Okay, that's it. The holiday's over. All done. Nope, you can't count New Year's Eve as a holiday. Its just a marker for the end of the tax year and the beginning of your diet. Don't believe me? Look at the ads. Tell me where in your house you're going to put that $900 treadmill? Hmm? No, you're not going to get on it. Okay, maybe twice but that's it. Then it will be the thing that holds your clothes after your done ironing. Those new sweats you got, you will take them out and try them 'in the field' once, maybe twice, then you will wear them while you sit on the couch and watch re-runs of the Gilmore Girls, Band of Brothers, or NCIS. I don't care who you promised, it ain't gonna happen, at least not for very long, not if you shoot for the moon.

You've got to take baby steps.

Practice walking to the front walk for the paper and back. Start small. Instead of finishing those Christmas morning cinnamon rolls because you 'don't want it to go to waste,' try only eating one. If you wait another day or two, they'll be so hard, even microwaving them slathered in butter won't soften them up.

Take the dogs out and toss the ball or Frisbee for them. Make sure you stretch first. The last thing you want to do is pull a back muscle. That will interfere with you laying on the couch watching the Gilmore Girls, or Band of Brothers.

When you're ready, go for a walk in the mall. This will take some planning. You need a good pair of sneakers, good socks, and those sweats you bought. Take a bottle of water so you don't get dehydrated while you're looking at the sales in the windows or as you slow your pace down passing Victoria Secrets and give it a crisp, snappy hand-salute. Make sure you watch where you're walking. You don't want to bump into something and bruise yourself. It might lay you up for a week or so while the bruise heals.

We all know what's coming. First, we have to get back New Year's and drinking stuff that we haven't had since we were under the bleachers in high school. It all comes down to moderation. Between now and April we all need to save up enough to pay the IRS or, if we're lucky we're getting some back. So think about using that money for a new couch. Come on, you've earned it!

The Thrill of the Season

Look, I'm not proud of the picture, at least, not officially. The fact is, the season made me do it.

That's right-the season. What's worse, I was able to convince the wife and children (the grown up hairy kind) to participate in this offensive behavior in which we believe, several federal postal laws were-if not broken, severely bent.

I don't believe in all that dribble of 'the devil made me do it' or 'I don't know, I was raised by wolves,' or any of that other malarkey stuff that is laid out to justify crappy behavior. We go into stuff with our eyes wide open-except during this time of year. It seems this is the time of year that the wheels fall of, for good for bad. There are more suicides and more babies being conceived this time of year than any other. Just when you think its safe to go to your mail box and open 'safe' Christmas cards, you get something like this. It's like your driving in Iraq and an IED goes off next to your convoy as you drive, well, this is nothing like that but its the best I can do. You open this innocuous envelope and BAM! You have this exploding all over your shirt. You have to admit though, it looks good on the refrigerator. But lets look at it for a moment in its entirety.

Christmas is the second most holiest day in the Christian calendar, right behind Easter and way out in front of Columbus Day (this holiday just pisses me off but I appreciate the day off). Family and friends are fighting like aardvarks in the Spring, trying to gather in family reunions all across this country, fighting the weather and consuming gallons of coffee and cocoa to make the trips to grandma's house in time for Christmas Day football games. Trips that will be talked about for years as Herculean tribal tasks of repatriation and good times. People do two things this time of year; they get nicer or they flip you off in a parking lot vying for that parking slot right next to the store. It brings out the best and worst in people. I toyed, I must admit, with sliding into a handicapped parking slot for just a short run into the store. It was only going to be a minute-honest-I use to be with the government. But I didn't.

I like to go to the mall and just walk. I'm 51, soon to be 52. Sometimes, I still think I'm eighteen and try to do things that I shouldn't be doing, like playing football with the staff against our football team. Yep, that was a bad call. I think I tore my hamstring on the first play. Not wanting to curl up in a ball and suck my thumb on the first play, I played until the half and then claiming department chair duties, excused myself from the game. But I can still walk the mall. That now seems more my speed. Walking with my wife and watching her in her element. Joni could touch every garment in a mall and then start over. I have the knack of finding every chair and nesting until she is done. I even walk with my hands behind my back, just like the 'Old Ones' the 'Silverbacks' of our society. At 51/52 I know I'm pushing the age thing but its comfortable-really, strolling with my hands behind my back like I'm a rabbi from Oslo.

Well, there ya go. Look, there's a lot of stuff out there that causes us to leave the light on in the house so we don't see the Boogieman. The world, sometimes creeps into our lives with pain, suffering, cancer, infidelity, aging parents, lost jobs, unmet dreams. I think I have laid aside several dreams that will never take place-ever. Those are hard things to realize. But, and I truly believe this, there is a purpose to our lives. If you believe in a thing called 'god' you know what I mean. Even if you don't, there is a sense of destiny we all have in us. Just because A, B, and C happen, doesn't mean D will follow. Today, look out the window and see it for what it is, a new day. Sure, those things we have been dealing with for what seems like years, might still be there, but its our hearts that are different, if we allow them to be. Shakespeare wrote in Henry V 'All things are ready if our minds be so."

Take this day, this season, as an opportunity to have hope that whatever you are in, will be what we can have it be. Enjoy it for what it is, a fresh start-starting right now-one step at a time. Who knows, you may find yourself standing on the front porch in a diaper-and loving it.

The power of the Christmas light!

Every year it gets bad. The last few years its been the worst. We put lights up around our house. Not a lot, just the trim-easy, conservative lighting. Just enough to get us in the game and playing as part of the season. You know? Just to show up is a victory. But over the last few years, there has been peer pressure to move away from one style to another, more 'traditional' lights-the C9. Now, I admit, I caved. I bought some a couple of years back. We had them growing up as a kid. You know the ones, the alternating blue, green, red, orange\yellow, white bulbs that the power company wants you to buy because your little meter on your house starts to spin like a top.

Before the reinvestment in the C9's we had switched to the small, white lights and for a time, during their fashion, the icicle lights which takes on a whole new meaning in a city that never gets snow. But here was the thing, in all the years and during all the transitions, we never threw any of the strings of lights away. We had them all. We had those big plastic tubs from Target full of lights. We even bought the spools for them to wind them up and store them neatly. Crazy. So, last year, I put out every strand I had-all of them. I wrapped trees, bushes, walls, eaves, windows, nothing matched. We looked like a Key West margarita bar, a bad one. It was cool. then, after the season, we dumped them, keeping only the C9's and some lights for the tree. This year, during BLACK FRIDAY, I bought the lights on sale at Target. Hard to beat Target for Christmas lights, as long as you get there the first couple of days they open.

Ya see, they don't restock. Once those lavender lights with the LED bulbs are gone, they're gone. Their selection is really one of the best in the free world if your looking for that bulb that says "WHAM, NOW YOUR IN A NEIGHBORHOOD THAT LIGHTS CHRISTMAS THE WAY THE SHEPHERD'S SHOULD HAVE DONE IT 2000 YEARS AGO!!" You know the ones, the soft blues, or reds, or the lavenders. The multi-coloreds that you and I grew up with are, well, dull.

So, my friend and I stood there looking at the bulbs, comparing notes, strategies, effects-both desired and misdirected, cost, and distance. Another man, overhearing our conversation, piped in with time/distance ratios and the anomaly issues he had about being five feet short on a fix measurement, thereby requiring him to go to Plan F and add a string of crap to fill the gap. The gap was filled but he commented 'it looked like a scab on the end of a pretty girl's nose.'

I usually just leave the gap there.

At night, from the street, it gives the effect of the driveway ending a few feet short. Of course, with all the lights, you can actually see the driveway and see that it doesn't, but that's the theory we're going with.

Anyway, there you have it. Lights. Its an annual thing. All of ours are up and active. Of course, we had a storm last night and half of them are now decorating the neighbor's yard. But, still, the yard needed decorating. I'm not going to move it. They look fine there.

The wisdom found in dogs

I love dogs.

They are what they are. We have two of them. One, is coming up on fifteen and the other is just over two and a half.

Dogs are what they are. What you see is what you get. They have no hidden agendas or plot or plans. They make stuff up as they go.

I came home yesterday and the two met me at the door like I was their god. "Oh, master master master, we are so happy to see you. See our tails wag? See? we are so happy. Pet us and let us know you love us too, quick, come see what we did today while you were gone." So you go and see your magazine shredded in the back yard and there is no one to blame but yourself. Why did you leave the magazine out if not for them to play with?

I woke up this morning a little later than normal. It's Saturday, after all and I wanted to sleep in. Betty, the young one, woke me with her face pressed up against mine. Her tail beating against something like a drum, only we don't own a drum. I couldn't roll over because Mindy, the fourteen year old, was laying on my feet. Yeah, I know what your saying. "Hey, what are you doing letting your dog sleep on your bed?" You're right, I shouldn't. But I did. And there is something comforting about an animal, particularly a dog, laying close to you. Mindy wants to lay between Joni and I because she feels safer there in her old age, and that, in turn, makes us feel good.

I guess as I get older I see my life between these two. The youth that I still cultivate in my mind that I think I still have, and the reality that as each day goes by, I seek the comfort that life has and of those around me. I want to be able to walk through the desert and look at life and smell the beauty that the world provides all the while thinking I can still leap walls and run like a galloping buffalo, knowing full well my galloping days are just about over.

I want Mindy's brains and Betty's young heart. I want the slow processing of the old girl and the willingness to jump into anything anytime of the youth. Somewhere, there is a happy medium.

Yep, I love my dogs.