New Year’s Eve and 2020

         I had always believed that New Year’s Day was for taking down the Christmas decorations and putting them away as that is the day my mom had always done that.  I had tried carrying it over to the family I am with right now.  Sometimes it works, but not always.  Roland always seems anxious to take it down right after Christmas.

         

          We did not wait until New Year’s for the outside decorations but removed the lights and ornaments, electric cords and so forth from the yard.  We started at 10:00 Tuesday morning before the fog had completely lifted.  Roland announced that it was going to rain.  He was right.  It poured.  I can’t remember what time it started pouring, but it was still light outside.  I don’t think the pouring stopped until after midnight.

          Roland wanted to play Monopoly and asked if I would like to be banker, but I really didn’t.  So he was banker and the rules were very different than they had been the last time we played.  Every time (both last time and this time) Jenna tries to play fair, it ends up biting her.  I don’t think it was so much the game itself, but making future comparisons of things that will take place in her life.  She is not ready (not willing) to grow up.  She was crying while I was thinking – “That’s tradition.”  Ever since I was a child I remember New Year's Eve somebody was always either physically sick or emotionally stressed – sometimes both.  But I’ve never seen it with this family – except for many Thanksgivings Jenna has been sick, but not since we’ve lived in Oregon – at least I don’t think.  She’s such a trooper.

          The youth had scheduled a dance that she had planned on going to until the day before.  She said she’d much rather stay home and play games with us.  After her meltdown, I figured she wouldn’t have gone to the dance anyway and wondered if she would want to play games.  But Jenna does bounce back and radiates a very positive attitude.

          We had three guests come over for light snacks and games.  Rita was the first to show.  We started to play the game Imagine-If having taken three turns each when Mary and Kassy arrived.  We stopped our game of Imagine-If and moved onto another so that Mary and Kassy could join us even though Mary said we didn’t have to. 

          She started preparing some food they had brought with them and Kassy sat at the table, arms crossed and expression that told me she had been dragged to the “party” against her will and would rather die than engage in any kind of celebration. We started game number two without Kassy but Mary did join in after a while.  We played “Hear Me Out” which Mary didn’t seem to fully understand as she would read the player's answers and make comments so that there was no secret about who wrote each answer.  When there was a tie, we asked Kassy to be the tie-breaker.

We did manage to get a smile and more participation from Kassy when Jenna and Rita took a break and started doing “the fork in the garbage disposal” dance.  All six of us played a round of Uno. Mary was tired and groggy and finally took a nap on our couch. I think we may have played another game of Uno without her and then Kassy decided she no longer wanted to play.  We put her on the other couch and gave her the remote control.  The rest of us continued to play “Catch Phrase” and pitted Roland and Rita against Jenna and me.  We laughed so hard.  After a while, we traded partners and quit keeping score.

After midnight Jenna went with Roland who took Rita home.  He said to just leave Mary and Kassy on the couch and they could sleep there, but Kassy was insistent that Mary wake up as they had other things on their agenda.  The wee hours of New Year’s Day in Myrtle Creek?  What was her hurry to get out of our house?  Perhaps she needed to get home to her dog.  I’ll bet that’s what it was.

They left shortly after Jenna and Roland returned.  We went to bed and took the indoor decorations down at 10:00 in the morning.  I thought we’d play games but went back to our boring routine of each of us just doing our own thing.  It was a quiet and boring day overall.

I feel like I did pretty well posting dashes last year, but my bi-weekly word rarely ever came out as I had intended.  They aren’t on the agenda for this year.  I figure most of what I have posted has been dash worthy – just not numbered as such.  My goal for this year is to allow Roland the pleasure of savoring his shopping and to not complain about the wait.