Thursday at work I was telling someone we could have lunch on Friday and she looked at me and was like, “Uh, it’s the holiday, we have off” and I was like “What? But the calendar doesn’t say…” and she was like “ But it’s New Year’s Eve,” and I was like “Okay, I believe you, I won’t come in tomorrow, jeez.” So that was a nice little surprise, all the more so in that I might have taken the day off anyway to blow my nose and have a headache and curse my suddenly very dry skin. I managed to make it outside for a couple of hours that day and do some errands and get home in plenty of time to put on my feather boa and execute my New Year’s Eve plans, which involved going to a three-hour long improv show by my friend Ian’s group, of which he is clearly the best and funniest member. Whenever I see him play I make sure to elbow whoever I am sitting with and to say loudly: “I totally know him!” (I often sit next to his wife when I do this, however, so I don’t always get the jaw-dropping goggle-eyed reaction I secretly hope for). Also there was cake. I was disappointed that no one took my suggestion for Aerosmithia when they asked the audience for an imaginary country, though. Aerosmithia, man. That would rule, right?
That is a party horn I am blowing, not a hand-rolled (albino) Cuban cigar. Also, no extra charge for the unrestricted visual access to my nostril, there.
So, in stark contrast to last year’s New Year’s Eve where I cried a lot and was all alone, this year I got to spend time with some lovely old friends and some lovely new friends and of course I wore the boa, which, while very glamorous, is also very sneezy. That’s something they never tell you, at the feather boa store: “Be careful, these feathers are totally going to go up your nose a lot and you will spend more time making unladylike spitting sounds than is strictly necessary.” So my advice to you, feather-boa-wise, is to make sure your feather boas are hypoallergenic.
But that’s about as exciting as things have been for me this weekend. Yesterday I stayed in bed reading and eating dried pineapple and blowing my nose until well into the afternoon, and then it was a huge deal to get into the shower and to the store so I could make some food that didn’t involve frozen hors-d’oeuvres. (It’s been so long since I’ve cooked anything, really, that I had to keep reminding myself that I did own a pyrex baking dish and a vegetable peeler and a strainer). I felt like I was swimming through molasses the entire day and it was with a grateful sigh I noticed that it was dark outside and that technically I could get back in bed, after being out of it for five whole hours.
I always feel guilty when I have days like that, like I should be spending my non-work time being very productive and goal oriented, with schedules and to-do lists and such. I mean, I set up Quicken, and I did make a dish that involves both legumes and vegetables, and I read some books, but that was it. I found myself lolling on the bed in my towel with the space heater pointed right at me, and having to tell myself that it was fine to read whatever I wanted and that I could skip to any song I wanted on iTunes and that I didn’t have to put any clothes on at all if I didn’t want to, for as long as I wanted to. I would never characterize myself as driven or ambitious in any way but isn’t it funny how my slacker tendencies totally dry up and blow away when it’s an optimal time for slacker-ness? Anyway, you’ll be happy to know that I did conquer my demons and reassert my laziness by climbing back into bed as soon as it was decently dark outside and that was Saturday.
I am also, while I’m thinking about it, feeling guilty for receiving a very nice iPod for Christmas and thinking “What am I going to do with that?” I haven’t used it yet, haven’t even taken the earphones out of the packaging, but I plan to tomorrow on the bus. Except I’m a little bit sick of all my songs and the songs I do want are not available in iTunes which means, I guess, that I’ll have to get myself some more CDs and that will cost money. I lost a lot of my CDs in the move and there are several others that are just plain lost and I know I’m going to end up buying CDs just to justify having this iPod. It can hold 10,000 songs and I know I will never, never have enough music to satisfy it. I sort of feel the same way about this very lovely laptop: I’m almost certainly never going to use iDVD or GarageBand or whatever and it’s way more computer than I will ever need. When I opened it up the first thing I thought was “I’ll sure be able to send email from this baby!”
Anyway, I think we were talking about my silly weekend. So after doing pretty much nothing except feel inchoately guilty yesterday, I woke up this morning and spent some more time being guilty because I ate some cheese wedges while I was waiting for my oatmeal to cook, like I was cheating on the oatmeal or something. Then I got dressed and felt guilty because I snagged a shirt from the laundry…I wore it a couple of days ago for a couple of hours and it smelled fine to me but what would I know, my nose is so clogged up it could be a relict of the horrible Laundry Detergent Switch Incident and I’d never know. Since I did go outside and interact with people today, though, and none of them recoiled from me (visibly, at least) I probably shouldn’t feel too bad, but still.
Later I felt guilty for leaving my wallet at home, thereby forcing the very tolerant Sundry to pay for our delicious pizza lunch at the freezing cold outdoor yuppie mall. I also felt guilty for both blowing my nose disgustingly and gooshily and using my cell phone in a bookstore. Now I am home and feeling guilty for not making the Brussels sprouts I have in the fridge for dinner because I am still full from lunch.
It’s always a little difficult to get back into being home after a vacation, and then there’s evaluating your life in the last year and maybe even making some resolutions for the new year plus just remembering to write 2005 on your checks and the realization that just because Christmas, thank heavens, is over, doesn’t mean that winter is over or that you can take the flannel sheets off. And even though I just got back from two weeks of vacation, they were pretty emotionally exhausting weeks of vacation for various reasons and it was nice, sort of, to take a rest from all that too this weekend.