As I walked into the Group Home @Houghton Lake after a desperately needed walk “around” the point this afternoon, the GG greeted me with, “I saw you getting up off the ground a minute ago. Did you fall?” Well. Nooooo. I did not fall. I deliberately lay down on the sopping wet, snow-covered grass to take a photoooo of a little sheet of ice sticking up above the seawall. That photoooo didn’t turn out well so you get this one instead, of ice in various stages of formation, including open water. Despite large areas of open water on the lake, people are ice fishing. You couldn’t pay me enough… Anyway, I will never be a pro at photography — I don’t even aspire to be. You might guess that by the fact that my iPhone is for all practical purposes my only camera. But I know enough to know that to get certain kinds of shots, you have to lie down on the ground. Yes I am wet.

Apparently the Houghton Lake area got a couple inches of snow overnight but it is 40 degrees now and Long Point Drive is a mish-mash of wet pavement and slush with a few patches of built-up snow/ice. It is mostly not slippery to walk on, except for the patches of built-up snow/ice but those are easy to see and therefore avoid. The biggest hazard I encountered was when the Rosco Minibus came whaling along and sprayed a big sheet of slush at me.

I am not much for celebrating New Year’s Eve and our plans for this year have been more than a bit uncertain. Should we head back up to Siberia? In the end we decided not to but not without quite some trepidation. We’ll get back up there in a week or two. Should we meet up with the Uncly Uncle and The Beautiful Gay at their new house in Gaylord? That was a promising possibility but in the end their plans included some things that we didn’t want to do because yer fav-o-rite blahgger is a stick-in-the-mud 😉. AND THAT’S A-OKAY!!! Have *fun*, you guys! I’ll get to your house yet. With bells on!

I have to say that 2011 was pretty darn sucky for me although there were plenty of good times along the way. I got yanked out of my comfortable cube farm existence as a mild-mannered systems analyst last spring and was forced to deal with an ongoing and ever-changing situation that was totally out of my wheelhouse. I had to make a number of excruciatingly difficult decisions and I had to make them *largely* alone. Believe me, I second-guessed myself every step of the way and I am sitting here at year’s end second-guessing myself yet again. I am not Superwoman and I don’t have a magic wand or a crystal ball or a clone or floo powder. I am a baggy old kayak woman and I am more often than not stymied by life and how little control I have over it.

I hope that everyone has a wonderful New Year’s Eve whether you party hearty or veg out by the boob tube. I won’t tell you not to drink and drive. Y’all are getting bombarded by that admonition from every direction. Hee hee, I remember back in the Jurassic Age when it would be 25 degrees below zero in the yooperland and Canadian radio would air public service announcements telling people to go hang out at a barroooom (i.e., don’t go snowmobiling or whatever because you might freeze to death). Those days are long gone and tonight we’ll likely be hanging out by the tube. There will be whine or whatever. If 1) I make it to midnight and 2) we can’t find Times Square on the telly, I can watch the ball drop on my iPhone. Yes there is an app for that!

Love y’all and hoping 2012 is a better year,
Kayak Woman

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 31st, 2011 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.