Hmm. We're still here. I think we can cue up “Looks Like We Made It” by Barry Manilow. Is anyone out there? You? You as well? Good. I think we’re okay here. We can decorate the Christmas tree and do the last minute shopping we’ve been putting off (somehow, an apocalypse that did not happen is no excuse for giving a loved one a sub-par Christmas). I put off buying a new side-view mirror until the last possible minute yesterday. I sacrificed the old one on the side of the garage earlier this week and figured “What ho! It won’t make any difference after Friday.” Now it does, and I’ll spend Sunday, or at least part of it, installing it. And be glad for it. I think.
Thrillers have long been obsessed with end times of various sorts. A cottage industry of sorts arose a couple of years ago which produced some interesting books (and many that…well, weren’t) about what happens when ancient calendars run out of days, but I’ve been reading books about the world’s end since I could first read, which was a long time ago. My favorite is I AM LEGEND by Richard Matheson. Yes, I know, it’s not quite the same thing, any more than Walking Dead is in either graphic novel or television form, but it amounts to the same thing. The characters in those books, and others, keep on trucking, to the point and the extent that one wonders why. I mean, is the biological imperative that strong? To ask another way, and from another direction: is there anyone out there who was actually hoping that things were going to bite the moose on December 21, 2012? Maybe a little bit, in some dark corner of their psyche they normally keep in a little tiny closet with a triple-bolt deadlock on the door, and that has been scratching like crazy to get out the past few days? I’m not talking about something to the extent and degree that we hoped for blizzards to hit during exam weeks in grade school. I mean something that whispered, “Wow! Now we can go flirt with the neighbor, forget about shoveling snow, and send that pesky collection agency a big foaming cup of…” Well, you can fill in your own end-time dream.
Now that tomorrow is the today that some folks didn’t think would happen, there are things to do. I’m going to bring the granddaughter home and make cookies. That side mirror isn’t going to climb onto the car and attach itself, so I need to do that. The tree is up, but not decorated. Our cat, christened “Fennec” by my younger daughter but nicknamed “Demonspawn” by myself, has claimed it, and attacks anyone who touches it. I think, until the end of time that it has all of the decoration that it needs. You be the judge.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! And we’ll see you in 2013, if the Good Lord is willing and the creek don’t rise.
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