After three years of enjoying empty-nester style New Year’s Eve getaways, we decided on something completely different. Three years ago we spent a few days in Chicago. Two years ago we attended opera’s greatest hits at Roy Thomson Hall and stayed at the King Edward Hotel and last year we partied at a friends place in the Beach and stayed at a nearby B & B on Balsam avenue. This year we opted for an evening with two nephews and a niece ages nine, seven and five, which included an outing to see the Muppet movie.

All was going well until I began to experience some ominous tummy rumblings and subsequent symptoms of food poisoning. My husband did not seem entirely sympathetic when I announced during our pizza dinner while viewing “Where the Wild Things Are” that I just had to go to bed. It was then that the wild rumpus really began, for my husband at least. I slept for several hours and gathered the energy to rise just before 1 a.m. just as the Pirates of the Caribbean was ending, to wish the still-awake 9 year old and my husband Happy New Year and then crawled back to sleep.

I woke in the morning after a long but very shallow and disrupted period of sleep with just enough energy to cook pancakes for breakfast and spend a bit of time with our lively crew of youngsters. After their departure we attended mass but I had trouble staying awake and spent most of what remained of the day sleeping. It is the one day of the year that I make a point of running and I think this may be the first New Year’s day in 31 years that I have missed a run.

Thus in the first two days of 2012 I have spent more hours asleep than awake, I’ve not yet run and my diet has been confined to ginger ale, apple juice, plain chips, a few pancakes and Campbell’s chicken noodle soup.

This gave rise to thoughts of how lucky I am to be nornally blessed with such good health and resolutions to remember that each and every day and remember those who are ill. One of the reasons I run is that like Emerson, I do feel that on this earth our “first wealth IS health”!

Wishing you health and wellness in 2012!

Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

(3 John 2)