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I am now on the recovery end of a six-day bout of flu that came to me as a Christmas gift.  Of course, as an aging diabetic, any encounter with flu is a brush with death.  And of course, it is not really over yet.  I still have to struggle to prevent pneumonia from setting in.  And diabetes can cause depression.  Especially since I have spent a majority of the holiday alone in bed while missing out on the time my number one son has been home for a visit on leave.  My other two children have both been sick too.  Isolation is not a helpful thing during times of illness.  We have to have our family and community in the real world to keep us alive and looking forward.  While I am glad that my son at least had his mother healthy to spend time with, and old friends from school, I mourn for me.  YouTube videos are not enough.  Though there are good ones out there like this one I found while writing this.

Hank and John Green need to be a part of everyone’s community, so I suggest you subscribe to Vlogbrothers on YouTube.  But he makes a very good point.  The internet is a good thing and making people more independent, but it is also eroding our real-world community.  Being retired from my teaching job should not mean I am cut off from the world.  But it does.  I may have to be nothing more than a cyber-person for a while until I can muster enough energy and wellness to burst out of the ground I am buried in and bloom once more in the sunshine.

Does that sound maudlin and depressed to you?  I have already pretty much decided that I believe that Earth is a doomed planet and humanity will soon be guilty of its own extinction.  I am not a born-again Christian looking forward hopefully to Armageddon.  But I do believe human life and all life on Earth has not been a wasted effort on God’s part.  We have added value to the universe.  I can put a wry, happy spin on almost any gloomy thought.  And in many ways, life is a great cartoon show.

When I had the flu as a kid, it meant getting to stay home and watch morning cartoon shows and eat lots of tomato soup with cheese sandwiches.

Yes, not just a cartoon show.  Life is actually an act of epic poetry.  Distilled and fermented and highly potent metaphor and meaning.  It is the reason God didn’t send the four horsemen and the angel of death a little sooner.  And who knows?  Maybe He is not actually done with us yet.  Maybe we will live for another year, and I will get healthier, and more breakthroughs will be made, and…

I am a hopeful pessimist.  The end may come tomorrow.  But likely it won’t.  And I still have more to say to this goofy old world…  But I think that is enough for today.

No, that is not a typo.  I only meant “gifts” in pun form.  Sometimes you don’t feel much like talking and, after all, the “picture can be worth a thousand words”, especially if the picture moves.

As you can see, I am spending the day with the Ghost of Christmases Past.  Have a wonderful holiday, however you may celebrate it.  I will offer more goofy stuff by Mickey after the Ghost of Christmases Future gets done with me.

Number One Son is the Marine on the left.

No, I didn’t get back to Iowa for the holiday break.  Weather, health, and work prevented that.  But my son the Marine made it home for a two week leave.  And, since my wife is still a dedicated Jehovah’s Witness, we still don’t celebrate the Christmas holiday.  But it is nice to be home with family.

We did get to the movies last night, and we did get to see Rogue One in 3-D.

We loved the movie.  It made me cry.  I will probably also cry every time I re-watch it from here to infinity… and beyond.  But this is not a movie review post.  I will hold onto that idea for later.  This was about family time together.  It was a very good time.

Rumors of my death are premature, and probably all my fault.  Chest pains, with my family history of heart attacks, always make me think dark thoughts of mortality and impending doom.  Today, however, it was merely cold air in my lungs and continuing to remember Trump will soon be President.  I need to forget about the greedy old orangutan for a while, and let my heart and imagination soar again.  I drew this colored pencil Pegasus in 1980, before I became a teacher and planned on saving the world.  Back then I thought anything was possible since I was young and bright and talented.  But looking back on old artwork like this helps me remember too that once the future seemed bright.  And the days can be bright again even if the Cubs won the Series and the world has ended. Vicks Vapo-Rub and balancing my bloodsugar, combined with rest, put me back in the pink… even if it is still a rather pale pink.  Number two  son was not perfect either, but he got up and showered, and then, being tough-minded, went to school for the afternoon.  Some days are a little harder than others.   Sometimes you have to wonder when the last day will come.  But I am not dead yet.  And there is a lot more to do.  And somewhere, somehow, horses really can fly, right?

There are days when things just don’t go the way you planned.  My chest is hurting, most likely from COPD meets cold air.  But my son will be home on leave tonight around midnight, back from his Marine base in Virginia.  My number two son has missed two days of school with a low-grade fever and general inability to get out of bed.  I don’t have time or money, for a doctor’s visit today, but may need two of them.  It is hard to soar when you can’t even take off from the ground.  It will get better, one way or another, but sometimes, life just sucks beans.

Yes, this is actually an art-post from a previous December.  Once again today as I was finishing up an essay that I hadn’t backed up, the computer suddenly highlighted the entire thing and deleted it, pictures and all, in spite of the fact that I did nothing that I know of to make it do that.  And the WordPress editor, naturally, saved the deletion-changes before I could even blink.  It was gone, with no way to retrieve it, ever.  The save function in my brain gave out long ago.  So, let me post this instead.  I am still posting every single day this month.  And I did actually write my 500-word minimum for the day.