Closing

I'm having a very difficult time wrapping my head around the fact that today is New Year's Eve ... again ... another closing of a year's worth of life, love, tears, laughter, struggle, and joy. My coffee has not achieved its purpose yet, waking me up enough to wax poetic about this most symbolic of days. Maybe later.

Right now it's dark, and the snow is drifting down at a nice clip, already covering the ground. The weather forecasters have not been calling for anything drastic -- a couple of inches at most, followed by rain. A typical NJ version of "winter" -- a heavy pile of nasty slush to shovel up. But for now, it looks beautiful.

After working at home for the past week, Don is going back to the job site today. The family for whom he's been slaving away were "blessed" by Santa this year, acquiring many more new games for their children to use in any one of their various gaming rooms. The problem is, every time they get a new game -- or anything electronic, for that matter -- they have to hire someone to load it into the system and make it work. There's something very strange about that ... but this is what puts food on our table, so off he goes. I just hope he comes home at a decent time tonight and doesn't need to put in another 18 hours for some ridiculous toy.

My parents are planning on leaving later today for their annual New Year's celebration with friends who retired to a beautiful mountain home in the Poconos. For their sakes, I hope the snow lets up a bit and travel is easy. If not, they'll be stranded here for the weekend.

So what's on tap for us on this final day of 2009? I have some more Christmas clean-up to attend to, now that "the poor old tree," as Grace has been referring to it in great mourning, is outside in the driveway. In order to maintain some of the beauty of the season, bringing a little festive light into our winter-dark home, I set up our little 3-foot fake tree inside the house, decorating it only in crocheted snowflakes. "It's our snow tree!" I announced happily, perfect for the winter season ... as well as for any potential allergies that might have flared up. (Although speaking of allergies, my mom informed me that the "reaction" could have come about not from the tree itself, but from the preservatives that they spray on it. A friend of hers told her of other instances like that, so there's hope yet!)

Tonight Don and I will continue our annual New Year's Eve celebration, treating ourselves to a delectable feast after the kids go to bed. Our menu this year involves two beautiful cuts of filet, along with lobster risotto. I cheated on the dessert, purchasing individual slices of Edward's chocolate cream pie -- just thaw a bit and eat. Later on we'll pick out our movie from AppleTV, and as usual I'm sure we'll fall asleep long before the ball drops at midnight. We've given that up years ago, for we learned the hard way that the kids could care less if we decide to stay up past midnight -- they're going to get up at the crack of dawn, regardless of when we finally close our eyes. Until they learn how to sleep in, I can't afford that withdrawal from the sleep bank.

Ah, yes ... the closing of another year. And not only of a year, but of a decade. I heard a report on NPR yesterday refer to this as The Decade of the Big Nothing -- or something along those lines, a decade where nothing really good or positive happened, and a lot of really horrible things occurred. Could that possibly sum of our own personal decade? In a way, yes -- until the very end, that is, when 2009 brought redemption ... and a new embracing of life. Hmmm ... Let me grab some more coffee and I'll muse about this for a while.

In the meantime, thoroughly embrace this last day of the year!