Happy, Happy 2017

It's still over an hour before 2017 and I'm going to bed as soon as I write this New Year's greeting. And though I had wine for dinner and champagne for a toast to the year that was, I'm perfectly sober.

Unlike such days in years past.

We had dinner with Jack and Sherry, long-time friends from New Haven. It was Hoppen-John: pork and rice and collard greens and black-eyed peas--something people from below the Mason-Dixon line know is required eating tonight and tomorrow. Jack and Sherry's son, Rob was there. He's 44 and was Josh's older playmate growing up. John, our friend from WV, who is a psychologist for the VA was the only other human. Between Jack, Sherry and Rob, there were 4 dogs and 2 cats. Southerners and their animals, you know....

We had agreed for our happiness to not say the name of the President-elect out loud. But we invariably did.

We  have three weeks for the thing that isn't just a river in Egypt. After that we have to wake up in a new reality.

We are all from, basically, White Working Class backgrounds, and none of us have yet figured out how we so drastically left our roots--the folks who made 'he who will not be named' the President elect.

But we've known each other for decades: Bern and I knew John in Morgantown when we were in college. John is an Episcopalian, like me and we met in church. Sherry was a member of St. Paul's in New Haven when I came there as Rector in 1980. Lots of years of friendship in all that. Plus Josh and then Mimi growing up around Rob.

Somehow we simply slipped away from where we came from and became Liberals.

And now, waiting for 2017, we are perplexed, anxious, angry, confused--each of us in different areas of those emotions.

But the year will come.

"It's not how many times you get knocked down that matter--it's how many times you get back up."

That would be my motto if I didn't realize that the saying is attributed to Gen. George Custer, not long before the Battle of Little Big Horn....

I know I'll 'get up'. But the 'knock down' this year was painful, perplexing, confusing.....

Happy New Year any way.....

La-La Land

That's the movie Bern and I will go see on Inauguration Day.

Neither of us want to be near a TV that day.

For the two of us--and millions of others, Trump becoming President is something we'd not want to view, in any way.

So, we'll go to a movie and dinner and probably I'll drink some wine (Bern doesn't drink...to her demise in this case) and just try to get through the day and pretend 'life as we know it' didn't end.

But it will. It will.

"Life as we know it", for 4 years at least, is over.

(I bought all the adults in our family "We're Still Here" blue baseball hats for Christmas. Bill Maher designed them and Michael Moore wears one.Just a reminder to Trump World that we are still here.)

La-la-Land won't make reality 'real' again. But it will pass the day.

Hopefully.....

Amazing....

Yesterday, Bern mailed in our last mortgage payment!

Somehow she (and I mean her and her alone...I don't do checks, I do taxes) paid off our 30 year mortgage in 27 years....

Only thing is, there goes our biggest tax deduction.

If you want to be angry with the government--and who doesn't these days?--consider this: tax policy for ordained ministers.

Any 'housing costs'--mortgage, utilities, taxes, paint, repairs, lawn furniture, a new mattress, toilet paper, on and on--can be deducted from an ordained minister's income and no tax is paid on them....Plus, like everyone else, ministers can also deduct the interest on mortgage, which was already deducted once in the mortgage payments....Go figure. God must be on our side....So, $1900 or so a month can no longer be deducted in tax year 2017. But that will be fine.

But it's nothing considering my father and mother's only house. He had an eighth grade education while my mother had a Master's degree in education. But when they bought their only house, the year I went off to college, they paid cash! Those two knew how to save.

It was on $28,000 but that was 1965 money.

It only took us 27 more years to pay for a house than my Mom and Dad....

And it feels so good.

Impossible?

I'm not keen on my mathematical acumen so when I saw this on line "Can you solve this almost impossible problem?" I almost passed it over. But just by glancing I knew what I thought was the answer, so I went to the site and I was right.

It just seems common sense and intuitive to me. What do you think? Here it is....

1+5=18
2+10=36
3+15=54
4+20=?

What do you think?

(What was harder than the problem was typing it! My computer didn't let me put spaces between the numbers and signs like I wanted. Now that seems impossible....

Short but oh, so sweet...

Mimi, Tim and Ellie came up from Brooklyn on Christmas Eve morning. Josh and Cathy and the three Bradley girls didn't get here until I'd left to do two (4 and a 6) Xmas Eve services. Everyone went to our friend John's Christmas Eve party and got home about half-an-hour after I did. We opened stocking presents and slept until 7 for Christmas day.

It was a wonderful day--full of talk and laughter and joy and a little alcohol....

John came to make 10 for dinner. The girls (all of us really) kept Ellie the center of attention!

Good food and a great family. What else do you need?

Josh and Cathy left early on the 26th--she had court of the 27th--and Tim and Mimi left in mid-afternoon.

Bern did, as always, put the house back in 'just the two of us' shape and we had a quiet evening.

'Bout all I could have wished for....

Yorkshire Pudding

More later about our wondrous Christmas with Josh/Cathy, Mimi/Tim, the three Bradley girls and baby Ellie McCarthy....

But this is about Christmas dinner. I had no idea what Yorkshire Pudding was. I thought it would involve raisins, dates, currants and the like. It's like a pop-over with beef juice! Who knew? Well, millions of people, of course, but not me.

We had a ten pound, bone in, beef rib roast, Yorkshire Pudding, a mixture of 4 mushrooms, scalloped potatoes, spinach salad with pomegranate, and beef broth. With a rich mixture of everything from German Chocolate Cake to ice cream to cream puffs for dessert.

Amazing.

And the Yorkshire Pudding threw me, but in a good way. I've having it crisped up in the over with beef soup for dinner tonight. Right now, in fact.

So, see you....

Tis the season....

Just as Americans do politically, the crowd shopping in Stop and Shop this morning split down the middle: naughty and nice....

I had half-a-dozen harried shoppers cut me off in an aisle with not so much as a fare thee well.

At the same time, more than that backed up to let me pass and smiled.

Most of the aggression wasn't so much 'aggressive' as just pretending they were the only person there.

Half the small kids were listening attentively to their parents and the other half were running amok! I kid had hidden underneath a vegetable display and his father dragged him out. I expected the man to hit the kid and present me with a moral dilemma...but he just picked him up and carried him away.

Lots of people simply seemed like they wanted to be anywhere on the eve of the Eve besides shopping.

And most of the people in really ugly holiday sweaters were the friendliest in the store.

Something about an ugly holiday sweater to bring out the best in folks....