Happy Last Days of 2022!

I used to spend the first few weeks of each year forgetting that the year had changed. I’d write the previous year in all the places I should be writing the current year. For a minute I was going to congratulate myself on training myself to remember the change better. Then I looked at the corner of my screen. There is today’s date. If I looked at my phone it would show me today’s date. Drat. I haven’t gotten better at the remembering that the year has changed, computers just tell me, repeatedly, what day it is.

These Days

I have gotten very little drawing done in the last week. I mucked up my fingertips last Friday pealing ice off my car. “Freezing rain” had been predicted for Friday. Never having experienced freezing rain I didn’t know what to expect. What we got was ice on everything. Our driveway was a sheet of ice. The lawn was a sheet of ice. Our car was shrinkwrapped in ice. I always park the car on the side of the street when I know we’ll have cold weather. I’d intended to go to work. Getting into the car was pretty easy. The doors weren’t so frozen that I couldn’t open them. But the ice on the car, and especially on the windows, was determined to stay in play. I spent 45 minutes running the engine and the defrost, alternately sitting in the car and getting out to pull off sheets of ice. While I was doing it I was having fun. It was a new experience and I do enjoy unwrapping things.

The road by our house seemed drivable. I made it two blocks, almost to the main intersection before I decided that going farther was a bad idea. Someone’s car was stuck at the intersection. A woman had tried to make it somewhere, realized that it was a bad idea and parked in the road with her hazard lights on. I parked on the side of the road, under a tree where the ice hadn’t collected. After checking to make sure the woman was okay (she was waiting on her husband to come help) I walked back home. Very carefully. I had slip on cleats over my boots but those aren’t meant for walking on thick hard ice. I walked most of the way in the road. No cars were on it so it was safer than the sidewalks and lawns.

I didn’t try to walk down our drive. I sat down and slid. I got a cold wet butt. Better that than bruises or worse from falling. Warmer rain was predicted for the afternoon. I thought I might be able to go to work later. Rain did come, but not until dark and by then I’d changed out of my uniform and settled in.

Out in the cold my fingers had gotten numb. I was wearing fingerless gloves so my palms were comfortable. It was only as my fingers warmed up that I realized how raw the tips had gotten from picking at and pulling off the ice on the car. A lot of regular actions became painful. Buttoning my shirts. Opening pill bottles. Unwrapping bandaids. Anything that involved using the tips of my fingers in a sustained effort was painful. I could type. The contact between fingertip and key was brief enough that the pain was minimal. Holding a pencil, pen or brush – nope.

So I’ve spent time thinking, getting ahead on newsletters and planning for next year. And, oh, right, having Christmas (the day itself and the day after, a federal holiday) to eat and celebrate and hang out with friends, family and Sarah.

I did deliver mail on Christmas Eve. In pouring rain. Safer than ice but … yuck. Only about a third of our stations carriers made it in so a lot of routes didn’t get delivered. We focused on getting parcels out and it looked like most of those that had been sorted actually made it to their destinations. There were still palettes of parcels that needed to be distributed. Some of that got handled by folks on the Overtime Desired List on the 26th. The rest of it was waiting for us when most of us came back on the 27th.

I worked 15 hours on the 27th.

I worked 13.5 hours on the 28th.

I had the day off on the 29th. I spent that running errands and making lasagna.

Today? I have no idea how long I will work today. I’m guessing it will be more than 8 hours.

Mugshots

For the last mug design of 2022 I visited with the Misspent Youths gang. I always have fun hanging with them. I did the main illustration so it fit on a mug. I added the logo for t-shirts and other products that allow for more design space.

Mugs can be found in my Zazzle store.

This design is on a variety of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. Sunday will be the first day of 2023. This is my last newsletter of 2022. Next year I’m changing the title and adjusting the format. I’ll get into the reasons why and what to expect in the first issue.

I hope that your year is ending on good notes. May next year be bright and warm!

See you in seven!