NEW BEGINNINGS

We have all been baptized into the new year. Hangovers should be worn off and it’s Friday, a work day for those lucky enough to have a job but not lucky enough to get a four day weekend. Being retired, no boss, no classroom full of teenagers waiting for me to unlock the door, a four day weekend is like being given a fork to eat your pop corn.  I’m doing breakfast in the kitchen, hot chocolate and peanut butter cookies, left over from the football games last night. For a few hours we eat from the unhealthy menu and lose ourselves in the moment. Living in the moment is one thing but being lost in it is another. One is about paying attention and the other is not. But it is a new year and we get to make believe things will be different; better than before. I’ll do my part but the man on the radio is no help. Except for football scores, the new year sounds very much like the last one. 

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions; a year has too many days. I’ll eat right and exercise day to day. When I confine my expectations to what happens today, then what happens today becomes more imporant.  When I fail, I forgive myself and start over. You don’t want failure to become a habit but you don’t live in fear of it either. Without failure to punctuate this life, our learning curve would be a flat line. I love the idea of new beginnings. The first day of a road trip is always good, maybe the best. The lead into a good song is almost always better than the fade. Hello kisses are better than the goodbye. Something about the marriage of hope and anticipation that lifts us higher than reflection on a good time. I’ve made several new beginnings already this morning. 

I don’t know how many times I’ve been to the French Quarter. It’s like everything else I suppose. You usually find what you look for. I know people who found it a dreadful place and never want to go back. Some were high minded moralists and others just had a bad day. I always expect to see something new, something that begs a question I hadn’t considered before and I’m seldom disappointed. I still have the weekend plus a day or two before I point the Mazda uphill. I will have to agonize whether to have a praline. If I do I’ll want another, and another; and if I don’t, I’ll feel cheated. What’s more sinful than caramelized sugar and pecans? Then I’ll browse through the tourist traps with their lusty, inappropriate T-shirts. My favorite is the black one with big white letters, ‘JESUS LOVES YOU’; below that the small print reads, ‘. . . but the rest of us think you’re an Ass Hole.’ I’ve bought that shirt several times and always been talked out of it up north somewhere. The pralines are up in the air but I will have a 1/4 muffuletta at Central Grocery, on Decatur St. Olive salad and hard salami on a 9” bun is too much for me. I used to split one with a friend but even that’s too much now. Peeling the butcher paper off a 1/4 muffuletta will be just one ‘New Beginning’ in a long day of fresh starts. 

O.K. 2015, it will take a while to get used to signing cheques, receipts and forms. I still need to buy a new calendar/organizer. Most of my notes and memos go in the computer but I keep a hard copy in my laptop case as a backup. Have no idea when my dentist or doctor want to see me but they will call, they always do. It’s 70 degrees in Louisiana but it will be serious winter when I get back to where I came from. I don’t mind the cold but I hate the gray. Swim early, coffee with amigos, afternoon making saw dust and find some music after dinner. Sounds like winter.