Since my last blog entry almost four months ago was inspired by the T-shirts for sale in a gift catalog, I may as well admit I am having trouble coming up with worthy blog material from my personal life. I figure people probably don’t want to read about each string of November and December errands run in order to prepare for Christmas gifts and food. Am I right? What do you want to read about?

How about the Christmas party I went to where I poured myself a glass of ginger ale with full awareness that I would have an embarrassing case of hiccups for the entire evening? This is why I don’t drink pop—because it always gives me hiccups. This particular evening, however, the hiccup fairy did not visit me. Instead, two other party guests had terminal hiccups. They were not the least bit embarrassed.

Another little irony of the season was that Robert and I used the upcoming annual Christmas gathering at our house to motivate a thorough cleaning of the fluorescent light fixture in our kitchen. Five prior such gatherings had not motivated us to flip and tap, tap, tap the fixture until all the tiny, gauzy, black wings and bug bodies fell out. But this year we did it, and boy, were we happy to have that job done. It had been “bugging” us for years. Would the gleaming white plastic now blind our guests? Not a guest looked aloft to notice that our insect cemetery had been transformed.

Christmas Day conversation contained many laughs, including “Cue ball in the fireplace!” (Don’t ask.) As I replay that sweet day in my head, one of my favorite clips is my nephew Jonathan’s surprised observation when the lettuce that had fit in a bag that had fit in a wooden salad bowl did not fit in the same bowl when emptied out of the bag: “I guess physics doesn’t apply to salad.”

Well, I hope my ordinary-life blog will be of some interest to you. Otherwise, since I have already exhausted the catalog T-shirt idea, I may have to resort to listing the curious names of spammers who have shown up in my e-mail. Here are some of my favorites: Dredge V. Steadiness, Perturbation A. Eye, Cognac M. Kent, Felted K. Squeegee, Edelweiss H. Tractors, and Leeward Apoplexy. I hope the names I dredged up are squeegee-clean and do not have unsavory connotations that might perturb anyone’s eye or lead to apoplexy. (Apologies to Mr. or Ms. Kent and Mr. or Ms. Tractors, whose names I couldn’t figure out how to work into my disclaimer.)

I'll try to post more frequent blog bits in 2008.
Happy New Year!