Packing Up Christmas

Put the finishing touches on cleaning-up the end of the year today, cleaning-up the holidays. Put decorations in dust-free containers and organized my shed while Mr. Fun hung hooks and put 4 bicycles in his shed.

The year 2011 is laid behind us like a ribbon that has fallen from a little girl's hair. It curves, twists, and is wrinkled where it was knotted and tied. We gussied-up the end of the year, the final couple months, and sent it out in glitter and gold; then the New Year began.

One month ago Christmas was on the marquee. Now, poof! another year is gone. The 2011 volume of history has been lifted to rest on the shelf beside the editions from previous years. We can't change a jot or a tittle or go back to dot an "i" or cross a "t." We each put our signature on 2011. For some, possibly, it wasn't the best of times. We're willing to wager, though, that everyone had a few good moments.

Long ago Erma Bombeck wrote, "Someone asked me the other day if I had my life to live over, would I change anything, and my answer was NO! and then I changed my mind.

January is the season to pack away the decorations; to preserve the holiday that's just passed; it's the season to reminisce, and it is a season to anticipate.

A new year has arrived . . . 2012 is here; a full clean calendar--January to December--twelve months of potential; twelve months of unknown. In the timetable of our lives that is where we all are. It is a doorway month. In an unbelievably quick countdown, the drop of a ball, we exit and enter. Take a breath, blink, and we're through the threshold and now six days have gone!

After crossing the threshold of 3 years of blipping, I feel like Rosie (& Mr. Fun) are standing looking at a landscape with new snow, not a footprint anywhere. At this moment 2012 is all fiction. Twelve months from now it will all be non-fiction!

Tomorrow we leave for some January vacation. I don't report back to the classroom until February 13th, but we'll be back in 10 or 14 days. Woohoo!

Good night from Southern California.
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol