Mark Timmins is the only person who I know reads my blog posts. He, in fact, asked why I don’t write any more. Shows what you know, Mark: I have never really written very much here. Mostly cut-and-pastes from other ramblings. But, a new year should be greeted with good intentions, whether or not they are long lived. So I’ll tell you about my last night of the 2011 calender…

I had a serious blood-letting.

I am frequented by bloody noses throughout the winter months, which tend to be cold and dry here in New Hampshire. I am not a stranger to them, nor they to me. They’re horribly inconvenient and messy and require patience to resolve. When you take into consideration the number of blood-thinning agents I’m on you can amplify the effects to legendary proportions.

Last night I seriously bled for about an hour. I thought about collecting the blood in a measuring cup just so I had the WOW-factor to brag about. I was going through toilet paper and paper towels so quickly that I eventually just hung my head over the sink and watched the red stream splatter into the sink. I pinched the bridge, I pressed paper up into my brain – all that did was back up the flow so blood started to pool in my throat now every few minutes I had to cough out a huge phlegmy blood clot. The other nostril kicked into action when it’s neighbor’s flow was obstructed, taking over the job of bleeding when the dominant bleeder was dammed.

Feeling light-headed I had no choice but to think about how this situation was going to play out. Who could take me to the ER if I eventually admitted defeat and my nose won? Could I drive myself to the hospital and – more honestly – could I absorb the mortifying embarrassment when I was pulled over by the cop on New Year’s Eve? No, not embarrassed for bleeding all over myself but for being alone – with my nose – in a hospital-bound car on this festive and socially-obligatory night.

Would I eventually just pass out? And, if so, would I wake up? And, if so, would it  be in a pool of blood? It’s such a mess to clean up. Maybe if I lay down for the night in my bathtub it would solve most of these issues but, in the event I didn’t regain consciousness, would it look like a holiday suicide? I mean, I’m not THAT upset about being alone – pleeease! At least I’m not freezing my ass off in Berlin with some other diabetic freak like I was this time last year: standing on a snow-covered bridge over the river Spree while I prayed this guy’s kids wouldn’t blow their faces off with firecrackers. In fact, last year I would’ve given various body parts to be here, right where I was, bleeding-out in my very own bathroom, and that’s really saying something.

However, this flashback planted the seed that turned out to actually be my salvation: I went outside into the cold and let my blood slow, the timing of the blood dropping onto the white frost of my porch proof of that. I know it sounds like I wasn’t trying to stop the blood but the drips were falling from the saturated paper that I was holding to my face – it wasn’t a situation in which I could be passive! Who could be when a hose of blood was firing out of the front of one’s face??

So, I start this new year with a whole bunch of new blood, I guess. Doesn’t your body regenerate the stuff, to a certain degree? Talk about a fresh start.

Happy New Year, Mark – and to anyone else who might stumble upon this account.

Oh, and my 2012 resolution is to brush my hair more often: it has rat-nest tendencies.