Sunday, January 01, 2006

New Year's Day

Back from a bit of a holiday break, Kellinahandbasket has more to celebrate than just the New Year. It's Kellinahandbasket's 1 year anniversary! That's right, a year ago today, Kellinahandbasket came into existence as a push from my friend, publicprivate, and was probably the first and only New Year's resolution that I successfully maintained. So *clink* to that.

Normally I hate New Year's. I hated it when I was young because it seemed like the whole world was partying (even *my parents* who rarely went out) except for my brother and me. We were left at home with our Great Aunt Dot, though the highlight there was taking turns, making Scotch on the rocks for her. Dot was cool, though. Mostly I remember her watching a lot of Jeopardy, not caring that I would accelerate the burning of her cigarette by blowing on it in its ash tray, hearing that she and her late professor husband had buried jars of coins underneath their house which had never been retrieved, and her constantly buying my brother and me lottery tickets in our church's weekly lottery. We won a lot too. $50-$100 every couple of weeks. And then there was the huge New Year's lottery where the grand prize was $10,000. We won that too, which may be why New Year's Eve was the only night that Dot ever babysat us. I guess that year wasn't so bad (despite the fact that we didn't find out until the next day). What did we do with the money afterward? $8000 after taxes. Then my parents threw the faculty and staff of my grade school a luncheon. My brother and I were alotted $100 so that we could buy a Nintendo and the rest was split and stashed in a savings account for college. Of course, that's gone now. And so is Dot. New Year's Eve reminds me of Dot. That part I don't hate.

As a teenager I hated it because it was always a fight between my mom and me along the lines of: Let me go out. No. Later in life I came to find out that I wasn't really missing much in the way of New Year's Eve parties. I think after all the holidays and exertion that December took, too many people seemed like they were trying to force one more night of fun in a month jam-packed with them.

And just the idea of it being the first day of the year bugged me. It's always felt like being on page 1 of a textbook in a math class...a hopeless feeling of, ugh, look how much we have to go. Not to mention that the worst month of them all, Febsuckuary is right around the corner. Wretched, cold, long-ass, short month.

I'm starting to turn a bit of a corner on it, though. I don't mind sitting at home with a drink and watching the fireworks on the streets outside of our apartment (they're on every street as everyone's allowed to buy them and fire them...and everyone does).

I'm keeping this year's resolutions simple:
  1. Improve my posture
  2. Learn about health care
  3. Use eyedrops
  4. Take vitamins
If I hit two out of four, I'll be happy. They're not *that* hard.

Related Posts: New Year's Eve...The Aftermath

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