Monkton Combe, outside Bath (UK)

It was cold enough we could use the garage as an overflow for the fridge and I went out there splitting wood, breaking down boxes, consolidating the remains of Christmas pasts and presents—and even though we said we wouldn’t, we still got ourselves in a froth over our friends coming over so we set to the vacuum cleaner and the dusting, the laundry—and I had to go out for more black olives because we had the wrong size (Dawn and mom were making appetizers with toothpicks, supposed to look like penguins): and now the potholes are so bad on our gravel road it’s like being in a video game but there’s nothing to win or lose, you just sit there bouncing—and I don’t know much about bees but that’s what the parking lot felt like at the store, the same chaotic hovering around the hive, the sense at any second they could swarm: and even though it was cold enough for snow I opened the sun roof on my Volvo, I turned up the heat and the car stereo, I put on my gloves and tried to forget I was 46, and thought with any luck next year, 47.

Categories: prose

Tags: aging, humor, midlife crisis, New Years, stream-of-consciousness, William Pearse writer