Going with the flow

Just as the last gift was unwrapped, the last fruitcake tossed and the last, last-minute gift delivered, company arrived. It wasn’t a surprise; in fact, the post-Christmas gathering had been planned months in advance.

Little wonder, then, that The Plan unraveled faster than a ball of yarn in the paws of a psychotic kitten. Don’t get me wrong; I love making plans. It’s the execution of a carefully thought out, meticulously choreographed and minutely detailed extravaganza that is usually my downfall.

The months-long preparation to drive to Philly, hook up with family in Media, PA and meet there with friends who were coming in from Pittsburgh collapsed like a house of cards mere hours before the truck was packed.

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Endgame?

On the final day of last month’s climate summit in Copenhagen, a massive winter storm bore down on the east coast. That night, Brian Williams opened his NBC Nightly News program with this sentence: “While the global warming conference goes on in Copenhagen, we’ve got the opposite problem in the eastern half of the nation.” Mr. Williams’ erroneous remark goes a long way toward perpetuating public ignorance about the crisis we face.

He reminded me of a woman I met in the grocery store checkout line last December, who also failed to comprehend the whole picture. She declared the 70 degree day reason for celebration. I looked her in the eye and said, “It should be cold. This kind of weather is a clear sign of climate change.”

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New year

The guy is late picking us up and Andrew is antsy. He’s been trying to work this out for a couple days now, and he’s very excited. A few different times, the doorbell rings and he leaps up, beckoning me to follow, only to return shaking his head in disappointment a moment later, saying, “Wasn’t him.”

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