January, as I say every year, is my least favorite month. I celebrate its passing. But it’s a valuable month if you make it so. Whether it’s laying plans for the garden, working on new carving initiatives, or making those long winter nights come alive by reading about topics that interest you, it passes and promotes new value. Because it’s a slow-paced month, you’re a fool not to take the opportunity to use it to recharge a bit.
I hate to say it, but if January did not exist, I might have to invent it. I shudder thinking about it in a week with three snowstorms.
So I try to keep busy this month. But there is a wayward part of me that wants to be away from January in New England – enough Yankee Stoicism already! I want to dance on the beaches! Wet my toes in the tide! Boogie under the tropical moon, and watch the flying fish off the starboard bow of my ketch. Running around my head, this entire month has been old sea chanteys. Earworms about hauling up and sailing away.
This one in particular:
Rolling down to Old Maui, me boys
Rolling down to Old Maui
We’re homeward-bound from the Arctic ground
Rolling down to Old Maui.
Once more we sail with a northerly gale
Through the ice and wind and rain.
Them coconut fronds, them tropical lands
We soon shall see again.
Our stu’n’s’l bones/booms is carried away
What care we for that sound?
A living gale is after us,
Thank God we’re homeward bound.
Chorus
We’ll heave the lead where old Diamond Head
Looms up on old Wahu.
Our masts and yards are sheathed with ice
And our decks are hid from view.
The horrid ice of the sea-caked isles
That deck the Arctic sea
Are miles behind in the frozen wind
Since we steered for Old Maui.
A well, back to work; sigh.
Love this song, but spooky times, the Husband has been wandering around the place singing this for the last week or so. I shall hide his passport…
C’mon Ella! Tis the season to run off to exotic places!
Not without me he doesn’t!
I mentioned this to my wife, and she said exactly the same thing…it’s unfair…a tropical interlude is…well anyway tell your husband I’ll meet him at the Blue Anchor when he arrives, and we can get together with the other escapees!
You naughty old seadog, you! Dread to think what the pair of you would get up to when let off the leash…
Leash?! Boys just wanna have fun!
That’s what worries me!
what happens in Maui, stays in Maui!
🤣🤣🤣