Closing of the year

We're in the Philly area, having escaped New England under the very nose of the blizzard and subsequently spent a few days with the in-laws in central Pennsylvania, where I played Wii and Hey, That's My Fish with a 9-year-old. (Neither of those things is dirty.) On our way from there to here, we (with the in-laws and the 9-year-old) visited Roadside America, a massive miniature of Americana made by someone who could equally well be called a hobbyist or an outsider artist: there are tiny churches and cable cars and zoo animals and Ben Franklin and coal mines and railroads, and there is a "lost world" dino-diorama in a cave, and every half hour the lights dim and the stars come out and a 300-foot Jesus is projected on the wall beside the Statue of Liberty while God Bless America blares on a fifty-year-old tape. It raised within me, yet again, a deep love for the unique madness of Americans. I purchased from them a bag of horehound candy, which tastes like you'd expect.

Here in Newtown Square, we are staying with Larry and Megan, their nearly-walking daughter Kaya, two excitable bark-o-dogs, and an invisible cat. adfamiliares and I spent the afternoon walking through a crunchy-snowed Crum Woods, enjoying the conversation of the happily married and comparing the many species of holly the arboretum has planted there (English holly, satyr hill holly, Doctor Somebody-or-other holly, Chinese holly, hybrid holly). We got cheesesteaks at Renato's and candy at the Head Nut, then returned to play some games with Larry and Megan and other friends. (My deductive powers are unstoppable in The Resistance; Dixit, in which one is supposed to produce clues that are obscure but not too obscure, is entirely beyond my ability.)

Tomorrow, we dance for six hours and ring in the new. I am more centered than I was at this time in 2009 — 2010 was a year of slaying demons, so my demons are fewer and deader.