Happy New Year

I'm a bit muddled. I have a cold, and I'm probably still recovering from my half of the bottle of champagne Brent and I shared in Ogallala, Nebraska on New Year's Eve, and the road trip sort of did me in, although Puck went about it with characteristic charisma. Aptly named, my little road sprite, because that car does icy roads like nobody's business. Also there was a blizzard of goose guts, trucks flipping gravel at us, and snow blowing sideways over I-80 like water, and he handled those fine, too. He was a joy to drive long distance, what with cruise control, firm, comfortable seats with high and low heat settings, and four dazzling entertainment options (count 'em, four: FM stereo, satellite radio [including an all Frank Sinatra all the time station, boo ya!], CD player, and iPod jack), etc., etc., etc.

So, yeah, not a word did we hear or read about Lonesome Dove in Ogallala, sorry. Although the charming little municipality is not above flaunting its rich cow town history, they're not being specific, except for this weird obsession with authentic Bay Rum. They've gone so far as to do up a whole little strip mall with wooden sidewalks and a mannequin-manned replica of a mercantile, apothecary, and barber shop, but nothing says Lonesome Dove on it anywhere. We enjoyed our frozen stroll through their cute little downtown and we got pictures of the Lazy J liquor store


for the Johnsons, and the water tower painted to look like an alien spaceship


for a friend of Brent's, but I forgot to take one of the great little bar tucked under the bridge that spanned the railroad tracks, the Underpass. And, FYI, lovely, wide Lake McConaughy isn't a lake. It's a reservoir. We drove to the dam. Stop mislabeling your water storage, people.

Anyway, I'm wondering how my house became such a wasteland if I was hardly ever here to make it a mess over the holidays, and the cats are looking particularly innocent. Maybe they decided to try on everything in my closet and throw it on the floor when they were done. Also, they dirtied all the dishes and just left them spilling out of the sink. They opened all my mail and left it scattered on the kitchen table, took every cosmetic product out of the cabinet and arranged them all haphazardly around the bathroom sink, and stacked all the books I own in the middle of the bed after reading just the first chapters. Plausible, no? The ribbon all over the living room I can blame on them, although it's really my fault for leaving it out.

I'll pull myself together this week, perhaps, and then we'll hash it out about last year and this year and what it all means. Right now I'm drugging myself and going to bed, and I'll leave you with something so cute it'll make your teeth hurt. We might stop privately joking about how sick we make people now since Brent's cousin put it in writing.

Happy 2008, people, and here's to the holidays being over. I have a new year to conquer, dang it. [Sniffle. Cough. Whimper.]