Friday, January 7, 2011

Happy New Year...What?

The spouse and I managed, somehow, to be awake on the stroke of midnight and thusly can state we celebrated with the best of them.  Amazing.  I forced the children and their collective spouses to let Steve and I barge in on dinner with them at the Buckhorn in Winters where we feasted on Vodka and red meat.  You may recall that red meat and alcohol are part of my happiness regime.  But never mind. So yeah, we crashed the party and left early.  The children went back to Woodland and had a proper see in of the new year en masse with clinking of glasses and what not.  I was curled up with my new Kindle and the spouse too was engrossed in suspicious You Tube Videos and we listened to NPR babble on about something or other.  At 12 we muttered Happy New Year Dear/Baby, depending on who you were listening to, turned out the lights and that was it.  Really.

Have a resolution?  Not I said the goose.  I quit doing that many years ago.  I think in my heart of hearts I do make resolutions.  But if you don't say them out loud it doesn't matter if you break them.  I think it's a little like if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a noise?  Try real hard to make that connection.  So any way I'll try not to bounce checks, try to keep my job, or find a better one, and try not to piss anyone off.  But I am not fully resolved.  So there.

I don't know what this year has in store for me.  I don't foresee any fabulous vacations or the purchase of an idyllic farm somewhere adorable on the horizon.  But it's really nice to be surprised, so I remain ever hopeful.  Perhaps new grandchildren will appear though.  That would be nice.  As luck will have it, they will probably  be born about the same time 1385.77 miles apart.  Now what would you do?  How do you pick which offspring you honor with a visit?  Goody, something to stress about.

I have googled folks I knew from ages ago and  friend requested them.  Sometimes that works out really well.  Others. Not so Much.  Entertaining though.  How about this?  My brother and I do not see eye to eye and have not spoken in probably five years or more.  Now considering the history I don't really get too fussed about it.  Well anyway, my cousin invited Steve and I to his house for dinner just before Christmas, fine I thought, they are probably going away to some place fabulous and won't be here for the big day, so they're doing a little something early.  Yup, you guessed it,  the brother was there.  Talk about your elephant in the room.  To say it was awkward would be an understatement.  To say that he got up, went outside and smoked furiously, that's what you do when you smoke, btw, and never came back in was the honest truth.  Soooo more stilted, uncomfortable chit chat ensued with the cousins, aunt and so forth, then the spouse and I made our excuses and hit the road.  I am not going to enthrall you with the history of the sibling and I, though I could be persuaded given enough begging and tithes, but suffice it to say I can be taken advantage of and probably deserved what I got, but I super resent being slapped in the face with it.  If you are reading this, family, that's where that stands.  Well, that was a happy little aside now wasn't it?

On the other hand some of my friends have very exciting hopeful plans this year and next year as well.  When you are young you can plan a couple years in advance.  My peers know what I'm talking about, the youngsters in the group figure that that is just some weird psycho babble old people wallow in.  You see this year is the Pan American Games.  The equestrian events will be held at the Guadalajara Country Club.  Just a little FYI in case you were wondering.  And 2012 will be an Olympic year as the Summer Olympic Games will be held in Merry Olde England.  What this means, in a nut shell, is that everyone who is a hot shot will be angling for team positions, new and improved horses, and working themselves in to a proper lather.  They will be stressing about  fitness, money, competitions, money, conditioning, money, soundness, money, travel, money, having a couple in the International string of horses, money.  You see the pattern?    Time to listen to more Pink Floyd if you get my drift. 

In light of the performance of the Americans in the Show Jumping and Eventing this past year at the World Equestrian Games, there is a lot to stress about.  In my not so humble opinion, the WEG results were just another day at the office.  Some days you got it, some days you don't.  I felt really badly for the rider who had a brilliant round on the cross country all the way around...till the last fence.  As I have told you before, you fall off, no matter how gracefully or not, you are eliminated from the rest of the competition.  So yeah, she had a silly mishap, but that was it.  Our teams finished, just not in first, second or third, but they did in fact finish.  And there were more behind them than in front.  We got beat.  Full stop.  Get over it.  You have this year and the next to do it again...maybe.  This is very easy to say from the comfort of the BarcaLounger, but I don't believe you can argue the rationale.

On that happy note, I'll sign off and wait breathlessly for your comments, which never come.  But here's to a productive, fruitful New Year to all ya'll...
Cheers,
Squidgy

2 comments:

  1. Very good my sweet!

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  2. Very entertaining....wish you would write more frequently!!

    ReplyDelete