Goodbye 2005, Hello Roses!
As I look back on 2005 one thing stands out as a stellar point in the year: After 34 years on this rock I finally realized that daily events provide all the satisfaction I could ever hope for. I’m not going to ooze sap all over you but it’s quite the remarkable feeling and I’ll give you an example. Ben can be very tough sometimes and those times I found that I couldn’t wait until he would go to sleep (how fucked up is that?!?). At some point during ’05 I decided to wrestle the mental beast and figure why I wasn’t enjoying my kids more and I noticed that playing with them, even when I wasn’t expecting to do so, made all of us much happier. Simply watching them “work” brought a slow but penetrating warmth over my entire self. Okay, a little sap there… sorry.
I guess 2005 will go down as the year I woke up and realized what was right in front of me. I’ve always found joy in the simple things but not so much in tough times — Times that were mostly “tough” because I wasn’t taking advantage of the sights and sounds around me at the moment (Wow, I should be a motivational speaker and sell videos on TV!).
Last night we had our annual New Year’s Eve party and it was the best in our 5 years of putting it on. A number of regulars were sick this year so we missed them but the good spirits of others and some new [soon to be] traditions made for a fantastic night. Pictures here.
Before I get started I should indicate that Kerri did 99.9% of the work to pull everything together (something to change in ’06). It had rained all morning and afternoon and I was afraid the weather would be nasty outside which doesn’t go so well with the notion of a fire pit but God was smiling on us and cleared things up late in the evening. I got the fire going a little early so it was nearly raging by the time folks showed up.
We had a pinata for the kids and decided to do “door prizes” for the adults but with a little twist. Everyone signed in when they arrived and we picked names to hand out prizes. Since we had some “no shows” there was basically a prize for everyone but the rule was, you could pick a wrapped prize and if you wanted you could trade it with someone who had already opened theirs. We had bought lottery tickets and little photo frames and that sort of thing but we also re-gifted a couple of Christmas presents. Don’t worry, I told everyone what we had done and they all knew that sometimes you get a nice gift from a good friend that you’ll never use but someone else might. It was all good. If you’re reading this… I kept the special gift from *you* — It’s on my nightstand — Thanks!
Thanks to all who came by last night and made it so fun for us. I hope you had fun too.
I’m looking forward to 2006 and plan on enjoying most of the minutes I used to dread.
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