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Well ladies and gentlemen, as with any other effort to vent my verbal virtuosity to the virtual masses, I sit here on a Saturday morning endeavoring to compose a retrospective for the year that was 2024.
Please note that I’ve just finished my breakfast which was not comprised of an Everything bagel lovingly slathered with cream cheese. We have a few leftover sausage pinwheels, so I decided to dispense with those before the ravages of rot rendered them to the kitchen trash with the remains of the pulled pork that was assembled for a family get together last weekend.
Please note that I also haven’t walked Mag-B the SLab yet this morning. That will happen in about ten minutes.
While you’re at it, please make an additional note that my 2025 “pooping dogs” calendar is scheduled to arrive today. It will be posted in the social media chamber in place of all previous years’ “pooping dogs” calendars, and will continue to inspire those using the chamber (mainly me) to move things along.
I just read last year’s retrospective to get an idea of what I was up against.
I have mixed feelings about that one because it called out the tougher events of 2023.
Here we are a year later and I’m coming to the realization that the next five to ten years will be salted with additional instances where I will experience loss.
I’m aging, my loved ones are aging, and that’s the way life works.
Speaking of aging, someone told me I was looking old the other night.
I don’t lend any credence to the statement for a number of reasons.
First of all, the contemptable soul who uttered those words has a history of projecting his own insecurities and inadequacies onto others by making off-hand comments designed to elevate his own self esteem.
Second, and more importantly, who cares?
Either looking old bothers me, or it doesn’t.
I have to step away for a moment.
Mag-B the SLab just barfed in the living room and as much as she would like to put Proverbs 26:11 on full display, I’m going to decline her offer and take care of it myself before returning to my own folly.
Just so you know, everything you’ve read to this point was composed in the waning days of 2024. Going forward, everything you’re about to read in this post has been written on New Year’s Day.
At the time of its inception, the last remaining president from my youth was waiting for the perfect moment to stick the landing by preparing his matriculation to occur during a traditionally slow news week. It turns out that Linda Lavin, the star of one of those TV shows from my youth took a similar cue from Jimmy Carter and executed similar plans.
Even though I wanted to write the retrospective last weekend, I set aside those attempts for a number of reasons.
First of all, I was occupied with finishing up the reading I wanted to complete before the end of the year. You’ll be happy to know that I knocked it all out just before bedtime last night.
Secondly, I was fighting a minor weight gain in recent weeks brought on by an excess of holiday baking and working from home. The whole episode jacked with my routine, and I’m now working to recalibrate my behavior. So much so that I’m looking forward to going back to the office next week so that I can resume a regimen which I know works.
Thirdly, if that’s really a word, I got a little bored when I started writing last Saturday.
I had some other things on my mind on what I was doing later that day. On top of that, an argument amongst the board of directors here in the organization ensued over something incredibly stupid. Irregardlessly, the day was ruined for any creative activity.
I’m going to blame it on the fact that I had something other than a lovingly slathered Everything bagel for breakfast.
But here we are now and it’s several days later.
My 2024 reading goals are complete.
Parts of my aging body are sore from incorporating a new workout routine in recent days.
The board of directors haven’t necessarily reconciled their differences over a particular matter which has been previously deemed as incredibly stupid, but they’ve acknowledged the divergence in opinion and have moved on.
Much like the calendar in the social media chamber inspires us to do, let’s move on.
Getting back to the retrospective, let’s talk about things to come.
I’ll start with a mundane item.
Ulnar.
For the last several months I’ve been spelling that word with an ‘e’ instead of an ‘a’.
My use and placement of the ‘U’ has been correct all along.
The ulnar nerve is one of the nerves in the arm that generates the “funny bone” sensation when you hit your elbow. It travels down to the hand into that area you use for a karate chop.
Since last August, I’ve had numbness in my southpaw pinky where the journey of that particular nerve ends.
Given that I’m right-handed, it hasn’t been too big of a deal for me.
That even applies to the occasional port-side use of my cordless hole punch which is chambered in nine millimeters. Operating those things is a new hobby I took up in 2024. I’ll spare you the details because on the scale for the mundane, talk about the ulnar nerve ranks higher than weaponry ever will.
It generally feels like I have a bandage around my left pinky finger and parts of my ring finger. The only real impact I’ve even felt has been in my typing where on the rare occasion I refer to someone as an ass.
Next week, I’m having a nerve study done on it to determine if the issue is in my arm or in my neck. I’m given to understand the process is quite uncomfortable, yet it will help us determine whether I need to employ a hand surgeon or a not-a-hand surgeon to resolve the issue in the coming year.
All of that effort is needed just to remove the tingling from my pinky finger when I call someone an ass via the type-written word.
Maybe if I would just stop with the name calling, the matter would resolve itself.
And then there was that time in March when I self-published a book.
To be honest, I started that shortly before the 2022 mid-terms when a nurse made a particularly snarky remark about Joseph Biden, First in His Name, Conjurer of Equitable Honkey Magic, Corn Pop Was A Bad Dude, Puppet of the Radical Left, Beneficiary of the Rigged Election, and Sniffer of Coifs. The comment questioned whether the man was in his right mind.
The remark was uttered to a dining room full of nursing home residents, most of which were in cognitive decline. I had spent a better part of the year getting my mother into my care and then to that particular nursing home, and hearing that comparison of the president to a dining room full of dementia patients inspired me to write a series of posts about my efforts with Mom.
When she passed that following summer, the only way I could really process my grief was to rework all of those posts into a non-linear tale around the last year of Mom’s life. By the spring of 2024 it was complete, so I published it. You can click on the link up above to get your own copy of it today.
Granted, that wasn’t the only project I endeavored to publish in 2024.
A new one is in the works which features everything I posted about the COVID lockdown.
The interesting little tidbit associated with that subject matter is that it was driving a lot of traffic to this site, even after a few years have passed and the memories are no longer fresh. Once I pulled those posts off of the site, traffic went elsewhere.
I guess society needs a new mass hysteria event for me to rant about so that I can recapture my previous viewership.
Irregardlessly I don’t have a specific date on when I’ll get it published, but I’m targeting 2025.
More to come.
At this point in a post, it would be fitting for a Blogger Laureate such as myself to offer up some inspirational words to summarize the previous year and present a sense of hope and optimism for the next twelve months.
To that I’ll deliver the following message rife with cryptic undertones for which I’m am the only one who knows the true meaning. When I come back next year and read this, I may or may not remember what those undertones are.
The year 2024 presented some challenges and some opportunities. This next year will do the same.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to pull some chicken off the grill before it turns from an opportunity to a challenge.
