{"id":5451,"date":"2017-01-01T10:36:54","date_gmt":"2017-01-01T16:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=5451"},"modified":"2017-01-31T10:34:06","modified_gmt":"2017-01-31T16:34:06","slug":"2017-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2017\/01\/2017-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"2017 Begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

January is the worst month.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s also the month for consumption.<\/p>\n

The coldness, initially a welcome relief from allergies, has now gone on too long. And the freshly fallen December snows have crushed underfoot. Sure, it might snow in January, but instead of a gentle blanket on everything, it will be a whitewashed covering of grimy ice crusts and rock-hard drifts. In December, at least, I spend the first 20-odd days of the month looking forward to the plant shutdown, when my good days \u2013 and I count as a good day any day that I don\u2019t have to get in a car \u2013 will hopefully outpace the bad. But in January\u2026no. I mean, I don\u2019t have to go to work today, obviously, but now I\u2019m at the point during my break where I just keep thinking about the break ending. Maybe I should go to bed earlier, I think, so that I get back on schedule. Maybe I should put away the project that I know I won\u2019t complete.<\/span><\/p>\n

Actually, the year felt like it started last night. The five of us went to the Jayne\u2019s house; they have a New Year\u2019s Eve party annually. On account of sickness, we didn\u2019t go last year, but this is our fifth time attended. We have yet to stay until midnight. Last night, with a record-high attendance, and half the attendees inexplicably standing around in the kitchen, and with some poor man\u2019s Dick Clark blaring from the TV regurgitating clich\u00e9s and showing off the worst that pop music has to offer, we only stayed until 9:45. We\u2019re not really partiers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, on the way there, I asked Jennifer, \u201cSo, do you have any resolutions, or goals, for 2017?\u201d I had to say it in an overly-dorky manner, since we don\u2019t really makes resolutions \u2013 they\u2019re as artificial as Hallmark cards for Hallmark holidays \u2013 and I had to add in the synonym \u201cgoals,\u201d since Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses think new year\u2019s resolutions are \u201cworldly,\u201d and thus \u201cbad,\u201d yet they encourage goals, which are the same thing. We\u2019re not Witnesses, obviously, otherwise we wouldn\u2019t be attending a New Year\u2019s Eve party \u2013 especially not one hosted by a Minnesota Atheists board member \u2013 but I made the resolution-goal joke because it reinforced the silliness of using December 31st<\/span><\/sup><\/span> as a day to make goals simply because it\u2019s the last day on the calendar.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Jennifer reminded me that her primary resolution is to completely organize and back-up our photos and videos. This was our goal for 2016 as well, but it didn\u2019t pan out. So she\u2019s set it up as a goal for 2017. Then I mentioned the goal of installing a fence for our yard. Then she mentioned Disney World. Then I mentioned graduating from college, and then she noted that that\u2019s not so much a goal as just something that\u2019s going to happen. \u201cLike have a goal of turning 42?\u201d I said. She laughed. \u201cYeah, like that. It\u2019s just going to happen no matter what we do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, graduating from college isn\u2019t quite as inevitable as surviving until my next birthday, but I get what she\u2019s saying.<\/span><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t say this to Jennifer, but another inevitability has to deal with my Grandfather\u2019s death. From my sister Diane, I\u2019ve learned that he\u2019s only marginally healthy right now. In September, she told me he only had a few days to live, and I said it would be sad if he died on our grandmother\u2019s birthday, which is on September 19th<\/span><\/sup><\/span>. Despite being Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses \u2013 Witnesses don\u2019t celebrate their birthdays \u2013 I agree, it would be sad to lose your husband on your birthday. But he had a couple operations, and they sent him home from the hospital in late September to die in peace with his family. Diane had plans to visit Florida soon after, and she worried he would die before she got down there. But, even with a flight delay due to a hurricane, she still got down there and visited with him for, presumably, the last time. He was still alive on the fifteenth of December, which marks my grandparents\u2019 70<\/span>th<\/span><\/sup> wedding anniversary. Witnesses do celebrate their anniversaries, though I don\u2019t know if my grandparents were well enough to do anything special for that milestone. Nobody would tell me, anyway. Regardless, he\u2019s still alive. Now I\u2019m wondering if he\u2019ll make it to his ninetieth birthday, which is in April. More than that, I wonder if I\u2019ll go to his funeral. Or \u201cmemorial service.\u201d Whatever it is Witnesses call funerals.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

January is the worst month. It’s also the month for consumption. The coldness, initially a welcome relief from allergies, has now gone on too long. And the freshly fallen December snows have crushed underfoot. Sure, it might snow in January, but instead of a gentle blanket on everything, it will be a whitewashed covering of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5451"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5490,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5451\/revisions\/5490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}