An open letter to 2012

Dear 2012 -

I have high hopes for you.  2011 was good to me, good to us, for the most part.  It was a year filled with friends and family, travel and memories, food and laughter, health and wellness, interesting work and new opportunities. But there's always room for improvement. That's where you come in, 2012.

Your predecessor brought us fewer occasions to spend with loved ones than we would have liked.  It is incumbent upon you to bring several more opportunities to visit Michigan, see old friends, meet and get to know the new ones they're bringing into the world and spend time with our parents and brothers and sisters.  I'd also love to find myself at the end of your term riffling through pictures of travels elsewhere to be with those we love.  Halifax, Boston, Toledo, Denver, Chicago, I'm not picky, just bring our hearts to those they love.

Just as important as bringing us to those we love, bring them back to us.  Fill our table with the sounds of their laughter.  Allow me to cook and cook and cook and fill every dish with the joy it gives me to share them.  Let our dear ones return home or tuck themselves into our fluffy guest beds, full, content and with the same warmth from being in our house that we get by having them here.  (Hear that people? Come visit! We'll feed you!)

I'm also demanding that you provide ample opportunities for B and I to exercise our travel personalities.  Over the years, we've found that on vacation, especially just the two of us, we're different people.  We laugh easier, smile more and banter faster and with ever-increasing wit.  2011 took us for a short Vegas vacation and a mini-trip to Chicago. 2012, to do right by me, bring longer travel somewhere farther flung.  London? The Caribbean? Spain? I could content myself with any of these places, let's just choose and start planning.

Next, give my feet wings.  In March, I run my first half marathon. I'm doing it for my health, for the satisfaction of knowing that I can accomplish something truly difficult with the right mindset and dedication. I'm doing it for the opportunity to spend some real, no kidding quality time with my little brother before he's all grown up.  And finally, I'm doing it for my Dad.  Because 2012, you're going to be WAY better to my Dad than your predecessor.  This is not a request, it's a demand. The only way the word cancer will be uttered during your term will be as a memory of what he beat in 2011 and what he will continue to dominate.

Finally, while I was on the road in 2011 less than the previous year, I still slept 51 nights away from home for work. I averaged 50+ hours in the office per week (an average that was drastically impacted by a quiet November and December) and another 20+ hours per week from the warmth and comfort of my couch, but working nonetheless.  I said "no" to more social engagements than I can count thanks to the constant, stressful grind that is my job.  So 2012, here's what I want from you - a dramatic drop in work-related travel.  How about 30 nights? That seems like a good, realistic goal.  See what you can do. While you're at it, see what you can do to help B make it in the door 12 hours or less after he leaves every day.  Help us spend more than one hour a night in the same room while still conscious.  I'd love to request a way to diminish my average weekly hours, but I'm also realistic.  With new demands and changes and opportunities on the horizon, I understand the need to keep up the crazy hours, but let's try to keep them up from the metro DC area.

I hope my expectations are clear, 2012. Get to work!

Hurrican hubbub

What a lame hurricane – for us at least. I want to be specific about that.  For us, 30+ miles from the coast, the impending doom forecasted for days ahead of Irene’s arrival was absolute drummed up garbage.  I know that many people closer to the coast felt the lashings of this tropical menace much more so than we, and this post it not intended to marginalize their suffering. My heart goes out to the families who lost property and possessions and most of all, to the families who lost loved ones.  Mother Nature can be cruel and no one deserves to feel her wrath.

Now let me tell you about those of us who didn’t suffer.  As a dear friend of mine would say, this is a “hot air” post. So bear with me while I vent my spleen about Hurricane coverage.  What a load. For days preceding the arrival of Irene every weather man from here to the West Coast and back howled about the coming storm like it might bring a rain of frogs with it. But I figured best to be prepared.  And I still feel that way.

We have city water. It would take a full power outage at the water treatment plant and no back-up power for us to find ourselves without water. But to be safe, I bought a couple of flats at Target thinking that if we didn’t need them we could take them to the office. Power was a greater concern.  While we’ve never lost power in our house, something that happened every third weekend in our condo, we didn’t know what to expect. But we snagged a couple of extra camping lanterns and batteries for our flashlights just in case.  The day before we pulled in everything we could from our deck.  The table and chairs, the plants, they all came into the kitchen to ride out the storm.  The grill, the stainless steel behemoth that it is, could not be removed, so it was covered and pushed up against the house.  We did the same in the front, pulling into the garage anything that could become a flying projectile should the wind predicted come to fruition.

Saturday morning it started to rain. The kind of ceaseless, soaking rain that sinks the world into a torpor, the kind it takes days to shake off.  And the rain kept on into Saturday night.  But by now the storm coverage had gotten ridiculous, notes of hysteria in the voices of the on-the-ground hurricane teams.   We went to bed knowing that Irene would make landfall in the wee hours of Sunday morning, and wondered aloud if we would have power when we awoke.  

And then next to nothing happened. This storm, heralded as the worst thing to hit the east coast in years, downed a few small tree branches in our neighborhood. The eight inches of snow we got last winter did more lasting damage, splitting trees in two with its weight.  Irene’s rains did soaked everything, leaving standing water in the cul-de-sacs and at the bottom of hills. Our grill moved three inches away from the deck rail.  I remember being woken only once, by the sound of a cracking tree branch.  If there was howling wind as was reported, it howled elsewhere, because neither B nor I, who sleep fitfully and wake easily, ever heard a thing. 

So if anyone is in the market for bottled water or camping lanterns, I have a few extras sitting in the basement waiting for the next time the weather man goes gonzo.  Not that I wish we had been hit by a real hurricane. Like I said, Mother Nature can be cruel. But I do wish that someone would tell the weather reporters that fear-mongering is as cruel.  And that the gross exaggeration that is the hallmark of hurricane coverage for all but those closest to the coast (again, there were many within a few miles of the coast that felt a battering we didn’t), is the reason why many people choose not to evacuate and why, when, the one time in 100 that their predictions come true, there are still people in their homes who cannot weather the storm. Thanks a lot weather jerks.

Excuse me ma'am, did you just move me with your ass?

My weekday mornings typically start peacefully with a leisurely metro ride to work. The 35 minute ride easily lends itself to a quick cat nap or several chapters of whatever book I happen to be reading. Normally, I revel in my commute. I silently yet smuggly pity all those haggard souls who are forced behind the wheel only to sit in DC's infamous bumper to bumper traffic quietly wondering when the person behind them is actually going to crawl up the back bumper of their car. For this among many other reasons, I typically revere the ease and tranquility of the metro. Worship it even.

But then there are days like today.

Getting on at the end of the line means I nearly always get a seat - a beautiful and coveted thing. This morning was no different. I took my seat in Vienna, pulled out my latest favorite book and settled in to enjoy an uneventful ride. Two stops later my bliss was rudely interrupted by the I'm sure kindly, but nonetheless annoying, man who takes it upon himself to share the word of God with metro riders through the joyful art of song. Except he's totally tone deaf and he makes me want to rip my own ears off. But taking the metro in the afternoon means that you learn to tune out crying toddlers and obnoxious teenagers, so I tilt my head still further down and pray silently to go deaf.

Two more stops and the piece de resistance! A woman gets on the train and proceeds to the seat next to me. I'm in the inside seat and by some miracle we've made it four stops without the train completely filling up. She gives me the "is this seat taken" smile and I slide my coat off the part of the adjacent seat it was overlapping. And then she sits down. Except it's not a "sit" so much as a slide into the seat and in doing so she actually moves me with her ass. I swear. One minute I'm sitting comfortably in my seat, the next I'm pressed against the window like one of those creepy kids you see at the zoo trying to be one with the animals. The kicker here, and I know this is going to sound sizist, but trust me, that's not what I'm going for, is that the woman sitting next to me doesn't really need more than her seat. She's just rude and completely lacks any self-awareness as to the space she's taking up. I make it another two stops like this before I realize that if I stay here any longer I might be compelled to commit an act of violence that involves my book and the side of her head. So I excuse myself to stand.

No sooner do I stand up than a woman gets on with a small child in a stroller. I don't know exactly how old, I'm not great at the age guessing game. Old enough to be a stroller and young enough to still be spitting up. Which he then goes about doing. Spits up right at my feet. Thankfully, and this is the tiny silver-lining to this whole black cloud of a ride, not actually on my feet. Now I have irrationally angry written all over my face, but I try to bite it back because the mother looks mortified. And she really shouldn't. Babies are babies and there's not much you can do about that as a parent. As an innocent bystander, however, I can move myself the hell down the train away from the rotting stench of curdling milk. But by then it's in my nostrils and I can't seem to shake it no matter how many passengers I put between us. And then, like some gift from God, the driver announces my stop and the doors open, ending my hell and torment.

So the next time I get all smug about the tranquility of my commute when compared to the average driver or worse say something arrogant about how by using public transit I'm doing my part for the environment, remind me of my commute this morning. And then don't be surprised to hear me say, "Can someone drive me to the car dealership?"