HAPPY NEW YEAR!

So, Tim and I had a pretty spontaneous New Year's Eve. The neighbors called us and asked if we were up for throwing the kids together and drinking some beers.
Lemme think about it.... Uh, yeah!
The kids tore up the house, we tore up some beer and rang in 2009 with a kiss. It was perfect.
I absolutely love all of our neighbors.

As I'm typing this, my entire family is asleep.

I find myself thinking back to last year around this time. We were headed to the the doctor's office to get an amniocentesis. Not fun.

I can't say that 2008 was great, minus of course, the birth of Harper. It was a trying year. Tough on so many levels. I have high hopes for 2009 and I've already begun my New Year's Resolutions:
-Make friends. Don't be a hermit.
-Go to the gym, fatty.
-Don't be so critical of yourself or others.
-Take more vacations.
-Reach out.
-Make art again

So, there you have it. It's not your typical list but hey, I'm not your typical broad.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite poems:

Advice to Myself

Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.