It is absolutely uncanny how I invite the kiss of death to any kind of New Year's Eve celebration.  Mind you, the people around me often have a good time, but my luck, or lack thereof, in having great fun on January 31st outside of my own home should be absolutely newsworthy.

My parents never really celebrated the New Year in any kind of profound way.  Where I grew up in Kentucky, there was a children's morning show called "The Peggy Mitchell Show."  Peggy Mitchell was something of a local celeb amongst the kiddies and her show aired from all the way in Evansville, Indiana!  I was especially mesmerized by Peggy because my mother's maiden name was Mitchell (no known relation to Peggy) and therefore, a good many of the people with whom I spent my time were also named Mitchell. 

One year, Miss Peggy implored of all of the children who viewed her show to, at exactly noon on January 1st, run into the kitchen, grab their mama's pots and pans and begin whacking them together out the front door in unison.  It just so happened that on January 1st of that year, we were doing something we rarely did.  We were going to my grandmother's house in Owensboro (a big town) on Boliver Street (absolutely downtown) where many little children happened to watch The Peggy Mitchell Show and so a cacophony of pot and pan banging was bound to commence.  I begged my mother and grandmother to help me keep track of the time so that when noon came, I could be making my mark in that glorious symphony.  Needless to say, since overall, they were not stupid people, noon came and went without so much as a rattle or bang out of me and around about 3pm, I asked if it was noon yet and got the ol' "Well shucky darns, I guess me missed it" crap.

I really do believe it was in that primal, parental denial of New Year's fun that the seeds of my future NYE failures were rooted.

When I married and left home in 1978, my husband was stationed on Guam (Air Force) and when New Year's Eve rolled around, a number of his married friends decided we'd all go in together and rent a yacht on which to tool around Tamuning Bay, watch the fireworks and commune with one another for a few hours whilst our poor children rotted away their formative years in the base child care center for the night.  The princely amount of $75 per couple would buy us the yacht for the night, a catered evening and a couple of fellas to steer us around.

I learned a few things that night.  One was that "yacht" is a very subjective term, depending on to whom you are speaking.  In our case, "yacht" also could mean, let's say, "fishing boat."  "Catered" could mean, "there will be beer and Ritz crackers with unrecognizable stuff on them."  Another thing I learned is that I get extremely seasick when confronted by a boat; let's say a "fishing boat" posing as a yacht.  Let's also say that I spent the entire 4 hours or so plastered to the deck of said fishing boat, praying for death and turning varying shades of green from the pasty to the puce to the nice olive drab.

The next year, we decided to stay home and invited a couple over to spend the evening (Mr & Mrs Cox).  They were our age and had also been married for a year or so.  I didn't know either of them, but Paul (the first husband), worked with Mr Cox (or I suppose I should say "Airman Cox" but I have trouble saying that without sniggering in a most girlish way, so I shan't) and assured me that they were just really good people.  I made something for dinner.  It was 30 years or so ago, so I can't quite remember what, likely fried chicken since that was one of the things I could cook well back then.  Then we all settled down into some moving watching after our little ones went to sleep. 

Suffice it to say, Mr & Mrs Cox were very fond of one another.  In fact, they were so fond of one another that they couldn't really keep their hands off one another.  You could (and should) go on to say that Mr and Mrs Cox didn't really register that there were other people in the room and just sort of "went at it" in a pretty powerful way.  Hands were going into all kinds of clothes that ought not be explored in public places or other people's houses and it was, I gotta tell ya, a little unsettling.  Paul and I managed to make a good bit of throat clearing noises and made sure  lights were turned up and such, but it seemed nothing was going to deter the Cox couple's hotness for one another.  At around 12:01, after much hip hipping and hurraying, we sent them on their way to finish up the (very few) remaining activities such sweaty hands would want to accomplish.

I asked Paul if he was going to be troubled if that incident left me frigid for a few days and he allowed that no, he was actually good himself and we just wouldn't talk about it again.

The next year, ever vigilant that we would have a good New Year's Eve celebration, we went to visit our friends, the Dunn's.  We knew them well and certainly did not expect any kind of grab bag experience.  They were having some couples over as well and all was great until around 10pm when Mr and Mrs Dunn got into a skirmish about something, resulting in Mrs Dunn locking herself into the bathroom and Mr Dunn talking to her through the door for most of the night.  Sadly, this was base housing on Guam and there was only one bathroom and she was in it.  With several people consuming huge amounts of beer and such, this was not your ideal circumstance.

The following year, we went to visit another couple yet whose name, I am sad to say, escapes me.  Mathews, I think it was.  She was active duty military, as was he, but she was in the Security Police Squadron and he worked with Paul in the Munitions Maintenance Squadron.  All well and good and fine except that since time memorable, there has been a brutal animosity between those two squadrons, whose barracks are side by side on Anderson AFB.  She invited her friends, he invited his and we all ended up crouching behind pieces of furniture and trying to collect our kids and crawl out of the house along side the wall when the brawl erupted.

After that, Paul and I avowed to ignore the New Year and that worked out well.

This tradition carried over into my second marriage and Eric and I have not celebrated outside of our home.  Stay home = good news.  Go out = bad news. 

Last night was by no means a tragedy as we ventured out of our comfort zone and accepted an invitation from my best friend up here on the mountain.  She's a wonderful person and honestly, I'll grab absolutely any opportunity I have to hang with her a bit.  Our kids get along great, so it seemed like a winning proposition.  Other couples were there and the only real sticker was that they all had something in common that we did not share, which was goat raising.  I did learn a whole lot about raising goats.  Delena used her Nifty Knitter to make a hat.  Eric stood out at the bonfire with kids and adults who happened to drift up.  We ended up leaving around 10:30 because I couldn't keep my eyes open any more. 

By the time we got home, I was a little more awake and the kids were more than eager to get to bed.  One thing my kids are good at is going to bed when they are tired and not pushing that envelope.  I think they get that from me.  Eric, however, was alive with feeling and twirling around the hilltop like Julie Andrews in "The Sound of Music," communing with God and nature and the snow and everything else that the especially expensive and smooth tequila he'd been sipping opened up for him. 

I sat at my computer, posting columns to my sites and watching the clock roll over to 12:01am, January 1st.  It was odd to be alone, ringing in the New Year and I felt a twinge of frustration over it, but then I got over my snit and did the reasonable thing. I went to bed and got a decent night's sleep.

I don't know if the curse is broken or not, but I figure I made progress since I wasn't dodging thrown furniture or puking into a pristine bay.

That's progress, I figure.

Dec 25, 2006

The Solstice passed in a beautiful way this year.  It was on Thursday and Eric and I went to town to eat delicious Chinese food (Dignity Dragon has become my passion) and finalize shopping for the kids.  All in all, it was a happy day, but it was raining like mad for most of it, which is fun if you are inside and love the rain as I do, but if you're the mail carrier and you're out pushing mail into the mailboxes of the awaiting masses, it kind of sucks. 

We went home and cuddled and did what we do every Solstice.  We talked about our goals for the coming year.  We figure that the harvest season that culminated on Halloween was the active time of the year for ancient folks, so the dark of the year when we retreat (by necessity of weather conditions) into our homes to be introspective and thoughtful is the perfect time to make plans for the coming year and to dream a little dream of 'me' so to speak.  Where was I last year and what have I accomplished?  What do *I* want to become in the next year?  How will I "demand more of myself" and step out of my own comfort zone to encourage positive change?  Heaven knows that if we are unwilling to take risks and push ourselves beyond what we believe we are capable of doing, we might just as well lay down and die because we will stop growing and learning and becoming.  I feel that giving critical consideration to where we'd like to go is essential to figuring out how we're going to get there. It's like cutting a big hunk of cheese on a block.  You don't watch the knife that is doing the cutting...you watch the the end of the cut where you want to end up to be sure and get it straight.

The day after Solstice was so profound because it was unseasonably sunny and warm, really giving the impression that as per the legend, the sun had returned to the sky on Solstice after the wet and drear of the day before.  Even if we don't notice the graduation, the days will now become longer until Summer Solstice.  It's a weird contrast in Grizzly Flats when we know that the most intense Winter still lies before us.  The "Dark of the Year" where it becomes something of a chore to move beyond the safety and warmth of our Hearth Home has just begun. 

Will it be another year like last year where we do not see any significant snow fall until late MARCH only to have it extend through May?  Already, we have seen more snowfall than we did by this time last year.  Does that bode poorly or just "different?"

What will be will be and whatever nature chooses to send our way, we will handle with the grace and dignity of those gone before us who did not have four-wheel-drive vehicles and central heat to keep their children warm.  We will wait our time and do what we need to do to maintain the best quality of life we can while giving respect to the elements and to the mountain.  All too often, we have seen the effects on those who do not give respect to the mountain and understand that it is an entity unto itself.  It allows us to live here and shares its resources with us generation after generation.  All it asks is that in return, we give it its due.

I see the Fire Safe Council doing just that, which is one of the reasons that I harp on citizens of Grizzly Flats to attend the meetings.  It's only a few hours out of one Saturday a month and you will learn so much about what our mountain needs in order to thrive.  You will learn how to live with nature rather than destroying it and fighting against it.  This is not Sacramento or "The Valley" where you can just run roughshod over the land, inflicting your will onto it and have it not matter because so many others have already done so before that the land has stopped expecting to be appreciated and honored.  This is a whole other world up here and flatlanders who choose to make it their home need to know terms like "continual forest" and "defensible area" and "firebreak." 

When you move into "The Valley," you move into a world that is dominated by humans and concrete and commerce.  When you move into a place like Grizzly Flats, you would do well to slow your roll and understand that you are gently becoming a part of a concert that has been playing for centuries.  You have to be silent for a while, listen for your cue and join in softly until you get the feel of the music that is being generated.  That music has gone on before you got here and will continue after you leave.  It is an honor to participate in that concerto.

When you go to a Fire Safe Council Meeting, you will learn more than you could ever have imagined about the area around us and see how the custodians of that land provide for it as it provides for us.  You will see the vast degree of knowledge and education the officers have regarding appropriate care of our natural resources.  The sophistication and intelligence of these proceedings cannot be denied and you will likely very quickly understand how little you actually know about forest living.  Sit down, listen, take notes and learn and you will not only forward the aggregate land wisdom into critical mass, but you will also, over time, learn how you can help and be a part of what is taking place to preserve the rustic quality of life we enjoy while still keeping the area and its ability to be safely inhabited secure.

I came away from my first Fire Safe Council meeting completely impressed by the entire process and grateful that those people were there to teach the rest of us.  For the record, the next meeting is at 10am on Saturday, January 6 at the Church Lodge (the little yellow building behind the church).

The good looking dark-haired guy with the pony tail is my husband.  I'll be babysitting.  Tell him hello and how amazing his wife is and we'll call it square.

Best to ya,