2018-01-01 - 12:05 a.m.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
Hello 2018. Please don't take anymore of my loved ones... there are so few left. I may have to start recruiting new loved ones pretty soon.
This was a crazy holiday. Once again I tried to go on a trip and once again it all went FUBAR. I was going to spend Christmas with my family and then go up to the Ozarks with my sister and help her move, plus go possibly sign papers to have a house built. I traveled to my parents house and that leg of the trip went as expected, but then my parents both came down with some horrible flu like bronchitis situation. Quickly after this started, my kid and my sister both started having the same symptoms as my folks.
I was still planning to go with my sister to her new house in Arkansas, but two things happened. For one, my parents were having such bronchial spasms, they were unsafe to drive, they didn't feel like cooking or doing anything at all. And weather reports were predicting icy precipitation stretching through the whole route I was planning to travel so it started to look like a dumb move to try driving up to Arkansas, plus my parents were sicker than Ren Hoek so I had to stick around and take care of them till time for the ice to start accumulating on the roads. I cooked and cleaned and went to get meds and groceries for the sickies. Somehow I have managed to miss the scourge. This is a pure miracle. I can pretty much count on at least one devastating bout of bronchitis any time it's going around. I hope I don't get it.
I had to come home before my days off were over but this is a nice unexpected bonus, because I have had time to enjoy a near vegetative state for a couple days before the old grind starts back up. Today I went to the grocery store to get my ham, green cabbage, and black eyed peas for tomorrow. In case you don't know of this.... southern people have to eat cabbage and black eyed peas on New Year's Day. The cabbage is for money and the peas are for luck. Ya have to. It's a rule here. As a result of this, grocery stores are loaded down with black eyed peas and the heads of green cabbage are piled up in large bins in the produce section. I went to Kroger and it was a madhouse. Southerners were everywhere, in a cold panic, due to the stunning lack of black eyed peas. I helped a lady who seemed very distressed to find some off brand peas so at least she would have them. When it gets down to the wire like that, you could sell black eyed peas stewed with possum shanks and people would buy it up. It's pretty funny. There were no frozen peas. The only option was canned. Any other day of the year I would refuse canned black eyed peas, but a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do. I got my can.
OOH! I just remembered I also bought 2 pomelos! I must go peel one. They are Chinese grapefruits and I love them oh so much.
My neighbors are wasting thousands of dollars right now. They've been shooting fireworks since before dark and they are still doing it. It was nothing short of a professional display around midnight. My neighborhood goes so far overboard with it that it has lost most of it's magic for me. I go outside and watch just a little bit at midnight, and then I come back in and comfort my two terrified dogs who do not enjoy even one little pop.
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