It’s looking to be a busy weekend. I’ve still got one color repeat of the fuzz to complete, so hopefully I’ll be able to do that tomorrow morning. Then I can get started on summer mitts for Aunt Net.

The weekend wouldn’t be so busy, but my friend Brian from St. Louis will be in town this weekend, and the old gang from work is getting together because of it. Tonight we’re going to see Iron-man and then tomorrow afternoon, after Brian completes the stuff for his job which brought him up here, we’re all getting together again to play games until we collapse.

It’s always a little bittersweet when Brian from St. Louis comes to visit. Brian is a friend from the days of ex-fiance Number 2. After the break-up, Brian was one of the few friends I got to keep when friends were split in the dividing of all things. Number 2 got the friends we spent the most time with, possibly because he was trying to worm his way into a friend’s wife’s panties. I don’t know and I no longer care. What still stings is that he got nearly all our mutual friends, including some of my high-school acquaintances.

I got to keep Rosie, my best friend and third sister. Apart from her, I got to keep Brian and the gang from work. It was a very lonely time for me, but I remember feeling so hopeful in those days. I believed I would find someone to love and marry. I believed I would have children one day. I believed a lot of things I would still like to believe, even though none of them have turned out to be terribly true.

Still, spring renews all things and for a short time they grow and bloom anew. Even hope. Even stupid hope for things that haven’t turned out to be terribly true.

Warble for Lilac-Time, by Walt Whitman

Warble me now for joy of lilac-time, (returning in reminiscence,)
Sort me O tongue and lips for Nature’s sake, souvenirs of earliest summer,
Gather the welcome signs, (as children with pebbles or stringing shells,)
Put in April and May, the hylas croaking in the ponds, the elastic air,
Bees, butterflies, the sparrow with its simple notes,
Blue-bird and darting swallow, nor forget the high-hole flashing his
golden wings,
The tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor,
Shimmer of waters with fish in them, the cerulean above,
All that is jocund and sparkling, the brooks running,
The maple woods, the crisp February days and the sugar-making,
The robin where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted,
With musical clear call at sunrise, and again at sunset,
Or flitting among the trees of the apple-orchard, building the nest
of his mate,
The melted snow of March, the willow sending forth its yellow-green sprouts,
For spring-time is here! the summer is here! and what is this in it
and from it?
Thou, soul, unloosen’d–the restlessness after I know not what;
Come, let us lag here no longer, let us be up and away!
O if one could but fly like a bird!
O to escape, to sail forth as in a ship!
To glide with thee O soul, o’er all, in all, as a ship o’er the waters;
Gathering these hints, the preludes, the blue sky, the grass, the
morning drops of dew,
The lilac-scent, the bushes with dark green heart-shaped leaves,
Wood-violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called innocence,
Samples and sorts not for themselves alone, but for their atmosphere,
To grace the bush I love–to sing with the birds,
A warble for joy of returning in reminiscence.

Imagine me needing someone. Back on Earth I never did. Oh, there were women. Lots of women. Lots of love-making but no love. You see, that was the kind of world we’d made. So I left, because there was no one to hold me there.
– George Taylor in Planet of the Apes

Actor Charlton Heston passed away today at the age of 84.

I thought Charlton Heston, so often miscast, was just the kind of man I’d want to be, if I were a man. He was strong. He looked awesome in a loincloth. He could carry the tablets of the commandments to the Israelites in one moment, survive the vampire plague apocalypse right after that, and become an astronaut in a future where humanity didn’t belong in the next.

You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you all to hell!
– George Taylor in Planet of the Apes

When I was a kid, I had one of those cymbal clanging monkey toys. I named it Planet, for the Planet of the Apes movies. Some days, when I read news about third grade children plotting to kill their teacher or a local man bludgeoning his whole family to death, I can’t help but wonder if we’re still not headed there.

It’s already half past January and I feel like I’ve gotten not a thing done this month. My knitting has stalled, as I’m faced with the prospect of needing to cast on my mom’s arm warmers in order to have them done in time for her birthday and yet I have absolutely no desire to knit arm warmers. Yes, it’s what she wants, but I just don’t want to do it.

On top of it all, I haven’t managed to touch any of the projects I’d hoped to start after the new year. There has been no craft room cleaning, nor any sorting clothes out of my closet to give to charity. I haven’t written a damn thing, and I’m still stalled out on my Doctor Who watching. It all feels too obligatory to me for some reason and that always sucks the joy out of things.

About the only thing that seems to be progressing is my WoW playing, and even that’s more a matter of obligation to friends who want me to be able to do things in the game than actual desire to play.

Tomorrow starts the first day of the Lighten Up Iowa Challenge. I’m captaining a team with five of us, called Los Perderdors, who will be working toward the goal of building more exercise into our weekly schedules. Hopefully that will kick start the rest of everything else and give me some motivation to start moving on the other items on my to do list.

Well, it’s the last day of the year and the day of lasts. I got out of bed for the last time of the year, fed the cats the last time for the year, washed my hair for the last time of the year, ate my last breakfast of the year. This is my last blog entry of the year.

I’m melancholy and yet I can’t say I’m sad to see the year go. There’s something satisfying about the final things of the year. It was a bad year for me personally with my health problems starting back in April and carrying all the way to now. Things still aren’t fully under control. Still, it’s my last day of pain for the year. Some time later this morning I will finish my last knitting of the year, eat my last lunch of the year, and go to my last parties of the year. There’s something comforting in all that, even if I know tomorrow will be my first day of pain in the New Year, because even that “first” will be one of many that will be far more positive.

Of course, all the news feeds are doing some sort of recount of the year, including celebrities who died in 2007. The whole year was full of tragic losses, from Sidney Sheldon in January to Dan Fogelberg this month, with people like Beverly Sills, Luciano Pavarotti, Liz Claiborne, Robert Jordan, and Madeleine L’Engle between. April was particularly cruel when looked at in review, because that’s the month we lost Johnny Hart, Kurt Vonnegut, Don Ho, and Boris Picket.

They will all be remembered. They will all be missed. They will all be replaced by the people they inspired. Such is the turning of the days, of the seasons, of the years. This is the season for honoring that change. Tonight we ring out the old and ring in the new.

May the best of the last year be the worst of the next one. As the Invisible Man might say, see you in 2008, my freaky darlings.