Friday, January 1, 2010

superstition

There are some days not meant to be celebrated, at least by me. For example, my birthday is practically guaranteed to bring with if a disaster of one sort or another. When I was in school, it was failed final exams, getting my period early and other minor disasters. As I have matured, so have the problems. More recently, my birthday has been accented by collapsed ceilings and flooded labs, grant deadlines, and being double booked for important events by people who have told me the wrong dates. Last time it was a threat of not being tenured unless I accepted more committee work, "Oh, and here is the committee we'd like you to serve on". That evening, I got uninvited from the trip to Fresno I had been asked to come along for with the promise we'd meet up for dinner anyway. Dinner plans were canceled at 9:00 PM and then a long standing friendship canceled the next day. Considering my track record though, it could have been worse. I guess I should be happy to have recognition of my birthday, but I could honestly do without. I do not seek negative attention like some neglected child. I am fine having a quiet, uneventful birthday. In fact I'd prefer it that way. Since that doesn't seem to be in the cards though, I always try to at least spend it with friends so that I can have some moral support. Although my plan must have become obvious since even that didn't even work out this last time.

New Year's is worse..... We used to have huge parties. We'd have 50 or so people over for homemade pizza and doughnuts. We'd watch movies and play games and jump on the trampoline while listening to music and it was great. The demise of our celebrations began the year that Laura ended up in the hospital. Though she had been in to the doctor earlier in the day for some large penicillin injections, she was found around midnight curled in a little ball, burning with fever under a blanket. She was hospitalized for a week and on an IV at home for a couple of months. On subsequent New Years Eves, my mom went into the E.R., then Tom, then my mom again and the holiday spirit kind of got wrung out of us.

We were all together this year for the first time in a long time (except for Michael) so we celebrated. Hilary played with her bluegrass band for the last time before she and Carl move to Tennessee for nursing school. We watched Kung Fu Panda with the children until midnight and then lit off fireworks and went to bed. It seemed best to not invite disaster by doing anything too boisterous and it seemed like we got by okay. Then Carl called with the news that Hilary's dad died last night. Her mom had a late night nursing shift and so no one was with him and no one knows how he died yet. His death is sort of doubly bad in my family because Hilary's dad is also Keriann's uncle. (Barlow boys like Karchner girls.)

We had promised the little girls a cousin/aunt/mom trip to see The Princess and the Frog, and they still wanted to go. If there is anything that keeps adults going through sad times, it is little children. But when we got to the theatre, somehow the times were messed up and the movie wasn't showing. We went to another theatre and it was sold out. That was probably okay though, because half of the girls and one boy were at home vomiting from a variety of illnesses (each child has something different).

Laura is moving into an apartment in Provo today since her car was totalled in a head on collision and we hope that the move goes well.

I got my hair cut by Pat yesterday morning and we discussed our ways of celebrating the coming evening. He wanted something low key, and I just wanted to get through safely. He said I should just keep my fingers crossed until midnight, hoping that nothing bad would happen. It seems like that isn't quite long enough.

1 comment:

Carroll said...

I think you are my vicarious writer', thank you. On the MSN page this morning the featured article is about the most common times or days for heart attack. Maybe there is a correlation of body response to excitement and events. Women usually have their babies early morning also like a heart attack, however not especially when there is an important or exciting event. There are mysteries that hopefully we will understand someday. Thanks for your blog entry. I like it.















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