Skip to main content

A New Year's Greeting/OR untrimming the house

A NEW YEAR’S GREETING FROM BARB
with apologies to Dr. Seuss

Cleaning up after the holiday
Isn’t quite as much fun,
As on the day
When the decorations were strung.
There was my family, all spruced, in the den,
With an eggnog toast, and a cheer, “Let’s begin.”
We set about bedecking every pillar and post,
Window and mantle -
With ribbon, wreath, Santa, and candle.
By the end of the evening
The tree was aglitter.
The windows were glowing
With the candlesticks flicker.
The children were happy
Mom and Pop, too.
To think we did all this.
You! You! and you!

But, then, the week after
Rolled quickly ‘round.
No time to untrim.
We headed to town.
To return all our presents.
To see a quick show.
What? It’s the first of January
The trimming must go.

Undo each ribbon. Undo each bow.
Untie the wreaths
Get that tree in tow.
It’s out to the trash bin
Arms loaded, we go.
Away go the boxes.
The cards and the letters.
Out comes our list of “Things to do better.”
Resolutions. Affirmations.
Declarations. Proclamations.
Where’s that old diet?
By jiminy, we’ll try it!
It’s a New Year we’re facing. And face it we will.
Without eggnog. Or fudge. Or even a pill.
We’ll face it together -
Oh, taste buds be still!
Until, oh no, here comes the BILL.
Or, as in our case, it’s many -
Giving the post man exercise aplenty.

At my house we’re still undoing the fun
Dusting and washing and rising and wiping
Trinkets and dishes and goblets, and griping,
“Next year, it’s a vacation we’ll take.
By Amtrak. Or horseback. Or roller skate!”
Who cares how we do it, we plan and we plot.
Next year it’s to the tropics.
Anywhere that it’s HOT.

But whatever we do, one thing is clear.
We’re wishing you and yours a VERY HAPPY
NEW YEAR!

God bless!

Comments

  1. Every year I feel the same...same decorations, same menu...thankfully same family...same resolutions...same diet!...but then when the snows of December come flying, I'm thinking all this "same" is just another word for "traditions" and here we go again! Thanks for the fun poem and Happy New Year to you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for sharing.

    Have a happy New Year.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love your poem, Barbara! No apology needed. Happy New Year to you.

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a wonderful poem! It's exactly how I feel right now - with decorations needing to be taken down and put away for another year. Happy New Year!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks to all who read this. I hated taking down all the decorations when the kiddies were small because I did all the work.
    These day we trim very little, our tree is small and manageable.
    Everything that is a pain to us can be somehow turned into something funny.
    Blessings to all. B

    ReplyDelete
  6. Barb: Hope you are enjoying the New Year so far. Very cute poem. Thanks for visiting my blog and commenting on my recent post on eBooks.

    Re your question about downloading books to your computer - I know there are a lot of free books you can download and read on your computer/PC. I'm not sure where to find them all but I know they are out there.

    A lot of us like small e-readers like Kindle or the Nook that we can carry around in our purses, something you can't do easily with a laptop.

    Hope you get a better answer to your question!

    Best,
    Harvee

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ho-ly! I think Dr. Seuss would be taking his hat off to you! Fabulous! How much time must it take to find all those rhymy words!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

APOLOGIES....

For those of you who regularly follow my blog, I wanted you to know that health issues and family problems have kept me from my computer lately. Of course my mind has been busy coming up with great ideas to blog about but by the time I sit down late at night to write those lovely ideas have flown out of my head and gone back to wherever good ideas come from in the first place. I miss posting. I miss thinking. I miss resting. I miss just standing and staring, as cows in the fields are known to do. I miss all of you too. Reading about your lives and reading your comments on mine. However, I'm the eternal optimist and I see a teeny speck of light at the end of the tunnel. In two weeks life here should be back to normal, whatever that is. Have any of you figured out what normal is, exactly. I get up everyday and try to live the best life I know how. Is that normal? Or is normal different for each of us. What about a new normal? Are we doomed to live our "normal life" fo

Shingles: not the roofing kind...

Just when I thought things could not get any worse at our house my husband R came down with shingles. On the day I had to be at the hospital in Columbus with one adult daughter in the morning and then go to Cincinnati to pick up her husband after his stomach surgery the day before, R gets up with a rash that had turned to blisters. We made a quick dash 40 miles away to our family Dr. for a check up and yes my diagnosis was correct. Shingles! So armed with two medications we headed to the medical center to see our daughter, then to Cincinnati to pick up her husband and then home to collapse and hope that that's the end of our downward spiral. I'm worn to a frazzle and so is R. No time for writing or fretting about writing. I do feel good knowing that I have some contest entries out (short stories and one novel) and will be working on my novel at least two days this coming week. I have my writers meeting on Monday at Great Expectations Cafe and Book Store and look for

Mother's Leather Britches...

My mother gardened all her life. It was one of her great loves, next to family, God, and country. Because she grew up during the Depression, she learned to use every last item from her garden for canning, preserving, drying or pickling. Every year at the end of the green bean season she made leather britches, dried beans that would keep for the winter. These were the last beans hanging on the vines. The beans inside had grown to full size with outsides a bit withered. They were beyond the stage to can or preserve, or even to pickle. Although her fried pickled green beans and corn bread were the best in the world. (Well, next to her biscuits and fried apples.) Mother started the drying process with clean beans. She would spread a clean white sheet on a table in the wash room and spread the beans out on that, giving them space to dry. Sometime she would carry the sheet outside and put them on a table in the sun to further the process. The next step involved needle and thread