Ringing in the New Year

I have just one thing left to accomplish before 2003 is over in a few short days.

To find something simple, yet a little different, but still figure flattering for my newish curves, maybe black, but hopefully not. Not too flashy or formal, but not too casual and bland...

I have two short days to make this dream a reality. Where to start? And if you say 'Lane Bryant' I will hunt you down and kill you. I have a bit of a sensitivity about my weight.

I need this outfit to attend this fabulous New Year's Eve party we've been invited to. I won't say who invited us...in case you know them too and you've been shunned. But I think it will be my very first serious 'Grown Up' party...and I'm 30, so that is sad.

We've done lots of things for New Year's eve. We've cooked a fabulous meal with another couple and ate until we thought we'd explode. We've gone to a fabulous chinese restaurant with another couple only to have the other couple completely lose all conversational skills at exactly 10:28...with exactly 1 hour and 32 painful minutes left until the new year. There was the year we attended a party of a friend of a friend...a year I stuffed my swollen pregnant mass into a rather lovely outfit and tried to make small talk without an ounce of liquor in my bloodstream. Disaster doesn't begin to describe it. At 11:50 Pants and I raced home to watch the ball drop in our own living room while I ate a big fat piece of cheescake by the light of the christmas tree in my pajama's...night saved.

One of my favorite new year's was also one of my worst. We ate a great meal at a table crowded with some of the most fun friends I have ever had, played Jenga and drank until the new year rolled in. It was good until at 12:01, I realized I had crossed over to 'Too Drunk To Keep My Eyes Open' and the song MTV chose to ring in the New Year was Youth of the Nation. The song wasn't the bad part, it was the fact that I was so drunk that I was singing along with Mucho Gusto and for a moment I thought those lyrics were actually talking about me and then I remembered I was a mother of two, coming dangerously close to her 30th birthday.

That song really wasn't talking about me and the room began to spin viciously and I called a time out and went to bed at the party. This was a common occurence during my son's first 2 years of life, falling asleep at parties.

This party is at a lovely restaurant, a restaurant I once ate to celebrate my surviving of graduation from high school and later my 24th birthday. Last year my 10th high school reunion was held there..but God Help Me, this party better be more fun than that.

This New Year's Eve...will hopefully not end with me sleeping on a table in the restaurant. It will hopefully find me wearing a tasteful ensemble. I am hoping the psychic predictions I am scheduled to receive at 9pm are all good things. I thought about saying, "Don't tell me anything bad." But then realized if I said that and the psychic had nothing to say I would be quite horrified. We'll eat dinner and we're scheduled to make resolutions at 11pm...

I've no idea what my 'public' resolutions will be, but I already know my 'private' resolutions...and no, I'm not sharing them here either.

At 11:59 we'll watch the ball drop and I will watch another year float away...and I will be looking toward the new year with as much hope and anticipation as I have any other, even if I won't be singing 'Youth of the Nation' at 12:01am.

Comments

[Patti]

Okay, I just want to know how you manage to find all of these couples. After 14 years together, Marcelo and I are still in search of a couple, still suffering from major "needacoupleitis". We've never had a cool couple; not even a couple with questionable converstational skills. Oh, what I wouldn't give...

Enjoy your New Year's celebration; I'm sure you will look fabulous no matter what you wear!

~Patti

[Rachel]

Thanks for the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser tip. They are awesome. I was running around cleaning with them all weekend. I know... I have no life : )
But, my walls look great!

Rachel