Wheaton’s Way

Well, here we are. It’s 2021 and there’s another whole year before Christmas comes around again.

Anyone who reads my column on a regular basis (and if you’re not, let that be one of your belated resolutions right now) will be aware of my decorating sagas of December 2020.

These included, but were not limited to, fighting with an uncooperative snowman on the front lawn and clambering up on the roof to painstakingly clip icicles to the standing seam, despite a crippling fear of heights.

Best friend and housemate, Lynne, has been pretty savvy this time around. In order to prevent me from keeping the live Christmas tree up in the house for so long that it resembles the victim of a forest fire, she called a company earlier in the week to schedule a pickup for Thursday.

By the time this story appears in the paper, all that will remain is an empty space where a glorious conifer once stood.

The arrangement she made also meant I had to get the storage boxes down from the attic so she could pack away the ornaments.

We’ve had a hard discussion about the lights and garden decorations being dismantled before May. I don’t know if the snowman will survive to see another season. I think he remained erect about 15% of the time he spent as part of our display; the rest of it was facedown in the grass or lying back to sunbathe. I’m not sure I’m willing to do battle with him again in 12 months.

Reflecting on all of the above, I suspect one of Lynne’s New Year’s resolutions is to find sneaky ways to get around my procrastinations.

Speaking of things I’ve been putting off, this may be the year to relocate the wild chickens. Note that I am not putting the word in quotes – I mean relocate, not cull. I’ll probably allow Rusty, Henny Penny and Golden Boy to remain on campus, but I’m sending the rest on a permanent staycation.

For over a year, I’ve gotten away with feeding them crushed corn and pretending to ignore the mess they make of the grass and deck – despite constant side-eye from the housemate – but when they started murdering Lynne’s lavender plants and kicking all her fresh soil over the front porch, it was a bridge too far. Every time we walked out the door, it looked like we were homing gophers in the giant pots – there was more dirt on the tiles than around the poor lavender.

I can no longer deny that Lynne may have a point, which hurts more than anything else.
What are my resolutions for this year? Probably not the top 10 ones you’re familiar with.

For starters, I am determined to get over this fear of heights and I may try hypnotherapy to get there.

When I was a kid, I was sitting on the edge of mountains like all the other little boys and girls. These days, I have a hard time being on the balcony of a high floor in a hotel. My phobia hasn’t yet affected my love of rollercoasters – maybe because you’re up high for only a short period of time – but you couldn’t pay me to get on a Ferris wheel, and the pirate ship that swings until it goes through 360 degrees? Fuggedaboutit. The last time I went on one of those, I may or may not have made it a thoroughly miserable experience for my ride-mate. Two years later, I’m still running through my list of promises made to God that fateful day.

Watching ‘Skyscraper’ at the cinema was a genuinely painful experience. When Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson was hanging hundreds of feet above the ground, I thought I was gonna hurl. Getting the picture?

Next on my list: I should try to be more succinct. This applies to talking and emails. My motto has always been ‘If you can say something in five words, why not use 100?’. I admit it – I suffer from a surfeit of verbosity; a galloping case of Runaway Gobitis. I can also speak at a trillion miles per hour, which is only considered a useful skill in a very specific sort of Olympics.

This affliction might have been with me for a while. I was going through some old middle school reports a few weeks ago. One teacher called me “very dramatic and excitable”. Moi? That’s just cray-cray.

On a similar note, I need to stop interrupting people. I think I get so excited about being able to contribute to a conversation that I simply cannot wait to interject some incredible nugget of wisdom. It’s an irritating habit, regardless (for everyone else subjected to it, of course), but as I get older, when people do it to me, I lose my train of thought completely.

One moment I’m in the middle of a fascinating story, holding my audience in thrall, and the next, someone has interrupted with a question that could have waited and I’ve forgotten where I was. I lose the rhythm and momentum I had; it kills my entertaining performance and leaves people wanting the more that I can’t give them.

After reading through the last couple of paragraphs, I may have come up with a subsequent resolution: I need to stop thinking I’m the most marvellous thing since sliced bread.

That one’s gonna be difficult.