Happy New Year: Day One 2018 - It's Freezing, I Have Had the Flu for the Past Month, and I Watch Too Much TV

I tried to start off the New Year on an optimistic note. Forces have worked against me.

• It's as cold--if not colder--than it was during the Ice Storm of 1973. I have an annoyingly fantastic memory, but the fact that the Ice Storm began on my eleventh birthday (December 17, 1973) means I will never forget it. I couldn't bring cupcakes to my Sixth grade classroom and celebrate with my friends! My father had to chop up costly two-by-four's in the basement. Why we had them, I don't know. And why did we have an ax in the house? My father was a CPA and a tax analyst, and we lived in a suburban town on Long Island. I may never know, and that's irritating. Our family of five sat by the fireplace in our center-hall colonial all day. We wore layers of clothes. I read, my younger sister drew pictures, and my younger brother built ice castles out of Legos. Daddy was a bit stingy with the wood. (I told you those two-by-four's were costly!) He tried to make me feel better about missing out on my birthday celebration by telling me how cold it was when he served in Korea. I cried for him, but mostly for myself, and vowed that all my future birthdays would be glorious. What a sucker's bet that was.

• I have had the flu, and complications since December 6, 2017. It's so last year. But I did not heed the CDC warning. I did not get a flu vaccine in October, as I should have. I was too busy stressing out about misogny, racism, nuclear obliteration and losing my health care so I DIDN'T MAKE TIME TO GET A FLU VACCINE! As a history buff, I think it would be ironic if I were to die from the flu on the centennial of the Spanish Influenza Pandemic. (I am a morbid and twisted soul.)

• As I said, it's freezing cold. Climate Change is real. Read this article by Dr. Marshall Shepherd and improve your "science literacy." A Response For People Using Record Cold U.S. Weather To Refute Climate Change I live in a Pre-war building on the Upper West Side. The radiators clank-a-lank all day long and supply my apartment with steady steam heat from the boiler. Yet, I am wearing three or four layers of clothing: silk thermal underwear (top and bottom), a long-sleeved tee, jeans, merino wool v-neck, and an Aran Islands cardigan sweater. It's heartening to know that when they find my frozen corpse authorities will be able to identify me by my clan sweater pattern. (See aforementioned declaration of being a morbid and twisted soul.)

• Due to the sub-zero temperatures and the "ague," I have not left the building in days. I am unable to read (sinus pressure) so I watch French crime series. It may be the fever, but I believe I am beginning to think in French. I sip red wine (grape juice), tear off pieces of bread (pumpernickel, not a baguette), and pretend to be smoking cigarettes when my breath condensation appears. Mostly I bemoan the fate of humanity, think of death, consider that Jerry Lewis may have been a genius, and wish that I were thin, young and had a lot of great sex like these crime cops do. Maybe I'm not morbid and twisted. Maybe I'm French. C'est possible.

I wish you all "Bon Chance!"