Opinion

March is winding down and my sister-in-law, Lori, is going with it. There is too much food and too many flowers because that is what we do when someone is dying, when we don’t know what else to do as, gradually, the unthinkable becomes accepted and even ordinary.

Sealy Main Street is ready to keep the ball rolling! The past year has been spent setting the program up for success. Thanks to Sealy EDC Director Kimbra Hill and the submission of her Strategic Plan (which can be viewed on our website at SealyEDC.com/ MainStreet) we are now officially a certified Main Street District with the Main Street of America program.

Remember that episode of “Seinfeld” where Jerry and Sheila (Jerry’s girlfriend for one episode) call each other “schmoopie”? This schmaltzy, saccharine show of cutesy nicknaming made the rest of the gang sick. Most people remember this episode for the “Soup Nazi” yelling “No soup for you!” I, however, can’t get the babytalk nicknames out of my mind.

Throughout the past year, my husband, Peter, and I have been seeing no one except Peter’s sister, Lori, and her husband. Lori has Stage 4 cancer and has had a tough fight.

By this point in your life, you probably know what an acronym is. Examples include FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), NFL (National Football League), and this incredibly important one to me: SPF (Sun Protection Factor). Anything short of SPF 1,000 will result in this pasty redhead contracting a sunburn on a cloudy day.

It’s our anniversary, and Peter and I will be celebrating, like everyone has this past year, the best we are able. We have not yet won the vaccine lottery.

I‘ve been contemplating a new parenting tactic: pre-emptively teaching my son bad words. Miles is seven, and he will someday know all the same expletives as I do. Because of this, I surmise that he ought to learn the words in context from his dad. That’s why I’ve started a spreadsheet in which I rank bad words from the tamest to the most profane. I’ll teach him two words per year with proper context and word origins, and keep instructing him until I exhaust the list.

I‘ve never been a fan of March. March is supposedly spring, but we all know it’s not.

Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you don’t know something so you just avoid it altogether? For instance, because I don’t know how to swim, I avoid parties on megayachts. I can’t tell you how many yacht-vitations I’ve turned down over the years because of my lackluster swimming abilities.

I know I am not the only one having travel fantasies. My husband, Peter, and I were not planning to do a lot of traveling in the past year.