A Year that is New

photo credit
creative commons license
This year we're spending New Year's Eve at the arena (Champagne on Ice - ha ha, get it?). I'm not really bitter, since we've had quiet ones at home with the kids the last couple of years anyway, but come on... who schedules hockey tournaments where you have to play New Year's Eve AND New Year's Day? Last year the kids did make it almost all the way to midnight, but this year Angus will have to go to bed earlier or be playing half-asleep tomorrow at eight.
New Year's Eve is a funny holiday. I've always sort of felt like I should be partying, or climbing a mountain or burning sage or something to commemorate the old year passing away and usher in the new one. On the other hand, it's so soon after Christmas that I'm often exhausted and still trying to dig out, so I sort of resent the (self-imposed) notion that I have to do something. Now that we have the kids, we either get together with other families that have kids or just stay in WITH the kids, and it's easier to say "we're staying in with the kids" than just "we're not doing anything". Is this improper use of kids? I hope not.
In a way I'm glad we have the game. I even like the sort of noble self-sacrificing feeling I get from having to go to the arena on New Year's Eve (I know -- I'm a slightly jerky head case). Sometimes it feels good to do something you don't really want to do for your kids. It makes me feel like -- what's the word -- a mother.
Happy partying, or hermit-ing, or sage-burning, or however you choose to celebrate tonight. See you in 2010, when we'll all be writing the wrong date and cursing and scratching it out to write the new one for the next four to six weeks.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Happy New Year! As for me, I am staying in with the kids, too. ;)
December 31, 2009 at 9:09 PM
Julie said…
My husband has that feeling. I just like getting an extra day off! ;-) Last night was spent watching a movie and going to bed at 11:30! Didnt' even want to try and stay up since we are heading to Mtl this morning.

Hope it was a good game and Happy New Year to you and yours!
January 1, 2010 at 5:25 AM
Mary Lynn said…
Seriously? They schedule a hockey tournament over New Years. I'm so not up for being a hockey mom.

Hope the games have gone well. Happy 2010 to you!
January 1, 2010 at 11:14 AM
Rosemary said…
Happy New Year to you too! We went over to one set of neighbors for dinner, brought the kids back home to bed at 10, went back over, rang in midnight and then slipped our way home on some very icy sidewalks. Then, just before going in the front door we notice that our younger neighbors were still awake because thier front room lights were on. So we decide to stop in just for a New Years hug. Several hours and several drinks and chunks of cheese later we're partying like people that don't have kids that are getting up in oh let's say - 2 hours. So I guess I fall somewhere inbetween, stayed home with the kids but dammit I still got to party. I hope the rest of the year is the same way for me!
January 1, 2010 at 3:23 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Books Read in 2021: Four-Star YA Horror

Image
I am pretty well ensconced in the January doldrums. We are in a deep freeze, and after the major snow dump on Monday I never catch it snowing, and yet there are a few centimetres on the driveway by every evening. I'm happy with my decision not to take any office shifts for a few weeks - it's incredibly stressful, will only be more so now that people are pissed that we're not supposed to be reporting Covid cases, and I don't even get paid my regular library rate. But it does sort of make the days run together. I try to walk Lucy, but it's so cold she starts dancing around lifting up one paw after the other for me to warm with my mittens. We've tried paw covers but haven't found any that fit. So I walk her around the block and then bring her home and keep walking. It's been cold but not very windy, so walking is quite pleasant (I'm finally not too warm!)  I am rewatching The Golden Girls, which I don't think I ever watched all the way through befor
Read more

I'm Sick

 Seriously you guys, I am SO SICK, and I have been stupidly engaging in presenteeism even though I am STRONGLY DISAPPROVING when other people do it. It's not because I think I owe anything to the school board (oh my goodness I do not). It's not because I have delusions of grandeur about how important my job is - wait, maybe I do, because at some of my schools my classes have already missed two weeks of library because of EQAO (which necessitated students writing exams in the library), and it's almost the end of the year, which means most of the librarians are closing the library to circulation soon if not now, and I really didn't want to make them miss one of the last library periods.  Also, and I am putting myself out there so try to be kind, I have realized that there is a dumb little part of people-pleasing oldest-child self that always suspects that if I call in sick people think I'm faking, so it's a tiny bit gratifying to go in and have people say oh my GO
Read more

Books Read in 2023: The Five-Stars

Image
This one took me SO LONG.  I figured out why I was a year behind reading the Giller Prize shortlist - something which is both screamingly obvious and surely important to no one but me, but it was nagging. The shortlist comes out in October, and duh, I didn't read them all by the end of the year, I spread them out into the next one.  This is also the point in these posts where I start to realize books are missing. I forgot to add them to Goodreads, or Goodreads was screwed up, or I accidentally missed or deleted them while composing the posts. I know there's at least one for last year - Cemetery Boys, which I think was recommended by Marilyn (HI MARILYN). YA Fantasy, LGBTQ, really good, I remembered it when I was reviewing Promise Boys in this post. It doesn't make me feel happy that I read more books when this happens, it pisses me off that my total was WRONG and the posts are incomplete. Hmph. Engie, international woman of mystery, decided to torture us all (or maybe just
Read more