Happy New Year....and Oh Shit

Happy New Year.....

It's Labor Day weekend, which, for Brian & I, is observed as New Years. I mean think about it. You started a new year of school in the fall, TV shows were brand new, you shopped for new clothes and school supplies, college football starts, NFL starts....it makes more sense for this to be observed as New Years Day than January 1. The traditional new year is so depressing. It's the doldrums of winter. You are all partied out from the holidays, you've over indulged in eating, drinking and spending. You're tired, shopped out, bloated and feeling the post-Krissmiss let down. There's nothing to look forward to in the next few months at all.

I remember being a kid, and into my teens, just weeping at midnight on New Years Eve. To me it was so sad, the passing of time. I couldn't help it, esp. if I was home alone, which sometimes I was as my parents were off with their friends, for one reason or another my cousins were doing stuff that I was not invited to, and my friends were babysitting. There is nothing more depressing than ringing in the new year, completely alone, listening to the countdown of the year's top 100 songs on the radio and watching Dick Clark's New Years Rockin' Eve. It just seemed like the passing of time mocked me.

In jr. high and high school, I always felt the loneliest and most miserable on New Years Eve. I just wanted to get out of Sandwich so bad and do something....ANYTHING....as long as it was on the west coast. And now we had a new year where I'm stuck languishing on the east coast and I had like zero to look forward to. To my school friends, I think I was seen as outgoing, friendly and funny, if a bit weird, but deep inside I was a very unhappy adolescent. Of course New Years was less depressing when I got older and got to do stuff, esp. when we lived in San Francisco and got to see the last 3 Grateful Dead New Years Eve concerts in 1989, 1990 & 1991. Now we're just too damn tired to make it till midnight.

So that is why we prefer to celebrate the New Year on Labor Day weekend. Because we actually have stuff to look forward to with the new TV season, college and pro football, the foliage and beautiful fall days, snug rainy weekends, the holidays and winter. Even though it feels like I just put the holiday decorations away, and now it's time to drag out the boxes again.

For the record, our fave college football teams are as follows:

Notre Dame - Because of the Irish tradition, and NBC always shows their games every week.

West Virginia - Because Brian spent a good portion of his teen youth partying in Morgantown.

UW Huskies - The local team of course.

Cal Bears - Because we lived in SF, nearly all the attorneys I worked for either did their undergrad or law school at Berkeley, I worked in Berkeley near the Cal campus and my former boss was the lead attorney for the Free Speech Movement in the 60's.

Michigan - Because of the Michigan tradition and my boss went there.

Nebraska - Because of the Huskers tradition.

Boston College - Because I'm from Massachusetts.

...and Oh Shit

Well I coloured my hair today....the colour on the box said "Medium Brown". What I ended up with is, essentially, black. Black hair. I've never had black hair in my life. How in the hell am I supposed to go out in public like this? What the hell happened????? Clearly, I bought the wrong box of colouring.

Black. Man alive, when Brian wakes up I am in for some serious ribbing. I'm surprised I didn't wake him up with my cries of distress from the bathroom, "WHAT THE ????? BLACK! MY HAIR IS BLACK?! DAMMIT! DAMMIT!" Needless to say, I better have a snappy self-deprecating comment ready for when I go to work on Tuesday b/c Steve's too polite to say anything unless I bring it up first. And poor Debby....she has night blindness and since I keep my office so dark, she's never going to be able to see me, esp. if I wear black clothing. I'll look like a floating face to her.

So for today, I had to offset my hair with a brightly coloured rainbow swirl tie dye shirt that says, "Peace, Love and Muddy Paws". It's going to take a few weeks for this to wash out too.

Summer 2007 Summary:

Is it me, or did the summer go by exceedingly fast this year? We literally got nothing done. Squat. Bupkiss. Nada. Nil.

No. of times sat and/or ate dinner on the deck: -0-

No. of times used the grill: 1, on July 4th.

No. of times sat in skychairs: -0- We didn't even put them up. Nor did we put out the summer garden decorations (gazing balls, wind spinners, etc).

No. of times Brian enjoyed a cigar on the deck: -0-

Yardwork completed: -0-, except for cutting the lawn a couple of times.

No. of Tacoma Rainiers baseball games attended: -0- But we're boycotting them b/c they took our mini-plan seats away after the ultimatum of "either buy season tickets for those seats or go sit somewhere else".

No. of times walked the dogs: -0-

No. of rooms in the house I thoroughly cleaned like I'd planned to this spring: -0-

PS Brian just got up and roared with laughter at my hair, "Leave the colouring on a bit long, did we?"