Birthdays and New Years - Yuck

I've never been a huge fan of two annual events. Both are supposedly monumental events that we build up in our fantastical minds to be the greatest day and night of the year. Both fall short of our expectations every time.

New Years Eve is precisely one of these huge letdown causes. I have never woken up on New Years Day and felt like I had done anything worth remembering or looking back on with the foggy fondness that you experience the morning after a really amazing night. Typically I spent those few minutes before and after midnight with my head buried in the toilet, or holding back the hair of a good friend whose head was buried in the toilet. Most likely, I was walking around with one high heel, crying about something I couldn't recall the next day. I never fell in love with a tall dark and handsome stranger at the stroke of midnight, I never had any kind of revelation about my future as the ball made its descent.

Speaking of balls making their descent, the other huge letdown event is birthdays. You never wake up the morning of your birthday and think to yourself, "This is going to be a great day! I feel wiser, enlightened!" If you do, I hate you. I've never wanted for anything in my life, and for that I am very grateful. All I wanted for this birthday was to take a nice, long relaxing nap. I was hoping that I would wake up feeling refreshed, and that Clayton would have taken it upon himself to do the laundry, do the dishes, clean up the kitchen (which stays clean for a grand total of 10 minutes after I clean it), ya know? Vacuum. I told him not to wake me up for anything. My exact words were, "I don't care if the house is on fire, don't wake me up. I'll go down with this ship. Just don't wake me up."

My nap went a little bit something like this. I laid down, fell asleep. About an hour later I hear the neighbor kids outside on the big wheels and 4-wheelers, racing around the street like a goddamned Nascar track. The dog is standing on my bed, in between my knees, barking nonstop. Downstairs I can hear football loud enough to give Helen Keller a headache, along with a 6-month old blabbering on, sounding like a Vietnamese nail tech. After about 45 minutes of trying to gently kick the dog off the bed and perhaps knock him into permanent muteness, I decided to give it up already and I go downstairs. The only evidence I have that Clayton moved from the couch is the open jar of Gerber prunes and a crusty bowl of baby cereal sitting on the kitchen table, some of it smeared on the kitchen table. Good. Thank God. I was concerned that he spent the whole time fermenting on the couch.

Last night we watched another shitty movie. What is with us and picking shitty movies? We need to have a movie-picking intervention. We watched The American, with George Clooney. Basically he's a mysterious American living in a small town in Italy, is making a gun for his boss who actually is planning on killing him. Meanwhile he makes friends with a priests and takes a couple hookers to Pound Town. In the end, I was more entertained by the straining faces Collins was making in her Exersaucer as she tried desperately to poop. Have you ever watched a baby and known instinctively that the baby is currently pooping in her diaper? Its actually really funny to watch...she bears down, grunts and her faces turns all red for a few moments. Then she lets up and carries on with her toys. Until she realizes that she isn't done, and she continued this trend on until I thought, "Hey it's been like 10 minutes, I'm pretty sure the coast is clear to change her diaper." You have to wait out the grace period to make sure that all dumping has been executed. You never want to open up a diaper mid-dump. Well that's what I did. I'm in the middle of changing her diaper when all of a sudden, BOMBS AWAY. "Happy Birthday Mommy! I poo on you!"