Wishing Everyone a Happy and Safe New Year's Eve!

"Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man." ~ Benjamin Franklin

Some thoughts for the New Year ...

Well, here it is ... the end of another year, but not only that --- the end of a decade.

And what a decade it's been!

Do you remember around this time, 10 years ago, what you were doing, and what was going on? I do.

I was 14 years old, a freshman in high school (and needless to say, about 50-60 lbs lighter). The Backstreet Boys and N*Sync were all the rage on MTV (which actually showed some music videos), boy band mania had gripped us teenybopper fangirls (okay, I'll admit ... Nick Carter was going to be my future husband. He didn't know that, but I was convinced of it), and the great Y2K dilemma had struck an uncertain fear into the hearts of the technologically-advanced world. Osama Bin Laden was hardly a blip on the radar for anyone, much less a household name (and not in a good way). I had no clue what the Twin Towers were, and couldn't give a flying crap WHAT happened in the Middle East. Knitting and crocheting were for little old ladies that had serious cat problems, gardening was something that only people that watched PBS did, and self-sufficiency and survivalism were for a bunch of redneck hicks that had militia meetings. I had a best friend with whom I was going to move to Florida (you know, because that's where Nick Carter and the Backstreet Boys were from) after graduating high school, we were going to get an apartment together, go to college together, and ---again --- both of us were convinced that, in one way or another, that life plan was going to ultimately end with us marrying our respective Backstreet Boy (there really was nothing other than THAT for us; we had a very finite range on our radar).

So, what's happened since then?

Well, I discovered that my idolization of Nick Carter didn't really pan out for me very well, and I moved on. I gained 50-60 lbs. September 11th, America's 2nd Pearl Harbor, rocked us all the way to our foundations. I became obsessed with various TV shows, some of which have since moved on without me, and some haven't (Smallville, Tarzan, Angel: The Series, Jericho, LOST, The Victory Garden, Colonial Home), as have their actors. I found new movies and their respective actors to fawn over (Red Eye - my favorite [Hel-LO! Cillian Murphy is gorgeous ... in that creepy sort of "I lurk in the shadows, watching you sleep at night, waiting for the perfect moment to slit your throat, all while maintaining a certain sexiness about my person" sort of way. Hmm ... I'm not over-analyzing, am I?], Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Iron Man [Hel-LO Robert Downey, Jr., as well, even though he's old enough to be my dad], The Lord of the Rings Series, The Harry Potter Series). I took up crocheting, which then led to knitting once I found out that it really ISN'T just for old grannies anymore. Self-sufficiency and survivalism moved out of the tinfoil-hat/conspiracy theorists realm, and into the "it's just what people did during World War II on the American homefront" area. That sparked my interest in beginning my own little garden, which I hope to keep expanding upon each year, little by little, until --- before you know it --- it has taken over a large part of the back yard.

Now that we've covered that, what do I look forward to doing in the coming year?

• Well, for starters, I'm going to be an aunt again in March, then again in May. I have two older half-brothers who have kids, but they never really lived with us, so they're kind of distant. My two younger (full-blooded) sisters are each pregnant, and will be due at the beginning and middle of next year, respectively.
• Since I've got two new people that I'm going to have a higher likelihood of seeing that I'm going to be becoming an aunt to, I'm going to have to make baby blankets. And I haven't even started, yet. So, maybe I should get on that.
• I want to be able to play with my niece and ______ (my other sister doesn't find out what she's having until 12/29, so it's a wait-and-see game, though I'm guessing it's a boy, as does the rest of my family) when they're older, so I want to take off that 50-60 lbs that I've put on since high school, to start with. Then, when I make it there, since I was never thin in school, use that 50-60 lb weight-loss as a spring board into getting rid of the rest of my excess weight. Unfortunately, for my body size, age, and sex, I should weigh about 80 lbs less than what I actually do. I would LOVE to see how healthy I would feel weighing 80 lbs less! It just would open up so many new doors for me!
• Organization has never been my strong suit. Ever since I was little, I have had a chronically messy room. Now that I'm older, it just spills into the rest of my life --- a messy purse, a messy work desk, and messy car. I need to clean all that crap up. I wish I was more like Sookie Stackhouse, who cleans when she's bored. I'll need to switch from watching TV to fill my void, to cleaning.
• Speaking of Sookie, I need to finish those Southern Vampire Mysteries books.
• Now that I've completed my first season as a gardener, I've cleared my first hurdle. So, once January begins, I figure I'll only have about 4 or 5 months until I need to start setting my plants outside. It seems like a lot of time right now, but with my penchant for putting things off, it'll come up faster than I would ever imagine. I'll need to start getting together garden ideas and a list of what I want to grow next year, and where I'm going to put them.
• I've lost contact with a lot of "friends" since high school. I use the quotation marks, because I always wonder how great of a friend I was to those people if I never kept in touch with them, and vice versa. I should get back together with them.
• My work schedule has made it near to impossible to be able to attend recent 9/12 Project meetings. I loved going to them, and I'm going to start attending more, to become more involved.
• I'm absolutely sick with the way politicians on BOTH SIDES of the aisle have been running things within my own personal living memory, and I'm determined to HOLD EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS! If they've sold us, the American people, out --- be it through national security, sweetheart deals, national sovereignty, illegal immigration, unconstitutional legislation, or any other action that breaks their oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America --- then I will resolve to do everything in my power to educate myself and those around me as to what has been going on in Washington with our elected officials, and I will do everything I can to make sure that, come Election Day 2010, We The People will be handing them their pink slips. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, Congressman or Senator.

What about you guys? What are your resolutions for the New Year? Write a post on your own blog, and let's see what your grand plans are!

Merry Christmas To All (or, How I Re-Discovered The Christmas Spirit) ...

Well, 2009 is coming to a close. For some reason, Christmas Day always seems so anti-climactic to me. I guess it's because it's become such a commercial holiday. I turned on the TV today, and what are they playing? You guessed it: the "hey, that gift you got sucked, so come in for our door-buster Day After Christmas sale and spend even MORE money to get the stuff you REALLY wanted that those cheapskates didn't get you when we were having our Black Friday Sale, Black Friday Weekend sale, 12 Days of Christmas Sale, Christmas Eve Sale, or Christmas Day Sale" commercials.

This year, though, the holidays seemed a bit different. I was unemployed for two (thankfully) short months at the beginning of the year, so that made me wise up a bit about my spending habits. I became a bit more politically- and historically-minded, which drove me to learn about what our country has gone through in the short 233 years it's been around. And finally, 3 days before Christmas, I came home to find the volunteer fire department had blocked off the intersection to get into my subdivision --- because one of our neighbors' houses caught on fire and burnt down to the ground.

3 days before Christmas. And they have an 8 year-old son.

Thankfully, there weren't any people in the house when it caught fire, but unfortunately, they lost 2 of their 3 dogs, which they had to bury today, on Christmas. Our neighbor that lives across the street, who used to be on the volunteer fire department, was able to run into the house while it was on fire and save the golden retriever, and they're now caring for it while the family is displaced.

Sadly, the family lost EVERYTHING. The only thing that's left of the house is the brick shell of the first floor and some charred boards. They had an antique Ford Mustang in the garage that now looks indistinguishable from a picture of a car bombing. They didn't have insurance on the car.

That night, the news had come out and done a live report from the scene (which is amazing, to me, because the Cincinnati news stations, despite saying that they serve the Tri-State area, hardly EVER do any stories about anything in Indiana), and it had been on the 11 o'clock news. Families from different areas of the subdivision and other nearby subdivisions had walked up to see the damage when they saw the flames and the flashing lights of the fire trucks. Once the fire department had opened the road again, cars were driving by left and right, surveying the charred remnants of the house. Apparently, this was the news of the night in our little community.


I was glad to hear that night, when I got home, that our neighbors weren't injured (or worse) in the fire, and that their parents were able to take them in that night after the flames were put out, the fire hoses rolled up, and the investigators had taken their leave. But I felt so bad for them, that they had NOTHING, 3 days before Christmas. What a way to kill the Christmas Spirit.

Or, so I thought.

The next morning, cars were still driving by, slowing down, as if they were merely driving past to see a particularly incredible Christmas lights display. But, then, we started to get people knocking on the door. "I heard about what happened, on the news last night," one woman said, "I'm getting ready to head down to finish some last-minute Christmas shopping. What do they need?" Taken aback, I explained that what she saw that was left of the house was pretty much all they had. "I'll stop back here once I'm finished shopping," she'd said.

And she wasn't the only one.

Car-full by car-full, people were driving up and dropping off clothes, shoes, canned goods, cereal, money, gift cards, toys for their son, and even offering to give the family dachsunds to help fill the void that had opened up when the family's two dachsunds had perished in the fire the night before. And it wasn't just people in our community. We were seeing people with Ohio and Kentucky license plates stopping their cars and dropping off donations. One man even came up, explained to my dad that he had been unemployed for a while, but he and his wife had been blessed, so he wanted to help out the family. He gave my dad a $100 bill. When my dad thanked him and asked him who he should put down for the name, the man simply said he wanted to remain anonymous.

Today, Christmas Day, people are still coming up and dropping off bags of clothes, money, offering furniture, and giving what they feel personally compelled to donate. They're taking time out of their day, to give back. Any time is a horrible time to lose everything in a house fire, but something really tugs at our heart when it happens 3 days before Christmas. I feel like the Grinch, whose "heart grew three sizes that day!" ...

Christmas always felt so anti-climactic because of the big importance placed upon what were the best gifts to get. Well, I got some neat things today, including some clothes, jewelry, a food dehydrator, a movie, and a video game. But those weren't the best gifts that I received (even though I love them all!). I got to see our community show that when times are tough, we can pull together. That we can give, not because government mandates that we do, but because our hearts lead us to do so, and that we can make better choices about who we want to give to, and what we want to give. I got to see local and not-so-local people rally together to make sure that a family doesn't feel alone and out in the cold during one of the most magical times of the season. I got to see, firsthand, that we aren't the nation of heartless cheapskates that some would make us out to be, but the most giving, charitable, and helpful country on Earth.

And who doesn't like to see that, in action, on Christmas?

Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night.