New Year's Day is the day when traditionally people veg out in front of the television and gorge on either football or NCIS marathons. I had the NCIS marathon going in my office while Walt had football in the family room. I decided to read a book, climbed into my recliner with a blanket and a chihuahua and started to veg out. I made it through not one, but two football games without seeing much of either. I woke up from my first nap long enough to realize that it had really tired me out and what I needed was another nap. I woke up from my second nap shortly before the end of the Rose Bowl and it took an hour to come to life enough for me to cook dinner.
I had no nachos or other traditional football day fare, but I definitely was a couch potato.
I'm not sure why I was so tired. It's not like I'd partied hearty last night. We went to a friend's house, as we do each year. There are maybe a dozen or a few more there. We have fabulous homemade soup and sit around talking. I learn lots about theatre, movies and televison each year, and it's always so much fun to play "the name game," where we all put names of famous people (real or fictitious), divide into teams, and then sit around trying to give clues to our team members so they can guess them. Like charades, but you can talk...in fact must talk.
We played the game for about an hour and a half, using up all the leftover names from last year, and then it was 5 minutes to midnight. We gathered around the TV and watched Ryan Seacrest prop up Dick Clark for another year, toasted each other and 2011 (I didn't even have champagne, but toasted with a large glass of ice water) and we were home by 12:15.
I slept fairly well, all things considered, and was up around 7:30. And then spent the whole day sleeping. Obviously I'm doing some sort of catch up. I started writing this around 9:30 p.m. but then took a break for another short nap before finishing it. Of course as I sit here writing, I'm not feeling all that well, so it's either some bad Omaha Steak hamburger or maybe all this sleeping means I'm getting sick. I hope it's the former.
During my brief moments of awake time this afternoon, I was aware that Walt was talking with his sister on the telephone, and later with his mother. The three Sykes kids have always been close, but I've watched them draw closer to each other during these past few years, dealing with the problems of their aging mother.
I got the pang that I get, not often, but occasionally. It's one thing to be an only child; it's another to have a sibling and then lose her.
Peach is fond of reminding me how lucky I am because I still have a mother, while she and Kathy do not. I never mention that both of my cousins have sisters (and Kathy also has a brother) and I haven't had a sibling for forty years.
Karen and I were never close, and she was murdered when she was 24 years old, but who knew what might have happened if we could have grown older together. We did share many interests, which sometimes was the cause of our differences, but maybe as we got older we would have shared experiences rather than tried to hide them.
It's difficult to imagine her as 63 years old. That's Peggy's age. It's difficult to imagine Karen being Peggy's age. But sometimes it would be nice to have someone to share the closeness that Walt and his siblings have together, especially as we approach whatever is going to come as my mother's memory problems worsen.
I'm going to have to end this entry. I am either going to have to go back to sleep, or lose my dinner. Or perhaps both.
Sorry for being so graphic!
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