This Is The Ending. . .

Here we go. . . One last rant before the year’s end. No pokes at the government, no jokes at the expense of the idiot masses, and, for once, I’m going to leave ‘Dubya’ alone (it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, anyway).

It’s been an eventful year, with record-setting storms and gas prices, the space shuttle finally getting back off the ground, Lance Armstrong’s retirement, and the White Sox won a pennant for the first time in 88 years. Amid all that, however, are the little things that didn’t make the news but were no less monumental.

So, amid the silence of my house, as the children sleep, the peace broken only occasionally by the neighbors’ use of incendiary devices and firearms to express their excitement over the new year’s coming, I invite you all to raise your glasses with me in celebration of what has been and what is to come.

To Kimberley, who has put up with my lunacy and quirks for eight years.
To my children, who never cease to amaze me on a daily basis.
To my daughter, Sabrina, born on the first day of autumn this year, and to my niece, Ella, born not too soon before.
To Bonnie, struggling to make things better.
To the memory of my grandmother, who passed this summer, and to my grandfather, who finds the strength to go on each day.
To Sarah, who reminded me of things long forgotten.
To Dee, who helped me believe in the story, again.
To Tori, as determined as I to publish her own book.
To Tammy and Michelle, though we don’t speak as often now, they still are islands in the insanity.
To Carrie, wherever you are, I know you can find your strength again.
To Justin, my brother in arms, who discovered that everyone has to leave the darkness, sometime.
To absent friends. . .

And now, the beginning. . .