Don't Jinx It

My avid readers will know that I am not fond of New Years Eve, or any regimented form of fun which will make my upcoming birthday a bit blurgh. However, I think finally I can articulate one of the single most annoying things about New Years Eve. It's the constant barrage of comments like "Lets hope its the best year ever!" and my least favorite and most lazy magazine cover story ever "New Year New You".

Why don't you go and fuck yourself? No, really, why don't you? The best year ever? Seriously? The woman who "waited" on me in Starbucks this morning was so seething with hatred for every single person standing in the line, including most lovable me, that really 2010 is all but shot in terms of "best year ever" for me. I know, its only day 5 but she was just plain rude.

"New Year New You"? Here's the new me - I will no longer be helping any blind people cross streets/board trains/find platforms. Sorry. I'm sure there are really a lot of nice blind people but so far any of the ones I've attempted to help in New York City have been aggressive and best and Blackberry thieves at worst. Yup, took my blackberry straight out my bag! So while my ass stays the same size, my attitude is certainly shaping up to be the worst its been in a long time.

New Year New Me - believe it punk.

Tongue

As depressed as I was (and probably always will be) over New Years eve, I managed to pull myself up by my bootstraps and head out for dinner with the girls. We've given ourselves the moniker "The Real Housewives of Astoria", but really they would NEVER make a show about us because we discuss how to get great deals at Disney World and why our kids 3rd grade teacher makes us use loose leaf. Not exactly riveting tv viewing.

I forgot about my depression basically as soon as I knew I was being picked up. My husband waved good bye out of the window ("Bye Dad, don't wait up" I yelled). And that was it. We ate, drank and laughed for 3 hours straight. I have been so blessed in my life by the most wonderful women. I have friends that I have known for about a million years and that I will be friends with until the day I die. And I have friends that I have known for a much shorter period of time, but of which I have no doubt will be with me until the day I die. I know these are women who will support me, laugh with me, cry with me, and always tell me when my ass looks too big in something. Basically all the corny crap that you'd like to think you are too cynical and long in the tooth to care about, but suddenly realize is all that matters.

Got to go back to work tomorrow. But so do we all. The kids go back to school tomorrow. But all our kids do. I love it. A misery that becomes a joy. Because it is shared. Because we have each other.

I'm glad New Years is over. And I'm so excited for all the fun I will have with darling friends both near and far this year.

"Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends"

PS - Why is this post called tongue? Oh, they know. They know.

I Hate New Years Eve

I've been trying to remember a time when I enjoyed New Years Eve. I can't. For as long as I can recall I have had an almost pathological aversion to any kind of regimented fun. And New Years Eve has to be the top of the list when it comes to regimented fun . I'm a fly by the seat of my pants gal as you all know. I thrive on spontinaity. It's one of the things that I miss the most about my pre K (pre kids) life. You go out for a "quick" drink. You come home 2 months later with a dual citizenship and a spaniel puppy named Corky. That my friends, is fun. Fun sans frontiers.

Being told repeatedly that this year is going to be "the best ever", watching prepubescents snogging FULL TONGUE in front of a TV camera, and hearing all those damn "we had a tough year but somehow we made it" stories. Oh. My. God. Husband has to hide all sharp objects and buy extra Clos du Bois.

It starts at around 9:30. That's when people start wondering what the time is. "How long do we have?". Until what exactly? Until you can wow a whole room with your math prowess (you can count down as well as up!). Stop asking me what the bloody time is!

New Years Day, while everybody else nurses their hangovers, I work hard to crawl out of the deep depression that I have been sucked into by repeated conversations about weight loss, smoking, drinking, meat, chocolate, pork pies. Really? That's what the New Year means to you? Planning an entire year with no pleasure whatsoever?

Thankfully its over now for another year. I can now get back to my jolly happy go lucky self! And look forward to a great night out with some girlfriends. With NO PRESSURE at all to have fun, safe in the knowledge that with such a great group of ladies, how could I not? Cheers!

Happy New Year

So intent am I to keep my new year resolution to write every day, that I'm actually starting the day before I'm really supposed to. Gold star, top of the class for me. How can I possibly write every day? Now I've made such a huge and sweeping proclamation on Facebook (is there anything more public?), I'm going to have to figure it out. Right now the way I have managed it is to pretend that I'm playing music on iTunes, but really I've just stuck the Arctic Monkeys on SUPER LOUD so that even if a small child needed any sort of aid at all, was trapped under anything heavy, or being carried out of our apartment by a mutant android, I wouldn't hear it because a) I'm writing (a very noble cause) and b) the Arctic Monkeys are really loud, even when you don't turn the volume up to very loud.

So this will be my method for a while. Pretending I'm doing something else, so nobody suspects that I'm secretly in the corner blasting music and chasing my dream.

Happy New Year everybody. Feels good to be back.

I'm Coming Out (I Want The World To Know)

Well, not coming out. But coming back. Very soon. As soon as I can. I promise. It's been too long. I'm ashamed of how long its been. And now that my husband is being approached by the New York Times, I feel that its only appropriate that I start being really competitive and a big bitch and try to steal his thunder. Hello? It's about ME!

So I'm back. Or will be. Shortly. I've missed you all so much.

Watch this space.

I'm No John Updike but.....

....this is what I was trying to say about books and reading the other day. John Updike of course said it much better than I ever could.

http://www.salon.com/08/features/updike2.html


"When I was a boy, the bestselling books were often the books that were on your piano teacher's shelf. I mean, Steinbeck, Hemingway, some Faulkner. Faulkner actually had, considering how hard he is to read and how drastic the experiments are, quite a middle-class readership. But certainly someone like Steinbeck was a bestseller as well as a Nobel Prize-winning author of high intent. You don't feel that now. I don't feel that we have the merger of serious and pop -- it's gone, dissolving. Tastes have coarsened. People read less, they're less comfortable with the written word. They're less comfortable with novels. They don't have a backward frame of reference that would enable them to appreciate things like irony and allusions. It's sad. It's momentarily uphill, I would say.
And who's to blame? Well, everything's to blame. Movies are to blame, for stealing a lot of the novel's thunder. Why read a novel when in two hours you can just go passively sit and be dazzled and amazed and terrified? Television is to blame, especially because it's come into the home. It's brought the fascination of the flickering image right into the house; like turning on a faucet, you can have it whenever you want. I was a movie addict, but you could only see so many movies in the course of a week. I still had a lot of time to read, and so did other people. But I think television would take all your day if you let it. Now we have these cultural developments on the Internet, and online, and the computer offering itself as a cultural tool, as a tool of distributing not just information but arts -- and who knows what inroads will be made there into the world of the book. "

Fuck Gwyneth Paltrow

I hear that Gwyneth has a new website, where she regales us mere peons with advice on where to buy the best qunioa or how relaxed she feels chilling on her sofa in Balenciaga.

Listen love. Life is tough enough with having the likes of YOU guilt us out because we don't feed our kids exclusively on fucking organic, born free, college educated grilled salmon. I really hate celebrities sometimes. It's so easy for them. Oh wait, no its not. She's a 'WORKING MOM' too you know. It's hard for her. Why, just the other day one of the nannies asked for the day off. The horror! Poor Moses and Apple were left alone with the other three.

OK, I admit that I am beating up on Gwyneth too much, because this diatribe is really intended for all those self-righteous celebrities who like to tell us how they live their lives. Here's how I live my life; I wake up, I suck it in, I suck it up, I head to a job that sucks my will to live, I go home and sometimes to spice things up I steal from Sephora. Ok, there's lots of wonderful stuff in my life, but you don't see me starting a fucking website about it and shoving it down peoples throats. Well, apart from this one. But you know what I mean.

I used to like GP. Then she started hanging out with Madonna. And lets face it, that's the kiss of death for most people. Now she dresses like she's on her way to a lesbian S & M club to pick the kids up from school, and works out for 3 hours a day. The best thing you can say about Gwyneth is that she's married to Chris Martin, and he's great. I can't reconcile that somebody like him has any interest in hanging out with people like his wife or Madonna. I'm sure it won't be long before he's caught in a McDonalds somewhere with a woman wearing clothes from the Gap. Poor guy.

Don't get me wrong. I'm really a happy sunny person. But I'm no Rachel Ray. And I think that everybody is very pleased about that.