NYE 05 Edition

What are your plans?

In previous years, I've volunteered to work NYE, because it's a bartender's dream. This year, Superfly and I are semi-working NYE: we're doing potluck, champagne, and karaoke at some friends' house.

Why? Drunken amateurs. Sobriety checkpoints. Great unwashed masses. NY's Rockin' Eve on TV. That stupid Auld Lang Syne song. The joy of choosing who you spend NYE with, most of all.

You can't make me care about Christmas, and Chanukah is for the kids, so I'm wishing you lovely and talented readers of my dumb blog a damn joyous New Year, ok?

What's the most fun you had on NYE?

For me, it was the Millenium, but not because I went to some glitzy shindig. No, Mother Trouble was 8 1/2 months pregnant on December 31, 1999. Damn near had a Millenium Baby (my son has lifetime LeapFrog presents and lifetime Harlem Globetrotters tickets for being born in Jan. 2000!)

What was fun about it was everyone around us stocking up on generators, bottled water, and freeze-dried bananas for the impending disaster. Women would gasp at me in the grocery store or wherever (I did resemble an olive on a toothpick, but that's another story)and make the sign of the cross on their chests. Poor woman! Having a baby right as the world is going to end!

Our next door neighbors even pulled all their money out of bank accounts and bought a gun to protect themselves from the roaming gangs that would surely bypass the surrounding wealthy neighborhoods to hit their house on our blue collar block.

Absurdity really amuses me. So much so that my mind was momentarily relieved from hating my husband and from lotto fantasies. I celebrated that New Year's Eve with a kung fu fetus, a bottle of Perrier, the cat asleep on my ginormous belly, the dog asleep across my feet, and a good book. The hated husband in question was in the basement, playing his online computer game and the other children were blissfully asleep.

Right before midnight he came upstairs, asked if anything interesting was happening, and then flipped on the TV. I think even the newscasters and Dick Clark were a teensy bit worried about being out in humanity as the minutes ticked off towards doomsday. The ball fell, the people cheered, and all the clocks on eletrical devices in our home (picture a Best Buy store in a living room)clicked over to 12:01.

He cackled and turned the TV to Cartoon Network. I waddled off to bed, smugly looking forward to all the back-pedalling and aw-shucks from all the lunatics I knew.