KICKSTARTING 2012

I trust you all survived the holidays and are preoccupied with your many 2012 resolutions, which will probably take at least a month to break.

Today two of my daughters helped me dismantle the Christmas tree and pack up all the holiday accoutrements for storage in our basement. We have a cleaning lady whose significant other is a superb handyman with all the skills that I lack; they are coming tomorrow, and Mike will help me move all these items to the basement and, with unbelievable speed, fulfill my wife's "honey-do" list.

One of the two daughters is leaving this evening for her home in Atlanta, and the second leaves tomorrow afternoon to return home to Toledo. They are great women with the additional asset of being superb organizers, so the house is in incredible shape: clean, all laundry done, refrigerator organized and closets never neater. They are great company, as well, and we cherish them, My third daughter is also blessed with the organizational skills and is obsessively neat, so, when she is here, everything sparkles. (She left a few days after Christmas with husband and two sons to resume her life on the east coast of Florida, and now the two kids are back at school.) My only son is a good guy and not here, but he lacks those "clean genes".
We also had here two grown grand-daughters by my eldest daughter and husband of one of the grand-daughters who had to leave before the New Year to return to Myrtle Beach SC and their lives there.

Now we return to normalcy, as our Sanibel Island, which is a real showpiece of holiday lights and decorations will also get back to normal---only now with more people beginning to flow in as the cold weather strikes the north and the snowbirds arrive. Soon traffic will be horrendous on our main drag, Periwinkle Way, which is only two lanes. Sanibel also does not have traffic lights. If you want to get off the island in a hurry, you better plan to leave by 2:30 p.m., for after that it takes varying from one and a half to two hours to reach the causeway that connects us to the mainland three miles away. It will stay like this through Easter and then, gradually, the traffic jam will become less sticky until by May it is heaven again. But we like the tourists: they help the economy of the local merchants and restaurants as well as the condos and inns.

2011 was not the best year for America. Let's raise a late glass to better things to come in 2012. Certainly, in our case, we started 2012 with a bang after this great family holiday. We hope you do, too.