I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. I think they’re a crock of shit, and setting yourself up for disappointment in the fresh year by aggrandizing what is basically a list of goals you should have had anyway is stupid. However, I do think that it’s perfectly acceptable to have a list of goals that you just happen to renew at the beginning of the year. The difference is all in the connotations, people.
That said, I have a list.
1. Stop smoking. I am 4 days cigarette-free and counting.
2. Be less fat. I am not putting limitations on this.
3. Finish writing the damn novel already.
4. Get a new job that I vaguely like.
5. Update this journal at least on a bi-weekly basis.
6. Take Aaron out in the woods somewhere and execute him. (Hi Aaron!)Christmas was a worthwhile affair; I finally got the kit-kat clock I’ve been wanting for years. It was, of course, sadder for the lack of Dirk’s father. Oh, also, Dirk’s brother is a prick. He never went to his mother’s on Xmas, the first holiday without his father. He did this, as he claimed, because his mother was being “childish”. You may be wondering what her childish behavior consisted of. Apparently, a week after the Sarge made a spectacle of herself at both the viewing and the funeral, she called Dirk’s mother and invited her over to their apartment on Xmas eve for dinner. Dirk’s mother declined to spend the evening with the second-largest source of trauma in her life in the past year. That was the childish behavior as far as we can tell; Aaron certainly isn’t disabusing us of the notion. I don’t think Aaron understands words like “disabuse”.
So, he hasn’t even picked up his Xmas gifts from his mother’s house. Meanwhile, he and the Sarge celebrated a year of combined stupidity on New Year’s Eve. I have another goal: talk about Aaron less. He’s stupid, and he’s getting all the backlash he deserves without any effort on my part.
We spent New Year’s Eve with Katie C- and her new husband, Adam. We drank fruity drinks, didn’t get embarrassingly drunk, and watched the menfolk play WWE Smackdown! Shut Your Mouth and Silent Hill 2 when we made them. There was also a LOT of talking/bitching/bonding over smoking sessions. It made me nostalgic for the times we used to hang out before I moved out.
I haven’t really been eating any more since I stopped smoking, which makes me happy. Our friend, Brent, gained 10 pounds in 4 days. I have been reading a lot to compensate for the jitters. It only took me three days to finish the entire The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I also finished Stupid White Men by Michael Moore. I wasn’t surprised by the minority-positive message it had, but I didn’t expect the level of info he had on Dubya and the election. I wonder if this made it onto bookshelves before 9-11? A lot of the things he predicted as far as backlash would have happened if the terrorist attacks hadn’t given our president a quick way to legitimize himself. I mean, Bush is still the same functionally illiterate party-boy he was before the attacks.
I took pictures of the kitty that don’t involve things being parked on her head, and I’m working on a comprehensive photo album of my parents’ cat herd.
I had the funniest conversation with Dirk last night, while we were on our way to his mother’s house. I’d been singing this traditional song called “Early One Morning” to prove that I knew all the words to it. After hearing it once, Dirk quickly tired of my singing, so I was pretty much babbling. I’m a noisy bug sometimes. Eventually, I told him that I knew a song about bumblebees. He looked mildly amused, but didn’t really comment, so I informed him that the only drawback was that the song was in the bumblebee language. He turned to me, grinning, and said, “This, I’ve got to hear.”
So, I started buzzing out the tune for “Early One Morning.” He looked disappointed and mildly offended when he told me, “That isn’t bee language! You’re just making noises with your teeth!”
I’m left wondering if he actually thought I knew how to talk to bees.