Happy New Year!

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, and here at the Loudshoes house, we are preparing for festivities. Around here, "festivities" means lolling about on couches while eating snacks and watching movies, preferably in pajamas or pant that have an elastic waist.

I'm not a big fan of New Year's; I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of rip-roaring, laugh-a-minute-fun-riot New Years I've ever had, and in 46 years, that's not much of a record. Mostly my memories of New Years involve standing in a snowbank wearing open-toed shoes, trying to hail a cab at one in the morning, all the while trying not to yawn so hard that it makes my head fall right off. Or I've found myself at 11 o'clock giving myself a pep talk ("Only another hour! You can do it!"), longing for my bed and my book and a cup of tea. (And before you judge, that was when I was in my 20s. It's not just because I'm old.)

Now, we tend to stay in an make a night of it with the kids. A few years ago, rather than have a big, fancy dinner, we decided that we would just have nibbles and appetizers all evening long. The kids were ecstatic; they thought this was the most sophisticated thing they had ever heard of! Combined with the idea that they could stay up all night if they wanted, they were over the moon with delight. (Just for the record, the longest they lasted was about 1 a.m., last year. Before that they struggled to stay awake until midnight. Just like their mother. But the very idea of it was dazzling, nonetheless.)

The hair salon is not very busy on New Years. Everyone tends to think that we are overrun on New Year's, but I find most people think that everyone else is doing something more exciting than themselves on New Years. The days of the elaborate, elegant dinner dances is long over...most people go to house parties or stay in, in my experience. And people don't tend to get their hair done for that.

I wish you all very well for New Year's Eve and the New Year itself. Nothing can be all bad when it starts off in my jammies with a big bowl of popcorn.