The New Year
It's here. It blew in last night with a sudden drenching rain. That didn't stop the fireworks, though, which scared our dog Cheri, and sent her slowly retreating to the bathroom. Slowly, because she has a hitch in her git-along, a most noticeable limp that has gotten worse since her Christmas stay with a friend who has three dogs, and who took Cheri and said dogs to her parents' farm on Christmas day, where Cheri romped and ran on 40 acres with 8 or 9 other dogs. Sheer doggie heaven! But now she's paying a price for her yuletide joy.
I am feeling hungover today, but not from any spirited indulgence. I had not a single nip of alcohol in celebration last night, as I have a cold, and it just didn't sound good. This must be the dryest New Year's I've observed in years. And I think I should get extra points for that! But anyway, what I'm feeling hungover from is the absolute break from routine, the time off work, and days of sleeping in. My ambition and drive, paltry as it was to begin with, has been completely undone. I have lost all impulse to lift a finger towards any purpose except the turning of a fresh page. I have been a total layabout with her nose in a book, and I have found this to be a completely fulfilling use of my time.
Now that it's New Year's Day, and the holiday season is fixing to close, I'm all a-shudder as what awaits me on the morrow. Early, early morning alarms, and the unnatural sensation of pushing one's body out of bed and into the cold before dawn glimmers---a return to 40 hours of weekly toil in the salt mines, where my contributions seem vague and at best, incremental,---a resumption of my duties as Cookie Mom to Girl Scout Troop 1985, which I have been blithely ignoring for the past 3 weeks, but which now stare me in the face as unyielding as that heap of extra cookie boxes blocking the front door, which I had at one time fashioned into a perky holiday arrangement and dressed with tinsel, but which now lie under a skim of dust and hold all the charm of a mis-directed warehouse shipment. They are a painful reminder that there is still money to collect, spreadsheets to complete, and that leftover cookies will require our troop to sign up for ---horrors ---a booth sale.
But I don't want to think about that now. I have a few waning hours to turn back and forth in my bed like, the oft-mentioned sluggard of Proverbs, and I plan to make the most of it. Of course it is not helping that I am reading "Autobiography of a Yogi," which is just reinforcing the idea that the material world is completely immaterial. But then again, even some of the most advanced yogis were told to leave their ethereal retreats in the Himalayas and return to the clod-ridden world so they could be of service to the masses. So I know that for the greater good, I too must summon my energies.
And I will, I will. Just give me a few more days.
I am feeling hungover today, but not from any spirited indulgence. I had not a single nip of alcohol in celebration last night, as I have a cold, and it just didn't sound good. This must be the dryest New Year's I've observed in years. And I think I should get extra points for that! But anyway, what I'm feeling hungover from is the absolute break from routine, the time off work, and days of sleeping in. My ambition and drive, paltry as it was to begin with, has been completely undone. I have lost all impulse to lift a finger towards any purpose except the turning of a fresh page. I have been a total layabout with her nose in a book, and I have found this to be a completely fulfilling use of my time.
Now that it's New Year's Day, and the holiday season is fixing to close, I'm all a-shudder as what awaits me on the morrow. Early, early morning alarms, and the unnatural sensation of pushing one's body out of bed and into the cold before dawn glimmers---a return to 40 hours of weekly toil in the salt mines, where my contributions seem vague and at best, incremental,---a resumption of my duties as Cookie Mom to Girl Scout Troop 1985, which I have been blithely ignoring for the past 3 weeks, but which now stare me in the face as unyielding as that heap of extra cookie boxes blocking the front door, which I had at one time fashioned into a perky holiday arrangement and dressed with tinsel, but which now lie under a skim of dust and hold all the charm of a mis-directed warehouse shipment. They are a painful reminder that there is still money to collect, spreadsheets to complete, and that leftover cookies will require our troop to sign up for ---horrors ---a booth sale.
But I don't want to think about that now. I have a few waning hours to turn back and forth in my bed like, the oft-mentioned sluggard of Proverbs, and I plan to make the most of it. Of course it is not helping that I am reading "Autobiography of a Yogi," which is just reinforcing the idea that the material world is completely immaterial. But then again, even some of the most advanced yogis were told to leave their ethereal retreats in the Himalayas and return to the clod-ridden world so they could be of service to the masses. So I know that for the greater good, I too must summon my energies.
And I will, I will. Just give me a few more days.
.jpg)
This has been the longest three days I can remember spending, in a long, long time. I think I need a special purpose.. a plan...a goal.
ReplyDeleteIf I were an accountant, I would probably be peeing my pants in anticipation of "starting over". If I were a yogi, I could always strive for a 2012 picinic basket. But, in my professional world, tomorrow is just another day along the way...to where? To the next holiday? Yikes! That will be five long months away. I better get to bed for some much needed rest as I begin my quest.
H.B.
Oh man, five months is much too long to wait for the next holiday. You must have one whoop-ass of a work ethic. No wonder you play so hard!!
ReplyDeletei love this post and i especially love paragraph 2.
ReplyDelete@hal - my brain train derailed after you said "pee my pants"