The New Year

At my personal board meeting this year, I passed only a couple of resolutions. “Allinfavouropposedcarried!”

My first and most important plan is to arrange my business affairs such that I can spend more time away from my family.

I mainly work from home you see, and I frequently have important business calls interrupted by small children loudly announcing that “the dog is scooting her bum across the carpet right in front of the couch Dad! Oh – you’re on the phone. Sorry.”

Working from home does present challenges. I usually dial into our head office and have reception patch me through to my clients so that, based on call display information, they believe I’m actually at the office and not, in fact, sitting in my bathrobe, unshaven and scratching myself.

I sound like I’m at work until the dog barks, or I flush, or some other such announcement spoils my clever ruse.

I have even boldly made business calls while small children sit beside me, playing away on some website, only to have the mute button on their computer somehow un-mute and emit fart sounds, just as I’m discussing last quarter’s balance sheet with the CEO of a company I am courting.

“Excuse me!” I say as I launch into a spastic, thrashing-about dance to hit the mute button, shove a kid out of the office, mop up my spilled coffee, and try to make a prescient comment about cash flow.

This recovery procedure involves a certain amount of coordination, something which will come in handy for my second resolution - putting on footwear that will give me some grip in the snow when I let the dog out.

I currently just wear slippers, which do not provide claw-like traction, I beg to inform you.

Yesterday, in fact, I did a rather spectacular vertical hurtle, plummeting from my usual lofty 6 foot 3 inch height to a much lower and horizontal one, in a scant hundredth of a second. I departed from perpendicularity with such speed that I did not even have time to say to myself “Careful dude, this is slippery.” I only got as far as “Ca…”

I’m not sure if it was the sudden appearance of me laying beside her, or the loud “Oof!” sound I made upon doing so, but the dog bolted away with remarkable speed for her age, despite her overwhelming desire to eat and contaminate the fresh snow.

One second I was standing, slowly creeping down the little hill towards the gate, the next I was laid out, gasping, legs splayed, bath robe agape and over my head such that neighbours were getting a horrified eyeful of my corporate inner workings.

Given the frequency of my arm-waving lurches on our little path of late, I’m sure my spouse will emerge into the inky blackness of a winter’s night sometime, and observe her rotund husband laid out on the snow, gasping for breath, exposing himself, pointing at his slippers which have been catapulted onto the roof of the neighbour’s house.

It being well nigh impossible to get up from such a position, I’ll probably just lay back and relax, fatalistically enjoying my fading view of the stars in the chill night air, as my enormous body succumbs to hypothermia, frostbite, and little bits of gravel which have been violently embedded in the musculature of my backside.

As I contemplate this quite possible and embarrassing fate, I wonder if there are such things as Slip-On Crampons – mountaineering traction gear for the housebound slob.

God forbid I should actually break down and shovel. Or actually use the lock on my office door at home.

That would require more resolutions, which are not on the agenda.