50+ Lifestyles

Could 2015 be a Confusing Year?

Contributed by
Gail McPike and Toni Hall

It’s 2015; let us be amongst the last to welcome you to the New Year. Humor us as we fast forward from our last time together. Christmas parties at home, work and a couple of friend’s houses were good for a few thousand extra calories.  Christmas Eve snacks and dinner was tasty and delicious.  And, eating and drinking too much is a Holiday Tradition.  Christmas Dinner at Gail’s house included enchiladas and barbeque with a pie chaser. And those were all just practice sessions for the grand oop-tee-oop on New Years Eve.  We, of course, are talking about Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2015.
Thank God that Dick Clark celebrated New Years on the Eastern Time Zone, because we’re not sure we could have made it to the real live QCA Midnight.  The combination of a month’s worth of feasting and a glass or two of the bubble can put a damper on a girl’s ability to trip the light fantastic.  But, we did manage to trip into bed, woke up and found our clocks set to 2015 time.

Since we’ve all made it to the other side, we thought now might be a good time to introduce you to the year. Since it seems the ancient Chinese were amongst the first to plot out the lunar cycles that make for a year, 2015 will be either the “Year of the Goat” or the “Year of the Green Wooden Sheep,” depending upon which set of experts one subscribes to.  But these experts have some time to figure the whole thing out, since the Chinese New Year comes on February 19th. Could 2015 be a sheep that smells like a goat?  Does this mean we’re still in 2014? No, but things are starting to be confusing.

Never to be outdone by any single country, the United Nations has declared 2015 as the “Year of the Soil” and a few weeks later turned around and declared 2015 as the “Year of the Light and Light Technology.” We kind of wish they would get their act together. Are world leaders somehow confused?  Perhaps, a bit.

Now a final fact about 2015. Did you realize they have already selected the 2015 inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? And our friend Ringo Star will be elected to the Hall of Fame for the second time. He has been in as part of the Beatles for many years, but this year he gets inducted for, well, being Ringo. We always like ole Richard Starkey, aka, Ringo. Besides being a big time music star, he was a favorite actor. According to our sources, Mr. Starkey has been in 35 movies. Current Trophy Husband (CTH) Frank claims Ringo’s work with Peter Sellers in Magic Christian should have netted the pair a truck load of Oscars. We won’t go into too much detail, but suffice to say, CTH Frank often cites the whole Ringo/Oscar thing as an example of creaking communism. Are you getting confused at how Ringo’s 1969 movie could find its way into an article about 2015?

We might be confused, but this year is different for us. For the first time in many years, we are traveling in separate directions. Gail and CTH Frank are joining friends Cathy and Mark from Ames in sunny Mexico. while Toni glides through the winter months in California’s Gold Country. CTH and good doctor Phil will be toughing it out in the QCA Artic merry-go-round of snow, cold, snow and more cold.

Speaking of a cold winter’s day; CTH Frank celebrates his birthday on January 23rd. He claims to have mysteriously hand selected his own birthday because of its significance as national pie day. As always, Frank can provide hours of background on most of his ramblings. We’ve decided to spare you about 119 minutes worth of verbal incoherence and condense his pie day story.

Saint Ivan of Rila is the patron saint of the Bulgarian people; not that CTH Frank is Bulgarian or anything.  But Ivan is credited with feeding masses of hungry folks of some obscure village in the olden country using the crusts of two small pies given to him by a local Pie Maker. Because of the generosity of the Pie Maker, St. Ivan blessed and became the patron Saint of Pie makers, and January 23rd is the National Day of Pies.

Does any of this make sense?  Well not really, but we do know these three things to be facts.  One, Frank’s grandmothers and his mother were professional pie makers.  Two, Chicago really does have an Orthodox church called St. Ivan’s of Rila Church.  And three, Frank claims to have eaten a piece of pie in the parking lot.

Confused?  We are. It turns out 2015 might be a confusing sort of year. Happy New Year. Have a slice of cherry pie on January 23rd.