After I pushed Publish just a while ago, I looked at my email and saw an offer from Shutterfly – quite a handsome one – and I looked. I should not have done so because I came face-to-face with calendars and this year I did not make the one I had intended, the one that featured Shane. Why am I so distressed by that dog’s death? Obviously, it has linked itself to deep psychological issues in my brain/mind that are gut-wrenching. I could have said visceral, but I might as well be blunt.

It almost doubles me over; my breath is caught between in and out; my throat tightens painfully.

Of course, it is not wise to write such revealing things on the Internet, but then I am not young and looking for college admission or for a job and don’t have to worry about an potential employer seeking out any weaknesses. )Actually, I certainly have given anyone a good enough look by now, what with Poos and Bears and UDO’s.)

They say anything on the Internet is there forever; I hope so, because no matter what the world is made of, somewhere, somehow, I want Shane to know how much I loved him and how much I cherished whatever links to others he had.

Yes, it is January 2nd. I figured it would be, seeing as yesterday was the first. I looked at yesterday’s post, by the way, and see that I used a wrong verb tense, quite probably because I altered my sentence and didn’t proofread. One of my many faults. Well, so be it. I may actually go and open the edit section and change it or I may not. A dratted chore, dontcha know.

I suspect whatever higher powers may be did not like that attitude, because when I took a drink of cola, it tickled the back of my throat and it was all I could do to keep it from spraying across the keyboard as my reflex kicked in – or spat out, as it were.

And so, what now? Well, I don’t know; I’m sort of blah with not even a hint of the idea of a fresh start, a resolution, a determination to put my nose to the grindstone and just get on with it. I believe this could proof to be a problem, one that down the road could lead to my being in tears, gasping through sobs how sorry I am to have been so irresponsible, lazy, unmotivated, whatever.

That was an uplifting thought . . . but that sarcasm did not have a motivating effect. Goodness. I am at a loss. Have I tried entering one of my other latent potential personalities yet? Might be a bit risky, not to mention being assumed to be dementia by those around me. Who IS this nice person? Obviously, doctor, she’s gone round the bend. Then again, there might not be another personality, which is stretching my imagination as does physics. Is the cat dead yet? Sorry, inside joke with Der Bingle.

Well, tomorrow is the third and maybe three is the charm.

It’s January 1st, new month, new year and one of the omens aren’t good. Omen isn’t the right word because that implies a sign of something to come. We don’t need a sign; it’s here. It is cold and we are going to be having snow and slick conditions and more COLD. It feels like 2 degrees out there.

Now, if you want omens or call them indicators if you scoff at the former, look at the time just before midnight and just after last night – the time that horribly tacky looking ball came down on Times Square. I remember remarking it looked like something from The Price is Right. I started to open a can of Diet Cherry Coke – so wrong, it fizzes all over my pants, not because it had been shaken by a New Year’s reveler, but because it was almost frozen. When I relieved the pressure, it geysered out as COLD slush. I don’t know why I am capitalizing COLD all the time now; maybe I am just peeved.

That peevishness could be related to a Words With Friends game I started before midnight and was flattened by soon after. Oh, it was horrendous. And I have to live with it for the next 365 days – unless I die and then it won’t be that long. Someone may put it on a tombstone, though, which is a good reason for the scattering of anonymous ashes.

Now, granted, when I saw the handwriting on the wall – or the pixel tiles on the pixel board, I thought, “Oh heck, blocking is just going to delay the inevitable.” Maybe, but it turned out not blocking was like throwing myself off a cliff. It went downhill from there; I believe that pun was definitely intended.

I started out with a reference to an easy December – not too cold, easy travel. Well, that’s over. The weather prediction is not good for someone in rural Northern Indiana. Now that Shane is gone, I am tempted to put a jar of peanut butter in a basket, put on my red riding hood and camp out by the heat source at the LaGrange house – as long as the cellular connections continue working. Just my Sprint phone, my Verizon ipad and my Kindle with 3G – and my Moo blanket: