Weather Report: January 28, 2009

The new year, and most of the first month of it has already been swallowed up. By what exactly? And just how did we get here so fast? Younger Girleen has a brand-new Louise Brooks-style haircut, Elder Girleen commemorated her 7th birthday with waffles for dinner last night and, last weekend, a "movie party" with the girls in her first grade class (for the first time I rejoiced that there are 14 boys in her class, leaving only six girls to feed pizza to).  The Husband is still sans job, though taking a page from the laconic cowboy model of manhood, has by sheer force of will, strongarmed lots of irons into the fire.* 

And me, I’m just a week or so back from another winter’s worth of contract work reading lots and lots and lots and lots of short stories, during which I deduced that the current literary short story template includes:

twins as protagonists**; 

cell phones set on nightstands the way cigarettes were once set in ashtrays, that vibrate sleeping couples — one of whom’s a cheater — awake; 

elderly parents who must be cared for; 

cold, hard sex between people who care for each other not a whit.

Oh, and Graphic Novels.

And here in Atanta? It’s cold, cold, too cold, and a pale wintery sky. A new president; a new year; and I have from the library conjured up for myself a book — Your Best Year Yet!

Because it would be nice, wouldn’t it, for 2009 to be that? But there is so little time, and is what there is of it worth expending on worksheets and assessments, on contemplating what I might’ve accomplished this past year, and how I limited myself as I worked toward it?

Nah, no time for any of that.  Sorry I've been gone so long.

*The assumption being that the saying refers to a cowboy who has his hands full at branding time, not a Victorian housemaid ironing lots of petticoats.

**If you are 23 now you were born in 1986, and given all the older mothers running around by then, chances are quite high that you know a lot of twins