Monday, December 25, 2017

Happy Christmas!

I'm not even sure if this has made it to the people I mailed it to yet (and I'm not done mailing either so apologies to those seeing it here before in their mailboxes but c'est la vie.

Did you think (or hope) I’d forgotten to write 2017’s Knox year in review? Although it hangs over my head like the sword of Damocles and one of these years it’s going to fall, this year is not that year. Your Christmas miracle will have to come from another source. Sorry, not sorry. Oh, and fair warning, there’s language in this one, because, well… Keep reading and you’ll understand.

January: On New Year’s Eve a stray cat wandered into our garage and showed no inclination to leave. We searched high and low for the family surely missing fat and friendly “Jasmine” but had no luck. On New Year’s Day we woke up to a flock of flamingos in our front yard. Another flock materialized the day after K. removed the first six. No one has ever claimed flocking us despite how much fun it is to say. K. went back to Minneapolis for her Great Group Reads gig this month and so got her annual dose of snow and cold out of the way early.

February: D. took a new position with Salesforce. He’s doing something with the health and wealth clouds. If you know what that means, you’ve got more than one up on K. (although she’s not averse to a wealth cloud around here at all). Also this month, we decided that “Jasmine” would officially be a K. The vet took one look at our enormous cat and said what a beautiful boy he was. Apparently in this case, a lack of dangly bits just meant he’d been neutered, not that he was a she. So Jasmine is now Jazz-man and is fat and mostly happy as an indoor cat. Gatsby, however, is less than happy with the new family member and is practicing tolerance, at least when we’re watching.

March: D.’s new position increased his travel a lot so we rarely saw him this month. T. turned 15 and started outdoor track. He didn’t get over the bar at all in the winter season but did make height for the first time this month. It’s totally amazing the amount you have to learn when your kid takes up an unlikely sport. You Tube sure helps although matching the parts of his vaults with the parts of Olympic caliber athletes’ vaults for comparison can be a real challenge.

April: W. turned 20 this month, leaving us with only two teenagers. We can’t possibly be old enough to have a child who is so very old. In other news proving our age, our baby, T., started behind the wheel this month. Appropriately enough, when the older two were home for Spring Break, K. forgot there would be another car in the driveway and she promptly backed into it on her way to picking T. up from his final behind the wheel. Our insurance was so very pleased with all of these new developments.

May: R. finished up her first year at college and promptly head up to Michigan to wait tables at the Les Cheneaux Culinary School. W. chose to stay at home and work in dad’s favorite bar, eventually becoming the expediter in the back of house so he didn’t have to talk to annoying people like his father and friends. Heehee. Meanwhile, K. went to Maine on a girls’ weekend and barely resisted bringing home much lobster or moose printed stuff.

June: Our most exciting month yet, K. found a dark spot that turned out to be a hole above the cabinets in the kitchen. She thought it might be from mice until W. flushed his toilet as she stood on the counter looking at the hole. Yes, we have had a shit waterfall behind the kitchen cabinets for who knows how long. We know you’re insanely jealous of this unusual and long hidden water feature, right? So started the nightmare that is still currently ongoing: destruction, disinfection, repair, and renovation of the kitchen. A shit waterfall, y’all. We considered stopping the letter here because what else is there to say? But we’ll soldier on. Oh and to prove what a loving wife K. is, she and T. went ahead and left for Michigan on schedule leaving the mess for D. to sort out.

July: While D. and W. worked at home in hot and muggy Charlotte and R. worked close to the cottage, K. and T. kicked back and enjoyed their free time in Michigan, swimming, sailing, and relaxing by the nightly fire. T. also went to Michigan State for a pole vault camp this month. He was inordinately pleased by the fact that his hands blistered so badly that he had gauze mittens on his hands when K. picked him up. This is some sort of badge of honor or something. Teenage boys are weird!

August: D. and W. got to come to Michigan for a brief week of vacation before heading back to work. T. sailed in the Sunfish Regatta again and got second place this year. He’s either improving or he got lucky. Your choice. We had to head home to Charlotte so W. and R. could head back to college for their junior and sophomore years respectively and T. could start his sophomore year of high school. When we got home we realized the house is waging a war against us…and winning. Mold on several ceilings, a burning smell that turned out to be the furnace dying, and still working on fixing the shit waterfall, coming home was so pleasant. Not.

September: R. turned 19 this month, adding to the evidence that we’re definitely old. We went up to High Point for Family Weekend but we only got to see W. as R. had gone off to spend the weekend with a friend. It’s like we embarrass her or something!

October: K. was lucky enough to spend a week in Italy with her parents and sister this month. (Nothing like horning in on her sister’s belated birthday trip!) Only the W.s could have so many bathroom related disasters in one trip but on the plus side, they all know how to say toilet paper in Italian now. In more K. travel news, she headed to New York City this month for the WNBA’s 100th anniversary celebration. If you have to ask anything besides how many bookstores she visited while she was there, you clearly don’t know her all that well.

November: The house thought we’d gotten a little complacent so this month we found rotten windows that needed to be replaced. 14 windows and 2 doors later… Oh, and the kitchen renovation is still moving at a snail’s pace. ::sigh:: T. spent this month in rehearsals for his latest play, Triple Blind Date and juggling his acting with indoor track. We weren’t fooled by the indoor moniker this year though, knowing up front it’s all polar bear all the time.

As 2017 comes to a close, we hope that all of you are surrounded by family, peace, love, and happiness now and throughout the coming year.

1 comment:

I have had to disable the anonymous comment option to cut down on the spam and I apologize to those of you for whom this makes commenting a chore. I hope you'll still opt to leave me your thoughts. I love to hear what you think, especially so I know I'm not just whistling into the wind here at my computer.

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