While the rest of the world is glad that the holidays have finally come to an end (and justifiably so), I am in a terrible funk that Christmas/New Years is over. At the end of A Christmas Carol, Dickens says of Scrooge:

…and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.

Well, I came out of the birth canal with that attitude about Christmas. I didn’t need to be haunted. I think I drive Mrs. Wife a bit crazy, but The Daughters seem to be an appreciative audience for my holiday mania. I can’t help myself. If you saw New York City all tarted up for Christmas you’d be moved too. 20+ years of the Rockefeller Center tree and the Bryant Park skating rink and Macy’s lights got under my skin so now I look forward to Christmas with the calm maturity of a 7-year old.

There is some bad voodoo in the ether here in Unbearable land. It’s not the kind of thing that’s fit for public airing. The holidays were the perfect tonic for it, but now that the celebrating and good cheer is all behind me, I have to figure out how to fix things. It’s upsetting.

You can take it in stride
Or you can take it right between the eyes
Suck up, suck up
And take your medicine
It’s a good day, it’s a good day
To face the hard things

Take Your Medicine
Cloud Cult

The loneliness of the long-distance commuter.

This passageway leads out to 42nd Street. It’s one of those you do what you gotta do photos. Grand Central Station looked a lot more festive around the holidays, but now it’s back to the grind. For everyone.

Dear 2000, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9:

Bugger off.

All of you, you dirty, rotten, no good, low down, two-timing, yellow-bellied, double crossing, back stabbing, snakes in the grass.

I didn’t think 2009 could be worse than 2008 but do you know what? It was! It just goes to show you that it’s never safe to set your expectations. I don’t use this forum to vent my troubles. I choose to leave out the dreary stuff. Plus, I was raised to pretend that everything is okay, even when it’s not. Don’t talk about it and perhaps it’ll just go away.

[Ms. Daisyfae, do you think that’s an Ohio/Midwest thing? I’ve always considered that mine was a problem of geography.]

But take my word for it, 2009 was no picnic for me or the people around me.

Ten years ago, Mrs. Wife and I welcomed the new decade wile dancing at Bruce Springsteen’s New Years Eve party. It’s one of the top five nights of my life. Tonight we’re in the family room wrapped in the red blanket and watching Ed Harris tear his guts out as Jackson Pollock.

Okay. As Mr. Bukowski put it, scramble two.

Happy New Year to my readers. Your attention is a gift to me.

We visited the Cleveland Science Center. I’ve never been a big science center kind of guy but when you’re in Cleveland in December, you either have to find indoor activities for the kiddies to burn off their energy or suffer the consequences.

There were some really cool exhibits. They had a working Theramin. That’s the device that makes weird spacey sounds when you wave your hand near it. It’s featured in Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys. They also had a plasma tube. There’s an electric current running inside and if you touch the side of the glass, the current attached itself to your fingers.

How neat is that?! I called 3-Year Old Daughter over. I wanted a picture of her grasping the tube. I thought it would make for a nice blog photo. She reached up and lightly touched it with the tip of her index finger. I wanted her to have a better connection so I pressed her palm against the tube.

ttzzzzzZAP!

WAAAHHHH! Daddy you PINCHED ME! AAaaagghhh! I want MOMMY!

Do this, don’t do that,
can’t you read the signs?

Five Man Electrical Band

When visiting my family in Cleveland, we always stay in a hotel. We are certainly welcome to stay at my sibling’s house, but nobody really has the room to accommodate a family of four and staying in a hotel makes life much easier for everyone. The first few times we did this, I think my mother was insulted that we didn’t stay with her in her tiny condo. But as the years passed, she eventually agreed that it made sense.

We usually get a suite at the Hampton Inn. It has a separate living room, bedroom and small kitchen. The Daughters can go to bed at their usual early hour and we can shut the bedroom door, which allows us to stay up for a while and gossip about the day’s events.

There’s a free breakfast served in the lobby and we’ve been coming her for so many years that the two elderly breakfast hostesses, Peggy and Loretta, know us and make a big fuss when they see The Daughters. They’re like two junior high school lunch room grannies. Two days ago, Peggy seemed so genuinely and weirdly overjoyed to see the girls that Mrs. Wife and I were a bit taken aback.

The best part of staying in a hotel is that we can leave the room in the morning with beds unmade and towels in heaps on the floor and when we return in the afternoon, it’s as though elves came in and waved magic wands and restored the room to it’s pre-wrecked condition. Do you suppose that would happen if I stayed at my sister’s house? Nay, I can assure you, it would not.

The sad part of this happy scene—the part that breaks my heart every time we come here—is the couple who provide the maid service. They are an elderly man and woman who, I believe, are husband and wife. And when I say elderly, I mean that they look to be in their 70s. The man walks hunched over and they both always look so beat and tired. They shouldn’t be working at all, much less going from room to room making beds and cleaning toilets. I can only assume they do this because they have to.

Nobody should have to live like that when they’re septuagenarians. What’s wrong with this country? The hotel is part of the Hilton chain and when I consider the fact that that nitwit Paris Hilton, who does nothing and is nothing, is living indirectly off of the labor of these two, it makes me wretch for the injustice of it. I can’t stand bumping into them but I always do.