Festivities – happy everything, everyone!

Yeah yeah yeah I’m a bit slow off the block, I admit:

Here’s wishing you and yours the very best for a fantastic, joyful, much-loved and loving, healthy, and dream-fulfilling 2009.

So did everyone have a good Christmas and New Year’s Eve – or however you celebrate this time of year?  Tux and I, being the dedicated atheists / pagans we are, had a pretty low-key festive period.

Our Christmas Eve Orphans dinner was AWESOME and delicious and heavenly, sheer genius even if I do say so myself.  I cooked a massive turkey and it was crisp-skinned yet beautifully moist all the way through; not a dry sandy bit of white meat in the house.  Side dishes were garlic-rosemary-sea salt roasted potatoes, steamed green beans and carrots, a dried apricot and cashew stuffing of my own invention, and a sublime rich turkey gravy [made with the roast pan drippings and a homemade reduced turkey stock].  The guests said that they would have been happy just with the stuffing and gravy!  [although I’m a turkey fiend and oh my that turkey was divine . . . tryptophan heaven]

We didn’t really do Christmas presents either;  this was partly a decision made for budgetary reasons back in November, but come December we had to replace the crank on Tux’s space-age carbon-fibre rich TREK Tri-Bike [with a very purty Shimano Integra component, if anyone’s interested] and I was running out of a few crucial skin care items so I got those and a couple MAC eye shadows and lippies, and we called that Christmas.  It’s a lot more fun than it sounds, really!  And I was pleased not to have to dive into the materialistic murderous crowds pushing and shoving and wearing out the magnetic strip on their already deep-in-debt credit cards.

[hey did any other Australians catch that incredibly responsible A Current Affair “news piece” on how in light of the economic situation and possible R-word, it would be positively un-Australian to keep your hard-earned dollars in the bank / pay off debt and not spend-spend-spend?  Keeerrr-RIST.  If Stephen Conroy and his totalitarian vision wasn’t enough . . . I am so ashamed to be Australian right now, time to head back to Ireland and get that dual citizenship, maybe?]

Needless to say I don’t do New Year Resolutions [NYRs] either; at least I do but not like other people.  None of this lose 10 kg / quit smoking / cure cancer / reverse global environmental damage and climate disasters / find true love.  Okay so I already have true love, and yeah, maybe I’d like to lose 10 kg, but my NYRs usually run to the more practical yet attainable genre, the kind of resolution I would have to work at but not set myself up for a fall into a deep dark pit of depression if I didn’t manage it.  Past NYRs have included “use less toilet paper”, “drink more water”, “wear sunscreen”, “clean bathroom more frequently”.  

So, thinking, thinking . . .

1.       Groom cats more often and take monthly portraits of Their Royal Highnesses;

2.       Keep up-to-date with paperwork and filing [ie, actually do it] [start by buying stackable filing crates or other hanging file storage] [not a huge office-type metal filing cabinet];

3.       Go for three approximately 45-minute walks per week [on top of existing exercise routine and horse-riding, of course;  will also necessitate buying a pair of elbow crutches ‘cause I can’t manage to walk long distances too well these days];

4.       Investigate and implement projects for alternate home energy sources, and water conservation and supply;

5.       Have even more sex.

What do you reckon?  What are your NYRs and your philosophy regarding them?

. . . . . . . . . .

While we do keep low-key and dislike the whole Christmas thang, shying away from all the trappings from decorations to carols [in my case, that’s because of approximately twenty years of singing Christmas carol gigs in various choirs, and being so bored I learned and sang – as well as my usual soprano – the alto, tenor and bass lines] this year’s was even less Christmassy than usual, for boring and somewhat depressing reasons. 

The pain levels in my neck / head / back / hips / legs / toenails unsportingly spiked to horrific proportions the fortnight or so before and stayed there so by Christmas Day I was totally exhausted by it all as well as the effort of holding myself together for Christmas Eve [and suffering from the side-effects of increased dosage of morphine et al] . . . that we stayed home on Christmas Day, missing lunch at my mum and dad’s and the whole family scene.  I really did want to go, because it’s Christmas and family lunch is what you have to do, no matter how abhorrent the emotional baggage attached.

And yeah, the pain levels are still maintaining the insane high, and I’m fed up and pissed off.  It is not fun.  And not at all festive and if this is an omen for 2009 I’m hoping it’s a really, really good one in that I’m getting all the yuk stuff out of the way in the first few weeks.