Tempting Fate
So how is 2006 shaping up for you so far? At the hospital, we had Monday off for New Year's, and everyone already knows what I think of those short weeks at work, and this was no exception, in spades. It also seems, with Christmas on a Sunday, that Martin Luther King Jr. weekend turns out to be right around the corner, so there's another short week staring us in the face. I'm thinking right about now, they can't be liking the look on my face all that much, and the people I work with, probably even less. Fortunately after that, there shouldn't be any other short weeks until Presidents Day in February, which would lead those of us operating in a delusional state to harbor fantasies of actually catching up on things around the office. Yes, I realize that might seem impossible to rational people, but it's my delusion and I'm sticking with it.
Something else we have to look forward to next week is Friday the 13th, which is one of two that will occur in 2006, with the other one being in October. There's a solid black cat who frequents our yard for hand-outs, that we call Smokey Joe, and I figure he should fit right in with the famously bad luck day of lore and legend. Of course, our own Captain Midnight has an inky blackness that makes him almost completely disappear, and in fact, if he closes his eyes, you simply can't see him at all. So when it comes to black cats, we've got that part of the day covered, and also in spades. Inky black spades, that is.
Like millions of other people, Bill and I rang in the New Year watching the festivities in Times Square on television, and by golly, you've got to give that Dick Clark credit. There he was all dressed up and giving it everything he's got, and doing a heck of a job, considering the health problems he's had recently. I was impressed with his determination and endurance, and I give ABC a lot of credit for giving him the opportunity to do the show, when anyone could see he wasn't the Dick Clark of yesteryear that we all know and love. It was an inspiring example of courage in the face of adversity, and he certainly showed those young whipper-snappers out there a thing or two about professionalism and dedication. After what seems like only 150 years in show biz, he's obviously not giving up without a fight. Good for you, Dick!
I don't know about other people, but we don't find the entertainment choices all that appealing after midnight on New Year's Eve, so after the ball drops in Times Square, we usually toddle off to bed not that much later. Besides, Bill likes to get up early in the morning to see the venerable Tournament of Roses Parade, a time-honored tradition of New Year's Day, and broadcast for countless years from scenic Pasadena, California. Surprise! The first day of this shiny new year found no roses, no parade, no floats and not a Grand Marshall in sight. Hmmmm. Could 2006 be The Year The Grinch Stole The Rose Parade? We couldn't ever remember this happening before, although as we found out later, it must have, whenever New Year's Eve was on a Saturday previously. Apparently the parade organizers have a long-standing superstition that having the parade on a Sunday tempts the Fates into calling down the rains from the heavens, in perverse contrast to the usual conditions in sunny Pasadena. As it turned out, I'm thinking that the Fates must have been laughing their heads off, and they were probably the only ones, when the parade slogged on through a steady downpour on Monday instead. It drenched the onlookers, pelted the marching bands, soaked the floats and made a sloppy, soggy mess out of the whole proceedings. I thought it was a shame, after the innumerable hours spent on the event and all of the displays, and you especially have to feel sorry for the musicians and cheerleaders and horses and everything, out there marching in it. I suppose the lesson to be learned in all of this is not only don't tempt the Fates, but also to watch out for Comrade Mischka and his infernal weather machine, da?
Speaking of weather, last week I had every reason to believe that I would personally usher in a new era of global warming, and we would see record high temperatures during the winter in our area, because I put the new birdbath heater into my fountain to keep it from freezing. This is not technically a birdbath, but rather a decorative fountain, and I'm sure that the manufacturer expects you to disassemble it at the end of the gardening season, clean it and carefully pack it away some place safe and warm for the winter, and put it back up in the spring after all danger of frost is past. I have no doubt that my using it as a (gasp!) birdbath is in direct contravention to its avowed purpose, and likely voids the warranty in no uncertain terms. I found out the hard way that because it's cement, it doesn't want to be full of ice, because part of the support bracket cracked last year when the water froze, and I didn't realize until too late that the heater wasn't working. So this year, I wanted to put the new heater in before it froze, to hopefully prevent any more damage. Okay, so that was a delusional idea, but it almost happened. I tested the new heater and it worked fine, and I admit that I plunged it into the frigid water of the fountain and under the rocks to hold it down, with an almost gleeful jauntiness. Talk about tempting the Fates! It was the very next day, when I went outside to pick up the newspaper, that I noticed the fountain was completely frozen, although like those "Wet Paint" signs that make people invariably go over and put their fingers on it to see if it's really wet, I had to walk over to it and knock on the ice to make sure it was really frozen. (It was.) Fortunately, it turned out to be a simple thing to fix, because somewhere along the way it had tripped the ground-fault interrupt outlet that it's plugged into, and I just had to press the reset button and we were back in business. The ice-breaker business, that is, because it melted the ice in the fountain in a matter of minutes, which was wonderful to behold. And so, dear friends, if you're within the sound of my voice, you can count on having warm weather from here on out, at least as long as my birdbath heater is working, and thank you, Comrade Mischka and the Fates. (Which, as Dave Barry always says, would be a great name for a rock band, nyet?)
For people with a lot of time on their hands, and an Internet connection (and that can be a dangerous combination!) some of life's simple pleasures can be found at www.jacquielawson.com, where this talented artist shares her exquisite animated greeting cards (featuring the irrepressible Chudleigh!) with an adoring public. There are greetings for all occasions, and also no occasion, but mostly I find people sending them my way at Christmas, and they are each one a special joy and treasure. One that I received recently had a very entertaining animated representation of The Twelve Days of Christmas, which in Jacquie Lawson's world, winds up with 12 drummers drumming, 11 pipers piping, 10 lords a-leaping and 9 ladies dancing. After that, the maids, geese, swans and the rest of the birds fall into line quite as expected. But in the versions I usually hear in seasonal recordings, it's 12 lords, 11 ladies, 10 pipers, and 9 drummers, not the other way around. Meanwhile, Bill and I happened across a Christmas special of Bing Crosby holiday shows from the Hollywood Palace, and when he sang the classic carol with his family, he ended up with 12 fiddlers fiddling (which was a new one on me) and then 11 lords, 10 ladies and 9 drummers, while leaving the poor pipers out in the cold completely. So even after four centuries, this song still seems to be something of a work in progress, at least in terms of the shifting demographics for each day.
As long as we're back in a Christmas frame of mind, I said to Bill that today being Epiphany, it was a perfect time for me to have an epiphany. I have had no spare time at work lately, since my co-worker has been out on disability (I'll have to ask you not to repeat that, for HIPAA compliance) and I've been trying to do two jobs while already being behind schedule due to extra tasks involving year-end reports, payroll, updating files and document storage. At this rate, I knew I would never find the time to take down the Christmas decorations around the office, probably until who knows when. But suddenly it occurred to me that while it's true that I'm time-poor at work, I'm also space-rich, and I had the brilliant idea to just roll the little table-top tree, with all of its ornaments and accessories, into an empty office down the hall and leave it there, until I could spend more time on it. Luckily, the tree is on an old patient bedside cabinet with wheels, although you wouldn't notice that, because I cover it with a decorative holiday tablecloth. I had never tried to roll it before when it was fully loaded with the tree and everything, but I went in to work early this morning and pushed it down the hall and out of sight, with no trouble at all. Everyone who came in later would have believed that I actually took down the tree and put all the decorations away, when nothing could be further from the truth. This is just a little fiction that I have perpetrated to buy myself some time, and it worked like a charm. Although Bill said that I should just let it stay decorated in the empty office all year, and just roll it out again this Christmas, but I know better than to tempt Fate. After all, the last thing we need in our office is rain.
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