End Of a Era

There are a lot of really well done year-end commentary pieces - none of them done by Mayan scholars.

Each year when this happens I feel a tinge of regret. I find for the most part I really do not want to relive the current year. In a childlike way, I'm too anxious to see how the next one is going to play out.

I guess you could call it my "Satan, Get Behind Me" approach.

I've been like that since I was a kid, and didn't even enjoy the cartoons depicting  Father Time and the New Year's baby. I wasn't even a fan of the superstitions that came with the dawning of a new year.

When I was a kid Mom had a superstition that the first person to enter the house on New Year's day had to be a tall male with dark hair in order to assure us of good luck in the New Year. I was usually the one chosen.

(Mom, if you're looking down here now you'll note I have to disqualify myself once again this year. My dark hair left me about the same time as my "Barry Good Boy" personality.).

I'm not much for personal New Years resolutions. I was better at giving up sweets for Lent.  As I get older I seem to have substituted my own monthly resolutions such as to quit smoking (OK so far) or lose weight (10 pounds to date .

Most of those resolutions are duely noted on one of the many calendars I still seem to have around.

Today I attempted to get a dresser drawer dismantled in order to determine what was blocking the last 5 inches of closure space.

I was suprised as I did not know we had a cat.

No seriously - PETA people - no more e-mails please.

I did discover several items which had "gone over the top" so to speak and lodged themself back there. One was a 2009 calendar.

In that years resolution collections I Johnny Inkslinger'd  the date(s) when I stopped smoking and/or started a new diet.

One surprise was that my beginning diet weight amount in 2009 was not that far from the one which caused me to start a new diet about 3 weeks ago which will be recorded in my 2013 office desk calendar.

As if to confirm the fact that I was also fat in 2009, beneath the calendar were hidden several pictures from a Florida golf outing with son Bruce that year.

I'm not sure what bothered me more; that I'm wearing a unflattering white golf shirt that looks like a sheet from a twin bed but still clearly shows off all the unpleasant nuances of my fat body - or that he so accurately captured me in the middle of some really horrible golf shots.

The irony to me is that I still have a copy of a family picture that was taken up at Edinboro Lake in Northwestern Pennsylvania where our family would vacation for a week or more when I was a kid. I look to be about 13 in the picture.

Mom & Dad and my younger brothers Jim & Tom look good. Neither one of my "bros" had acquired a full beard at the time - as they were probably 9 and 6  respectively.

My dad and brothers were shirtless in the photo as that's what most males do on a lake vacation in July or August.

I'm the one in the photo who was photographed wearing a sweatshirt with the sleeves half rolled up in an attempt to hide a body so skinny you could still count my ribs under a winter jacket.

Just goes to show the wisdom behind the popular saying, "Watch what you wish for". ( I sort of  "filled out" when I retired).

Hopefully, I can find a happy medium this year.

I believe there is a palm reader somewhere up the road on 70.

Perhaps she can predict where 2013 is going to take me and my so-called "blogs".

I will probably still be rating and raving about injustices I either saw or imagined, and will continue to honor my "Grover Norquist" pledge to save the planet through my musings.

(I honestly believe, with a name like that, he must have at one time been a featured  character in a Beatrix Potter book - perhaps as a friend of  Mrs. Tiggly-Winkle or Pigling Bland.)

Hey, "Have a Great New Year".