You Can't Make Great Wine with Sour Grapes aka My Look Back at 2012

You can't make great wine with sour grapes.

Well, maybe you can, I don't know as I'm not an oenophile...but I know one thing's for certain: If you lie on your back long enough "woe-is-me-ing" the day away, not much gets accomplished.

I was going to write a catchy little end-of-year blog...a summation of what I experienced in the past year. I was going to do it really interestingly like my friend, Meleah, did with hers...but as I laid there, on my bed, woe-is-me-ing" away...I realized, "By God! I don't have anything really worthy to say!"

Oh, sure, I participated in Ziva's month-long "30 Days of Photographs" non-contest in April...and I enjoyed he heck outta that one, but, other than that...what could I say?

In September my daughter accomplished being named "National Merit Scholarship Semi-Finalist". Yep...it's all MY fault right there.

October brought Hurricane Sandy ashore to mess up parts of New York, New England, and my beloved New Jersey. Even with the devastation, I longed to be back there. Geez, I miss Jersey.

Then in July and December I cried a lot - I don't like mass shootings...so shoot me. Yeah, not so funny, anymore, is it?

I also had plans of talking about a wonderful person, a stranger really...who wanted to remain anonymous and be given absolutely no thanks whatsoever. This person showed up out of Internetland...and made my daughter and I cry again...but this time it was with tears of joy and love. I won't go into details as that is what they wished...but what transpired showed me that there truly are wonderful people out there. The only thing this person requested...was that one day...I should do a like kindness. Perhaps not the same kindness...but a kindness...a kindness which I can do in some way. I will, one day, honour that request.

I had all those plans...but there I was, still lying around like a dead carp -- and still thinking about how pathetic my little life was and how I was rather looking forward to the demise of the world, Mayan-style, on the 21st of December. It would have solved a lot of the world's problems, mine included, but then I got some much-needed sense knocked into me.

I started thinking about the ills of mankind throughout the ages...and what "age" I rather would have been born. I thought about this thoroughly. I went through all the countries, too. France, England, the US...and all the others I had some vague historical knowledge about...and thought where I would have been happy...and most importantly, when.

This progressed to visions of political imprisonment -- thrown in and left to rot...just for voicing that you were against...and then, later, were for...Napoleon (or any of a myriad of tyrannical leaders). I thought about the strife of coming over to a new land, kicking people off theirs, and claiming it as your own. I thought of poor little Dickensian orphans, working their fingers to the bone in the dead of Victorian winter like so many Hans Christian Andersen "Little Match Girl" characters.

I thought of so many wars throughout the world...throughout history...and throughout my lifetime. Where would I feel safe? Where could I go? When would I pick? When are things in MY life going to get better?

Then I thought how I probably would have died from Black Plague in the 1600s, succumbed to Tuberculosis in the 1800s, been a statistic in the 1918 pandemic, or just even one of the unremembered thousands upon thousands who died during childbirth. More realistically, I would have been dead at 41 because of my lung...had I had my lung problem prior to the mid-to-late 1900s. And -- I would surely have died living in the brutally cold and hostile environment of the Russian Ural Mountains since I can't even tolerate the temperature in my house getting down to a "frigid" 69.8.

Lastly, I will stop "woe-is-me-ing" (or at least greatly curtail) every single time I read about the fortuitous happenings regarding a viral blog writer, or a blog writer turned book writer, or a book writer turned blog writer, or anything with the word "writer" in it...because it's only my own damned fault I'm not famous because apparently I'm not sticking these things, called words, in the correct order.

Plus, first and foremost...I'm just not sticking to it.

But...I'm going to really try this year...basically because I'm just so tired of swallowing that bitter whine of mine...and there's no better vintage than now to get started.