New Moon, New Year

You'll find Jim Whitaker's book "Hill of Beans" available at whiskeycreekpress.com and barnesandnoble.com.



December 2009, the conclusion to an often blue decade, could have been a bluebell month or a blueberry month or a Bluebeard month or a bluebook month or a blue-chip month. It's a blue moon month.
We could have had four blue Mondays. We could have taken blue pills and been stuck at home all weekend (a side effect of many blue pills – just check your PDR). We could have fallen off a ladder, startled by blue bird and collected on our Blue Cross. We could have won a first-place blue ribbon in the Christmas lights contest while the other guy collected green cash. We could've gone hiking high in the Blue Mountains and come back with blue ankles and a bluenose and all blue from the lack of oxygen. We could have sold our cobalt blue car at less than Blue Book. We could have heard "Blue Christmas" just … one …more … time.
I could go on.
I don't hear anybody out there encouraging me.
December was one of those rarities when the full moon rises twice before you have a chance to flip the calendar page in the kitchen. (Unless your kitchen calendar is like ours and you haven't turned it for a little while. I could’ve sworn Monday the 21st was the first day of spring.)
The blue moon happens in the night sky about every 2.7142857143 years on average. (Sorry for the lack of preciseness. The calculator is busted.) But it can happen just months apart.
Even though the rare blue moon happens at least once in a blue moon, there are occurrences that just don’t take place even once in a blue moon (no matter how long you hold your breath and turn, well, you get it by now):
• the coffee machine delivers five fully filled cups of steaming, delicious brew in a row without cheating you out of your dollar;
• meaningful tax cuts from the feds, the state, the county and the city;
• February 30;
• a still-wet sock doesn’t fall to the floor when you’re unloading the dryer you thought was finished;
• that full-amount-you-expect pay raise you know you absolutely deserve without question;
• your husband cleans out his pockets before the pants reach the washing machine;
• provisions of major legislation opposed by a majority of the public and affecting every American profoundly is developed and debated in the open and not hidden from the people by Congress and the president, despite the chief executive's cheap promise of transparency;
• your husband volunteers to do the laundry and actually separates the whites and the reds (that baseball analogy you used to explain why the reds and the whites need to be segregated finally soaked in);
• your child forgets to ask you for a twenty to buy a soda;
• the boss asks your opinion and follows every single recommendation you make without revision;
• you win back at least 10 percent of the money you've spent on lottery tickets over the past seven years;
• the government forgets to threaten us with a non-election-year hike in the gasoline tax;
• a big chocolate chip cookie has bigger chips than a little chocolate chip cookie and tastes better at the same time;
• a product won’t be “improved” by adding Spanish to its label;
• and… well I could go on.
I don't hear anybody out there encouraging me.
In addition to December being a blue mooner, the month of double moonshine ushers in a new year, brightly illuminating a time for second chances – time for renewal and forgiveness and regeneration.
However, best of all, when you forget to leave the porch light on and you come home late from New Year's Eve and you drop your house keys in the snow while you're fumbling at the front door … you'll have that big bright smilin' moon so you can see how to break into the bedroom window.
Have a Non-Blue New Year!