New Year's Party Animals

I was never much for New Year's resolutions.

For one thing, it always seemed to me that if I were going to try to do something different, better or more effectively, I didn't necessarily have to wait until the end of December to decide this. I could make those decisions anytime I wanted to - that last bit being a rather important qualification. For another thing, well, given my track record with those decisions that I did want to make, setting aside a special day to announce what I wasn't going to be able to achieve just seemed counterproductive.

For years, the only resolution I would make would be to drink more. And then I would spend the following year turning perfectly good wine into vinegar, which is not really all that messianic a feat when you get right down to it. Disciples do not accrue to men who make salad dressing out of Merlot.

So I try to approach New Year's with a general sense aimless enjoyment rather than purposeful looking forward. It's better that way.

We had a quiet night, really. It was Tabitha's birthday, but because we've not quite managed to get our act together regarding invitations her party won't be until the 9th, so we decided to have just a family cake-and-presents after dinner. There was chocolate cake. There were presents. And it was Good.



I have no idea how she got to be nine.

Afterward we had our Second Biennial Kids And Cards Festival, where we invite folks with children roughly Tabitha and Lauren's ages to come over for a casual evening of drinking and card games while the kids run around destroying the house. Fun for the whole family, and no babysitter required! It's never a big event - that would defeat the purpose - and this year it ended up just us and our friends Dan, Theresa and Grace, but it was a great deal of aimless fun and that is quite enough.

Indeed, there were games. And indeed, the girls ran around the house converting it from the newly straightened and presentable place it was back into the "comfortable" home that it usually is. When the Ball dropped in New York, Kim got out the pots and pans and let the girls have a Wake The Dead Parade around the house. And then when it was actually New Year's in Wisconsin, there was another parade.


Because you can't have too many parades, that's why.

And then to bed, and then to bed. Happy New Year 2009!