and even in Dallas. Then I'd snort awake, take the dog for a walk and go to bed.

But being a member of the VFD I will be with my fellow members of the department at the fire house, munching on pot luck goodies (I'm baking some cookies a little later to take), drinking non-alcoholic beverages, playing various games and waiting. Just waiting. Waiting for friends and neighbors to do something really stupid. Things like drive home drunk from a really rad party. Um. Make that TRY to drive home. Then there are the ones who get snockered and decide to celebrate by shooting their guns into the air, forgetting, in their inebriated state, that what goes up also comes down and can go through roofs...and bodies. Don't forget the ones who just have to have fireworks. Fireworks they may be too drunk to use responsibly. Fireworks that can hurt them or work just fine and set a neighbors house or pasture on fire instead.

Of course it has been real wet around here the past few days so the danger of grass fire's is not so great. House fires on the other hand are more likely as folks, especially if they are partying, can get clumsy with candles, fireplaces and/or wood stoves or even space heaters.

So the VFD has its own little, dry, party and we wait. We wait for the call's we really hope don't come. We'd all much rather stay in the warm, dry firehouse and munch on goodies and drink tea and sparkling grape juice. Yeah, that would be much better than being out in the cold and wet cutting a friend or neighbor out of a crashed vehicle or putting out a house fire, or any other of a lot of things we could end up having to do.

Hmmm. Just reread this. I really do need more sunlight.