Tag: #Christmas

  • Planning for Fall?

    Summer’s over. It was a fast ten weeks for us, as that’s what the wife and I were saying to each other last night. We do have one final week until the kid starts school on Monday, but let’s be honest, it’s not much of a Summer week, being that we will be spending our time preparing for the start of classes.

    And it wasn’t that great of a Summer. I give it two and a half stars. And I will blame it all on the Delta Variant, and the half of the country that didn’t get vaccinated, for whatever reason that I don’t agree with, but here we are. The ability to return back to normal never materialized. Having normal fun with people? Not so much. A return to unobstructed travel wasn’t really possible either.. And now we are left with an Autumn that looks like it will be filled with anxiety and stress.

    But still, last night on the sofa, as we mourned our lost Summer, we still found ourselves falling into our old positive ways. We talked about our plans for the rest of the year; patching and painting the apartment, hanging new shelves in the kid’s room to free up floor space, getting tickets for the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze in October, making the kid’s Halloween costume, Thanksgiving, and the Granddaddy of all planning, Christmas! We even kidded about going back to Maine next Summer.

    With everything happening, and it is STILL HAPPENING, we find ourselves being optimistic, and trying to plan for a better tomorrow.

    I don’t think we are being delusional, just hopeful.

  • New Year Admission

    I had taken the past two weeks off to just focus on my family, and especially my kid, over the Holiday Season. With all the changes that have happened to us, I wanted to make sure she felt like she had my complete focus.

    When I did have time for myself, I read. This year for Christmas, my wife got me the novel “Transit” by Rachel Cusk. I have wanted this book for some time and placed it on list of books I would like. In all honesty, I think it was near the bottom of the list, but I was thrilled to receive it as a gift. I read the book in four days; that’s how much I enjoyed.

    But I am not here today to talk about that novel, or my opinion of it.

    I am here to admit that in 2018, I only read two books; “Transit,” and “Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana.” I started reading half a dozen books this past year, but I only completed reading two.

    It’s a little shameful to admit that, but as we enter a new year, I think honesty is of the top order.

    I made this self-discovery as soon as I finished “Transit.” As I closed that volume, I thought about what I should read next… and that’s when I remembered about the box, which I still haven’t unpacked, that contains all the books that were sitting on my old desk I NYC, that I planned on finishing.

    And that’s the key; planned on, but never did. The scary thing is that I think this has been a trend for the past few years.

    As I start this new year, not that I really consider this a resolution, I need to read more than two books.

    Let’s see if I can do three.