Happy December 30th, Stroock's Books aficionados. Let's get to it.
This was a year of anxiety. We've always been something of a worrier, but it got bad this year.
We've fretted a lot about the house. Fretting started last January when the sump pump line froze over, causing a PVC pipe to break free of its fitting and spew water onto the water heater alarm. We fixed this problem in 20 minutes, by the way, at 4 in the morning. Nevertheless....
Devotees will recall last June's AC wars, in which a company needed 9 days to get a replacement part. In November a glitch in the new thermostat caused the AC to come on with the heat. Overall the HVAC required half a dozen visits this year.*
We're jumpy AF now. Over the summer we saw an ear, nose and throat doctor because of a persistent cough. He plucked a couple of hairs resting right on the ear drum. We believe this has made us more attuned to daily sounds of the house. Pipes clanking, the ice machine switching on, small ticks in the walls, etc. What is that? Is that anything? It's usually nothing.
We go to bed at night with a vague feeling that something is going to start beeping, or break, or otherwise need our attention. It's not pleasant. We're working through it though.
Going back to the AC wars, we unleashed verbal hell on that repairman, and upon his boss over the phone. Immediately afterwords we felt...well...we can't quite find the words. But it was not a pleasant feeling. They knocked 60 percent off the bill though. Is an angry verbal onslaught the way to get things done? We've always prided ourselves on being nice in such situations. Maybe niceness was a mistake.
Late this year we decided that the less we say, the better.
Getting rid of our twitter account was a great idea. After a few months we don't really miss it.
We're bored a lot, and we have trouble getting into or even trying new things. We're bored, yet we had a lot of trouble concentrating on work.
We look to the future with a sense of melancholy, fear even. Fear at what might be. Maybe in 20 years we'll be wandering around this house looking for rocks in the stream of time.
On to nicer things.
We held ourselves to under 30 cigars this year. Usually the number approaches 40. And usually when the family is gone, we smoke one or two every day. We had only three during the week of this last trip. We went all of June without a cigar. And we went 42 days in November/December. Not bad. Let's see if we can hold the Arturo Fuente number down to 20 in 2026.
We look back on June with pride. A month in which we got Real IDs, a high school graduation, graduation party, dance recitals and prom. Heck, when the AC shut down in late June we acted decisively and bought three window AC units. A busy month. A successful month.
We had a great year at the gym combining weights, calisthenics, and tension bands. We stopped lifting last August. That month we were down to 235 Lbs. Right now, the scale says 245. Even with the gain our clothes are looser. We look down and see our toes, etc etc. That gain has to be muscle. Since August we've been doing a lot of stretching, pushups (160 in sets of 20), crunches, leg lifts, tension bands and the rowing machine. Obviously this routine is working great, but we're fatigued and bored. Time to switch up in the new year?
Our bloodwork came back fantastic this summer. Glucose down to 5.6 which is right on the prediabetic line. Sugar is high but sodium is militantly normal right there in the middle of the green zone. Triglycerides dropped from 382 to 204 which is just over the high line. Ten years after our cardiac catheterization, our numbers, while not perfect, look more or less normal.
For the first time in a quarter century we're tempted to say we had a bad year. But no. A lot of stress, yes, but the year wasn't bad. There were too many good milestones. Too many nice memories.
*Hahahahah....ahhhhhh...hahahahah...as we write this the thermostat sends a Service Urgent message and the furnace isn't blowing hot....Hahahahaha....Repairman is on the way. He's here and...Hahahaha....new furnace coming in tomorrow. Given all the glitches we've dealt with this year, it's a no brainer and costing about 20 percent less than we fearead.
No comments:
Post a Comment