Trade-In

There are two things I should say before we begin:
1) I slept until noon today, and
2) it was entirely necessary.

I would like to say this was due to our wild party-animal instincts, but the drab truth is that we saw 31 too-late nights in December and were destroyed (as we say in Italian). I am a little miffed with this holiday season for hinting at long, languid hours of relaxation when it actually meant a sort of continuous harried feeling. Gifts to be gathered, events to be attended, games to be played, food to be cooked, meaningful time to be spent with friends and family—all lovely, holiday-y things that somehow arranged themselves into a military formation in my mind. How does this happen every year, I ask? (Just to be clear, love and good cheer still abounded, as evidenced by the photo below. They just had to compete for attention with tiredness and headless chicken syndrome.)

And now it is next year. I’m a little surprised to find that I can believe an entire twelve-month span is over already; we put a lot of mileage on 2009, and it’s time for a trade-in. Besides traveling to eleven countries and over forty cities, I learned how to cook clams and braved black diamonds and started running (and stopped running… but have noble hopes to start again) and found a way out of an emotional quagmire and celebrated six years of marriage and moved houses and started wearing skirts again and cemented more than one close relationship and began teaching English and picked up piano playing again and attended weddings galore and had questions answered and spent delightful hours getting to know kindred spirits and finally found my taste for bitters and laughed more than cried. The year was richly layered with experience, and I feel comfortably full. It’s a good feeling.

As for 2010, I hope for much more of this…

…and this…

…and this…

…with maybe just a wee bit more of this to go around:

Happy New Year, everyone!