I think our tree this year is just lovely and this seems like a nice opportunity to show it off.

(Sunday Paper, Year VI, Issue 51)

I love doing Sunday Paper mailbag posts.

I love getting fun questions from you all and crafting clever answers to them.

It’s a fun way to break up the sometimes weekly monotony.

But, in bringing back this mailbag I remembered why I had stopped doing the mailbag that I love doing so much…

And that’s the fact that sometimes it can be hard to get a bunch of questions from people.

There’s a lot here to blame and none of that blame is on the reader.

There’s the social media feeds on which I beg for questions - sometimes things get buried and they don’t get seen.

Then there’s the fact that I often feel like I’m asking for things all the time - questions for the mailbag, donations for the marathon charity (well, charities…I guess I’ll be telling you more about that soon), constant attention - I get it. There’s no need to respond to calls for questions too.

But I did get a response…and then appealed directly to a couple of good friends to get a couple more questions to flesh out the piece. So without further ado, here’s a little mini-mailbag post for you.

We’ll start with a fun one and then progress through questions that actually have serious answers.

Do your girls and Tate ever have sibling rivalry, like does Tate get jealous if one of the girls is getting more attention?

I think the short answer here is that Tate gets jealous whenever the attention is on anyone other than her. She seems to have a strategy for dealing with this - she’ll gnaw on a big chew toy and just really go at it…as opposed to, say, gnawing on my face. But she just wants to be part of the action.

Whenever we go downstairs (where the TV is) to watch something as a family, Tate will race everyone down there to try to get her seat before everyone else loads onto the couch. (Her cues are if Kathy and the girls get their blankets to snuggle into down there.) She’ll do the same thing with the bed at night although that’s more of a territorial thing - I think she now thinks that I’m intruding on her sleeping area when it is 100% the other way around.

And to be honest, it’s not sibling rivalry if I’m giving attention to the girls, it’s protection. If I’m ever talking to one of the girls Tate will often position herself in between us and just keep an eye on things. And if I ever raise my voice at one of them (but really why would I ever need to do that with one of our angels?) she’ll jump on me and run interference and make sure they’re OK.

Do you miss teaching?

This was a pretty spot-on question, meaning the asker either knew there was an answer that I haven’t been writing about or just accidentally hit on something that I’ve been thinking about writing about eventually.

So the answer is, “Kind of.” I keep finding myself drawn back into it. The parts of it that I like, anyway. The headaches that come along with teaching are not pieces I miss all that much and I am not drawn back to.

Bottom line: I love working with students and helping them learn something they didn’t know about before or deepening an understanding of something they knew a little bit about. Helping them find a spark or a love for something, if they’re willing to put in a little effort.

Luckily I’ve been teaching a college course on-line that hits on one of my passions and for the most part involves an invested class of students.

So there’s no funny answer here, just a straight one - sometimes I miss teaching, but I don’t miss everything about it, and luckily lately I’ve been doing some teaching that hits on the parts I like and avoids the aspects I don’t.

Your big adventure for 2021 was the Boston Marathon. What is the exciting project for 2022?

Well, as I alluded to in this week’s Wednesday post on the Facebook page (You can Like the page here if you don’t already so you don’t miss out on big news like this), the Boston Marathon is now an exciting project for 2022 as well.

But that’s in April, leaving two-thirds of the year left to fill with exciting projects.

And I don’t know if I know what those are yet. More running goals will certainly fill out the summer and fall, I’m sure. I’m doing my first half-marathon in February and likely will want to do one or two more by the time I recover from the Boston Marathon.

I suppose it would be nice to have some writing goals or comedy goals - that’ll probably be the bulk of next week’s Sunday Paper. But it should be noted that as of right now Comedy Night at Exhibit ‘A’ will be back in January.

To be honest, it’s hard to get excited about a lot right now, seeing how many things are out of my control. Something like the running goals - there’s not much the current state of the world can do to interfere with those. (I mean, the marathon could be cancelled again, sure, but I’ll choose to be optimistic that it’ll proceed like the one in October.)

But seeing Broadway shows forced to cancel performances again, cases rising, and sports being postponed or canceled - it’s hard to know what will be able to continue happening or not into the new year.

I hate to end on such a negative note, but the reality is things are a little negative right now.

I guess the most exciting part of 2022 would be to finally turn a corner on COVID, but I’ve done/am doing all I can on that front.

Notes

*Hard to believe this is the last Sunday Paper post before Christmas. What I’ll do is post something about my goals for the new year next week, as has been my custom these past few years, I think, and then after almost unbelievably that it’ll be the first post of 2022.

*I gave you the Facebook link above. You can follow me on Twitter here.

*Running update - this week was week one of marathon training, so the long run on Saturday was 6 miles with Team Framingham. It was mid-to-upper 30s and dry - pretty ideal running temps for me.

*I might be breaking out of my reading slump - it remains to be seen if I stick with it. Part of it is habit - I just need to get back into the routine of including reading as part of my day. And I would like to add here that I have already told you about one of the best things I read this year - My writer friend Julie Vick’s book. If you’re looking for something to read or share as a holiday gift, I can’t recommend it enough.

*I enjoyed looking back through my old mailbag posts. You might too. They’re fun. You can access all of them from the last one a few years ago.

*In one of them I kind of go off on the end of Elf. Listen, the ending of Elf is sweet. It’s just that whole Central Park Rangers piece of it that bugs me. I feel like there could have been a better antagonist there.

*We watched Elf Saturday night, which is why it’s on my mind. I don’t watch a lot of movies…or at least I didn’t used to. But Elf I’ve probably seen every year at least once a year since it came out - that’s a pretty good indication of how much I enjoy watching it. And I do love watching it with my family and hearing them laugh during it.

*Enjoy your Christmas, if that’s your thing, and stay healthy and safe. Things have a real crazy feel to them right now.

Here’s what our outdoor lights look like this year. I’m very pleased with how they look too: