new year's eve

This year has been quite something. The big things that have happened have either been supremely excellent or heart-rendingly hard.

Hard or excellent, take your pick, it was a mostly unbloggable year Chez Butch.

Since not long after I started it, this blog became one of my main places for working internal shit out. We've all got that shit, I figure; most of it's not all that different from person to person. Maybe the details, but often not the reasons or root. And most of us feel terribly alone while we're trying to work it out. I wanted to feel less alone myself, and hoped that it would maybe make other people feel the same.

Which works fine if the emotional stuff you're working out are the increasingly weak aftershocks of things one or two decades old.

Peeling back the layers to get at the raw stuff means sharing the details. Without the context, it's just senseless wailing.

If the stuff you're dealing with is unfolding in real time, around you now, it isn't ghosts conjured by your messed up chemistry. It involves the details - and, more importantly, the feelings - of the lives of people you love. Who would, perhaps, choose not to share their lives with the internet.

And so, the hard stuff has been absolutely unbloggable.

It's all to do with family. I started 2009 with a lot of certainty as to what my life was going to look like in the near and distant future. That has shifted significantly and I have no real idea what my life will look like in 12 months, 5 years, a decade.

None of us do, not really, but I always liked to pretend. I clung to the visions I conjured up. I'm not sure that doing so was particularly good for me. This year I have been learning how to open up to what happens a bit better. That hasn't happened without a lot of crying.

The excellent stuff was both very much and only slightly more bloggable.

Chronologically last, I wrote a novel this year, which you've already heard more than enough about. It was a door slamming shut on one phase of my writing life. The next door is open, and I'm taking a breather before stepping through to take a look around at what's in the next room. It's exhilarating and a little terrifying.

Chronologically first, I fell in love. It crept up kind of slowly, which is an emotional first for me. I've tended to not so much fall in love with people as throw myself out of a plane at super high altitude without checking my parachute. I moved in with my band boy ex after we'd been dating for 6 months. Eric and I had our first four dates in four days.

The unspoken plan with D., at least back in May, was that we'd have a fun summer together, full of kisses and larfs, and then he'd head back to London and we would drift quietly and amicably back to being acquaintances. Except he didn't and we most definitely didn't. He stayed and I though that was excellent.

Normally I'd have been blogging it the whole way along, as I have with the other people I've dated in the past 4 or 5 years. This time, I wanted the space to feel all my feelings, to not pin them down or push them along the most narratable path. Those feelings continue to grow and I continue to want to give them free rein.

2010 might also be nigh unbloggable. It's hard to say. The stuff that started this year will still be playing out through the next.

We'll see how much I want to write about it.

At 11 o'clock last night, I was dolled up in my slinky dress and ready to go to bed. And not in the euphemistic sense. We'd ended up dillydallying at home a bit, and I was tired and not in the New Year's swing of things. I would have been quite happy to sit on Shelley and Steve's couch, have a glass of wine, toast midnight and scoot up the driveway to my cozy clean house and my brand new sheets.

At 12:30, I'd finished off a flask of straight gin, tossed back a few small glasses of bubbly wine and was starting to black out. I remember lots of the rest of the night, especially the very fun parts that left me with a bite mark on my shoulder, but it's with tunnel vision. The edges of the night are greyed out pretty close to the centre, and beyond that it's murky muddly swirly.

I've done that a few times this year - gotten black out drunk by accident, where I've started the night thinking, oh, I'll just have a drink or two and go home. Each time, I've misjudged just how drunk I am and then, of course, how much more I can handle. Last night was weird, since I can generally handle a flask full of whiskey with aplomb. Maybe I metabolise gin differently? Maybe it was the small supper several hours before? Maybe it was the bubbles.

No matter, really, because I don't like it and it's not okay. It makes my rosacea flare up for a day or two, it means the next day is pretty much a write off. It means that I wake up thinking what in god's name did I say that for and really? I fell down again? fucking christ. It makes me squeeze my eyes shut and roll over.

But I did have a wicked time at the party. And I remembered that I love celery.

True to form, today has been pretty much a write off. Though I did make delicious overnight french toast and roasted potatoes for Shelley and Steve this morning. After that, though, I read a mystery novel in the tub for an hour and some and then dozed on the couch for another hour and some. Now I'm blogging, about to get ready to go eat lobster.

With a nice bottle of wine from which I will not be drinking.

All in all, 2008 has been a pretty damn good year.

An unexpected year.

On December 31st 2007, I wouldn't have guessed that I'd be sitting in my own house with Shelley and Steve right behind me. I wouldn't have guessed that I'd have a roommate and really like it. I wouldn't have guessed I could do a headstand.

I would have guessed that I'd be single.

But I wouldn't have guessed that I'd have had the chance to not only date three very lovely people but also to keep them in my life as good friends.

I would have guessed that I'd have exactly one whack of excellent friends.

Today's going to be a busy one. I want to wake up tomorrow to a clean, orderly house, with the all the niggling chores I've been putting off all done. Seems like a good way to start a new year. My house isn't a crazy disaster, but it is a slightly perturbed one.

To do:
- clean bathrooms
- change sheets
- wash floors
- put up blinds in bedroom
- tape up paint chips in bathroom
- hooks in closet
- clean fish tank
- take compost to garden
- get new bead for ceiling fan chain
- patch & paint holes where old curtains used to be
- fix splotch on dark blue
- vacuum couch and chair
- buy KC for lobster dinner
- get a door shelf for fridge
- grocery shop for new year's brunch
- do brunch prep

That's a lot. I'd better get going.

But before I do, thank you, everyone, for sticking with me, through my ups and downs, my endless piled-up clauses, my internal confusion, its occasional outward manifestations; the mess, sadness and joy that makes up the day to day of my life. Of a life, anyone's life.

Happy 2009!

Today was a pretty good first day of 2008.

I spent a lot of it knitting and watching the second season of the L Word. That was pretty funny, not because it's a particularly funny (or even good) show, but because I've been stealing it from the internet, and the only version I could find was on a Chinese website. That is also not very funny. What is funnier is that it's subtitled in Chinese for the first couple episodes, and then subtitled in both Chinese and English for the next few. Even funnier is that the English doesn't always match what they're saying. Funniest is that I've caught myself a few times reading the English instead of listening.

My resolution making was entirely successful. This morning, my apartment was clean, clean enough. And last night I was not a depressing pain in the ass, at least not for the most part. I did cry as people were hugging and kissing at midnight, but the people I went to the party with were very kind. Mitch lent me her hanky and outright gave me a big hug, Karen commiserated, Nico made me laugh really hard. And then scooped several spoonfuls of alcoholic jello off a cookie tray and shovelled them into my mouth. "Jello sheeters!" he said. "Have more!" Uh, okay.

Kareoke at the Shanghai was a bit of a blur.

At the pre-party, we had a bit of a conversational lull. Unto the breach, someone said "Everyone should tell their resolutions!" I was thankful when that was met with a groan. Mine would have been pretty awkward to announce. "Okay, okay. Then we'll go around the room and make them up for everyone." More warmly received, but again, I was a bit trepidatious. Did I really want to know what people thought I should be doing better in the coming year? Ennnnh, hrm. I'll go with no on that one. "Fine. Fine. How about everyone writes a resolution, we'll put them in a hat, and then we each pick one." Aha. Golden.

My given resolution for 2008: gain some weight. Apropos, since I've lost a few pounds over the past few weeks and have put a watch on that.* It did make me feel a little self-conscious and exposed. Like, was I supposed to get that one? Do they think I'm too skinny? But I shook that off quick,** a fact pleasing in and of itself.

Tonight, after dinner, Jennifer came over and we knit and watched When Harry Met Sally. I think between us we have nearly the whole damn thing memorized. That is a great fucking movie. We drank chocolatey stout and laughed a whole helluva lot.

*No real worries, I'm still eating okay, I just need to eat fattier foods and more of them, or my tits will disappear completely.
**By channelling Steve, who often says "Are you calling me fat?" to great effect.

Generally, I love New Year’s Eve. It’s one of those things I don’t really understand about myself. NYE is hokey and over-hyped. Why should this one night matter more than any other? But then it rolls around and I get all excited planning out what I’m going to wear, what I’m going to do, the excitement of a new year with myriad possibilities.

Resolutions are not usually part of the mix. I’m almost always trying to be a better person anyway. Kinder, more generous, more thoughtful, more likely to say yes than no; the kind of person who manages to eat well, get enough sleep and still accomplishes interesting creative things. I don't feel the need to add to that pile.

This year, of course, I’m not so excited. I knew I wouldn’t be. Of course. But I’m finding it more upsetting than I thought I would.

I cried in the beer store. “We’re out of Guinness,” and I welled up. I wasn’t sure I could manage the beginning of the new year without a bottle of dark beer. Or two. The guy behind the counter kindly suggested the Oatmeal Stout. An offer I hastened to accept. He is probably used to people in the Somerset Beer Store being passionate about their beer.

Come to think of it, I do have two resolutions.

First, I resolved to spend tonight with people. I may not actually believe that how you spend New Year’s determines the tone for the rest of your coming year, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to cry myself to sleep at 12:01. Mitch kindly invited me to go party hopping with her and her crew. I don’t resolve to have actual fun - too much pressure - but I do resolve to not be a depressing pain in the ass. I’ll let you know tomorrow whether I broke my resolution.

Second, I resolved to start next year with a clean apartment. I put away the laundry that had been on the drying racks since before Christmas. I scaled half of dish mountain, which had been accreting at an alarming pace since the moment I returned from Stouffville. I picked up the tufts of cat hair in the hallway. Cleaned the bathroom. Washed my sheets and took them to the laundromat to dry them. Turned all the stuff lying randomly around my house into stuff piled in orderly piles. Including two for relationship stuff.

Before, of course, I went to the beer store. Indeed.

One pile to store away: the giant squid poster that had been hanging in the hall; the cards and the notes; the lid from the cupcakes we shared last valentine’s; the tickets from our first few dates; the dirty promise written on a vinyl glove.

One pile to return: sex toys, books, and fish stuff. A relationship could end in worse ways, I suppose.

I’ve got a few more hours to finish the dishes, get the sheets on the bed, do a little dusting, wonk in some contacts and slap on some lipstick before I go out and fake the fun until I make the fun.

If you see me around, wish me happy Happy and a good beer. That way, you know I'll be able to manage at least one of those things.