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My resolution for 2024? List one update for every one of the 12 days of Xmas. Or two to make for 24. And when 2025 comes around, after all 12 months of 2024 pass, like an expired meter, no one will remember any of these retorts I report, as I jump around.

We start. On my ode to the lighthearted, “Wise Men and How I could never make their journey to the manger,” which drew many comments including one from “Galilee.” In retrospect I was illustrating how epic and important this quest was. And much, much more quickly than I’d make it through that desert. In terms of years … Decades … Centuries …
And I return to, oh those omnipresent Agave Kitchen nacho-nushing signs. It says: Turn those gift cards into nachos. So (you’ll need to) create corn crumbles. Then later, Santa doesn’t want cookies, he wants nachos. Like so many of us.
I saw, on what had been my Halloween walk, as in a runner-on sentence: Many “Christmas strawberries” on a side-street otherwise bit gnarly mural, still more roofing projects and again such work (big pink houses done by orange-clad workers) at the Phipps Inn in the massive DIY spirit that got us swimmingly through the pandemic, new red and orange and a little of pinkish berries on a sprig of bushes that are like mistletoe, a Me And My Old Lady Sitting In The Shade-type scene of a winter sun shining on such a porch (a main one back-to-back then another back-to-back), and all that cool and naturalish-looking brush and bush making for a front yard that’s now chopped away with many a stone kept and bird houses too, (though not nesting season.)
On the porch of that old house just down from the pink Barbie House — where Ken lives as a senior? — there’s now a RWB flag amongst RWB poppies sitting in front of a red Santa sign.
A block away, a blue mesh fabric falling all around has in its middle a couple of even more beautiful RWB pinwheels.
And that angling fence, going up a hill, alongside which a remembrance sign with flowers was placed in autumn. It has now not fallen, but been fully straightened.
At Cornerstone Church, that line for donated food recently extended much longer, almost a block, and that was not at the offering’s opening. It should be noted that after Christmas, there was a lesser turnout, as Santa and/or God must have given.
That Christmas tree I described with sealer setting aside, along with a (prayer) book: It was there until the very end of 2023, then removed. Mistetoe remained.
When tuning in the TV news when back from the holiday, it was shown to be, as I have already written, just how much need there is everywhere in our world. A delivery guy shoots down so many lives, then guns for more. California farmers are without any water. Only now, finally, can felons reform their lives and get a college degree. Crackerbarrel donates 800 boxes of food to a shelf, but that’s only about one percent of the need.
At the cusp of the new year, the ground was sprinkled with silvery frost, much like the hair of that looking-older Ken to his Barbie.
I saw that morning the parking guy, and the Happy New Year wishes were shared, as the old year had just passed like an expired meter. Who had the worst joke? Who trumped who? “Why is Santa so jolly. He knows where all the naughty girls live.” Touche, he said. He better drop some pounds if he wants to ride their sleigh.
So, another “daylight in the swamp” joke. However, this can be quite serious. If you are a Toadie. But this is a survival story. How do they find a way to burrow in the mud and sleep silently at this time of year. Renewal in the dirt.

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