North Star Writers Group

When 2006 began with a monster snow storm that turned the town where I live into an enormous parking lot for three days, things didn’t look too bright for the new year. But now that the year is quickly winding to a close and I’m getting ready to celebrate my 67th birthday, I’m pretty pleased with the way 2006 has gone.

Oh, sure, there have been a few glitches.

Early on, after my wife Sally and I managed to get some money ahead, which is no easy feat in this day and age, the glitches surfaced. The toilet broke, the hot water heater in the basement sprung a leak and the garage door opener went kaflooey. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, “so it goes”.

It was also a year that saw us downsize after 33 years in the big, 150-year-old house on Main Street only to discover how many things we had that we didn’t even know we had - including 56 screwdrivers, 11 hammers and enough yellowed newspapers to fill seven dump trucks.

This is also the year Sally taught herself how to macramé, and before she broke the habit, she made macramé plant hangers, macramé bedspreads, macramé curtains and macramé tablecloths. There for awhile I was the only guy in town wearing macramé undershorts and I was relieved when she lost interest in macramé shortly before she began what would have been her biggest project ever — a macramé two-car garage.

Although there were a few other negatives - I broke 34 pairs of shoelaces, forgot at least 100 telephone numbers, lost a dozen house keys and twice that many black plastic pocket combs and complained at least a thousand times about the fluctuating price of gasoline – it has turned out to be a year of incredible positives.

I’ve had enough willpower to kick two bad habits. I no longer wear shoes to bed at night or bite my fingernails.

My Detroit Tigers made it all the way to the World Series.

I’m not the president of the United States.

My favorite socks still have elastic in the tops.

My snow tires haven’t melted.

I survived the afternoon I was fishing with the grandkids and ended up with a hook in my hand and had to go the hospital emergency room to have it removed.

My car gets 32 miles to the gallon.

I’ve almost finished reading Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick”.

The tomatoes in my backyard garden were scrumptious this summer.

I dislike fresh spinach.

The only real negative I can think of is I haven’t won the Ohio Lottery a single time during the entire year, which prompted me to tell Sally, “Oh, well, unlucky at the lottery but lucky in love.”

That prompted her to say, “Not tonight, grandpa.”

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