HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011

  Events we like to refer to as catastrophic, (we are ripe with melodrama) have forced 2010 to be a totally sucky year! Things beyond our control have transpired to cause us to seek high cliffs. We won’t do it. Fret not, (if you even are) but it has been the weirdest year since we peed our pants in the lunch line in 4^th grade because the teacher would not let us go. HAHA!!! After our mother got through with her; she not only let us go, she checked on us several times a day, offered us suckers and stopped smacking the back of our hand with a ruler! Boo-Yah!!!!!!   Here is the deal; we have had so many people say to us that 2010 was terrible for them or their loved ones. With tragedies, and deaths and hurricanes and pestilence and mountains of junk mail and gum disease and Reality Television that makes us want to rip our own ears off and stuff them in our purse just so we don’t even have to hear about them on commercials. Fortunately, they made this thing called a ‘mute button’ on the remote (or “remuter” as our youngest has always called it!) which we have almost worn out. If we ever disappear, and they need DNA to identify us, just check the mute button on the remote, it will be covered in it.
   Plus, we have found out that people don’t mean to be whiners, but 99.9% of us are. (Dept. of Random Figures) That’s what kept the Israelites wandering around in the desert for 40 years, you know! It should all be about counting our blessings. Yes it should. And we do that too. We spend time counting blessings and thanking God. We journal our thanks too, we also journal all of our craziness! What our family does with the journal volumes we have amassed after we are gone is their own problem…… Journals that really probably will only be of interest to our self and God, and maybe they even bore God…who knows?
     So then the fam will be torn. They will feel guilty if they throw them away. Besides what if someone finds them in the trash and learns what a true nut their mother was???Oh the humanity! Well, they could burn them, but that feels too pagan…like a pagan rite or a goddess ritual. They would like to avoid all lightning bolts so, of course that will stop them cold.
   Well, you know they will end up stacked away in the attic,(the journals , not the family) and if the world should continue to turn then great,great,great grandchildren will find them and ask; A.) Why was great, great, great Noni such a Loon, and B.) What exactly is cursive? Are we reading a foreign language? Because, by then cursive will be like hieroglyphics or eight-tracks…..completely irrelevant. “Daddy, they will ask our great, great grandson, why didn’t she just spend time in the groove-a-tron when she felt sad? Why did she record her feelings? Why didn’t she just go have her weekly cerebral-wash like everyone else?” Then he will have to explain that all we had were rudimentary tools at this point. Things called books, even empty ones to write absolute drivel in! And sticks with lead, and people still did that and they hooked all their letters together because they were taught to, and somehow it seemed faster, and of course, they were fundamentally stupid.
    Let’s see, where the heck were we? Oh yeah, 2010 blowing like a hurricane and, or, sucking like a tornado. Many have experienced this. Not everyone. We see people reporting great blessings and strokes of “luck” on line….We are truly happy for them when we read about it. Really. Seriously. Because it is such a hopeful, wonderful thing; even that person in school who whacked us repeatedly in the legs with her hockey stick during P.E. field hockey games is prospering. We hear she just acquired another land grab! Good for her. May her stick proudly wave!
   But for those of us who have had a wee-bit-o struggle in the big 2010…we are lurching toward 2011 like a thirsty man in the desert, heading toward the BIG oasis. As though, it held the secrets of the Universe, as though we were going to get a knock on the door from Publisher’s Clearing House immediately after the first of the year. As though great waves of peace and prosperity, and all the crap the politicians promised are really going to happen! YAY! Who’s ready to only pay $4.25 a year in taxes, and get several large breaks for owning Poodles??? We are! We are! Even though we own no poodles, we would purchase several, or borrow our mother’s. They are old and they smell, but they have lovely little bows. (The poodles, not our parents…)
     2011, the year of possibilities! The year when ANY thing could happen. Any GOOD thing!!! Grown children could begin to enjoy their lives and do things you wish to report on CNN. Credit Card companies could call and tell you that since you have been such a faithful (aka/stupid) customer, they are going to wipe out your balance to zero! What? Shudd-up! It could happen!
     And, all other nations could not only forgive us all our debts, BUT they could pay us back what they owe us too, thus causing a surplus. Government servants; as in all of our law-makers would then actually have the wisdom to use those funds wisely. This would put us in the black for the next century causing the world to once again fear us as the Super Power we are; and stop trying to blow us up all the time.
     But seriously, why doesn’t everyone just forgive everyone’s debt? How does America owe its own self money? WTHeck……How stupid is that? If we owed our own self a bunch of money, we would just say, “Hey, Tonya, don’t worry about it, we forgive ya, just let it go!” to which we would reply, “Gasp! You don’t mean it! Why, thank you!” We know America owes everybody and their brother, but they owe us too! Just do one great big ol’ write off, and Voila! Just like that… Problem solved.
   Enough of that. We have like; fitty more fabulous ideas that could change the course of the Nation’s financial outcome, and stimulate the economy to such a degree that it would need giant doses of Ritalin just to keep from reading FDIC backwards. But we will keep it to our self; as most people would rather have root-canal than discuss the economy, and by ‘most people’ we mean us.
    Anyway, so as we head into the New Year let’s let all the 2010 crud go! Let’s also pick our battles carefully and just lay down the sword whenever possible. Let’s plant flowers as soon as we can hack through the frozen ground without a jackhammer. Let’s turn our faces to the sun, the minute we spot any, and soak up all that vitamin D-3. It’s the big thing. It is supposed to give us dopamine and serotonin and make our endorphins swim through our bodies like pods of happy dolphins! Ignore the 45-SPF sunscreen, it is passé.
     Oh, yes, we hold out great hopes for 2011! Not in the New-Agey, Harmonic-Convergence, tape crystals to your Chakras kind of way, but in the; “Dearest Lord, please send good things, please shine upon us and touch our hearts. Please fill us with your joy, because it is our strength…” Like that! Happy New Year everybody! The wish could not be more heart-felt. In 2011 may all your roses bloom and may all your bread land butter-side-up!  Tonya Willman ©2010