Ever since I met my husband New Year’s Eve has become something of a sad passing for me. Without fail I get a little nostalgic and choked up for the year that has passed and the experiences we’ve shared. Last year was the worst. In 2007 we got our first cat, moved into our first actual house together (leaving behind our small, but utterly charming, apartment), I got accepted into grad school at Johns Hopkins, we both got new jobs, we got married, and had a spectacular honeymoon that started in Amsterdam and ended in Istanbul. It was tough to see that year go. This year has been significantly calmer as we’ve settled into married life together, but since meeting the Mister my life has had so much more laughter, love, and happiness that I’m always a little reluctant to say goodbye to each year, despite knowing that all of those things will continue into each new year. So, to keep from becoming a blubbering mess with our friends this evening, I’m trying to get my reflections on the old year and its accompanying tinge of sadness out of the way now.
1.) January: I have my first review in my new job and it goes wonderfully. They love me. I love them. Everyone loves each other. I’m happy and comfortable and see myself in this job for a long time; they want to give me a raise and more responsibilities; everything is great. We start painting our home office red. I get fabulous new glasses, realize that they’re not just for reading and driving anymore, and start wearing them all the time, surprised to find that there are actual numbers listed next to programming on the TV Guide Channel, not just blurry artistic representations of numbers. People love the glasses, except for the Mister, who for a long time still prefers me without them. In the last six months or so I’ve found myself doing the same thing with glasses that I do with hearing aids. When I see someone on TV answer the phone without first taking out her hearing aid, or holding it up to her right ear instead of her left, I think, “Wait, she left out a step … oh, wait, no she didn’t.” Now when I see someone reading a book or sitting at a computer without glasses, it hurts my eyes.
2.) February: The Mister and I spend most of the month looking up pregnancy stuff, fearing that we each managed to get through ten years of pre-marital sex without a baby only to screw up four months after getting married when we have no money or emotional readiness to have a child. We shell out on four separate pregnancy tests, talk about little else, drive ourselves insane, forbid ourselves from talking about it anymore, and learn a whole lot more about the female body. I’m not pregnant. I weep.
3.) March: My in-laws come to visit for Easter and I learn that it was traditional for my father-in-law’s mother to take him and his sisters to the Cleveland Museum of Art every Easter Sunday. I love this tradition. We go to the Walters Art Gallery and have a lovely time at their fabulous Maps through the Ages exhibit. I determine to uphold this tradition when we have kids.
4.) April: With the exception of the Mister’s birthday on the 2nd, April is a pretty quiet month. I’m taking a class and he’s watching a lot of Mythbusters or whatever it is he does when I’m in class. I bring a lot of work home, trying to get five different projects handed off to manufacturing on time.
5.) May: We talk about getting a kitten but decide not to since our cat Alex seems to have finally adjusted to all the changes in his life over the last year, and is being much more loving than he used to be. We finally finish painting our office red and the Mister paints the living room beige all by himself while I’m out shopping with our neighbor (her boyfriend works in the yard all day and then they take us out to dinner that night: it’s a fabulous day for the girls). After five months I’m finally satisfied with the red office and I love it with the beige living room. Husband forbids me from ever choosing red as a paint color again unless it’s done with a paint sprayer before we move in. We get amazing prints from our honeymoon hung up in the living room, along with a wedding picture and the special marriage certificate our friend and wedding officiant gave us, and other things to make it feel like home. My parents come to visit and Dad puts in desperately needed outlets so we don’t have to run extension cords across our entire living room and office. Our house just got a lot nicer.
6.) June: We go to visit a rescued kitten at our neighbor’s house and immediately bring him home. Alex is not impressed. We spend the next few months trying to get Alex to like Mr. Miyagi, and Miyagi to stop being so much of a hell-raiser. It’s stressful. My first project at my new job publishes, which is a Big Deal. We try to drive from Baltimore to Nebraska for our friends’ wedding, but get stalled in Ohio because Iowa is closed due to flooding. We take a much needed mini-vacation to New York. We go to a game at Yankee Stadium, which is an unforgettable experience even though we hate the Yankees. Nobody can hate the Yankees when they’re in Yankee Stadium: the crowd is electric and passionate. This is the kind of crowd all games should have. We drive from NYC to Cooperstown and go to the Baseball Hall of Fame, which is astounding. We camp at a state park and Mother Nature continues her tradition of raining whenever we go camping, thwarting my attempts to prove to the Mister that camping is a lot of fun. We have fun anyway, playing catch in the drizzle, and curling up in our tent when it rains hard. We make up our own traditional camp dinner to have on future camping excursions. I spend about three straight hours trying to get a decent fire to burn in the rain. This is decidedly not fun.
7.) July: I get my saxophone cleaned up and start playing again for the first time in ten years. I spend a lot of time playing the same note repeatedly, working on my embouchure, but it feels good to be playing. After two months, I stop playing because I’m too busy with class, work, and blogging, but I know I can still do it, and I think I have a better ear than I did in high school, so it’s next on the list of things to do with my free time. We visit our friends’ house and I’m jealous of their nice things. Then they visit our house and are jealous enough of our home to move into a new one of their own. This makes me feel a lot better about not spending our money to yuppify our abode. A few months later I realize that we spend a lot less money on stuff than most people our age, and that it’s not usual to be as debt-free as we are. It makes me feel better about wanting to buy a nice TV, a purchase that will be hugely expensive and out-of-character for us.
8.) August: I start blogging, which represents the first time I’ve written anything since college. I turn 26, rather uneventfully. I spend almost two weeks visiting family in Ohio. I reconnect with an old friend I had had a falling out with three years ago just in time to get invited to her wedding. We go and have a great time. It’s our first wedding since we got married, and we brag to each other that our wedding was better. I get fitted for new hearing aids, going back to my audiologist in Ohio because I don’t like any of the ones I’ve gone to in Baltimore.
9.) September: I go back to Ohio for my parents’ Labor Day party and to get my new aids. They’re purple and a lot better than my old ones. I meet my brother’s new girlfriend, and feel out of place with my family. I feel the same way at Christmas, but realize that’s okay. I’m just a different person than I was when I lived with them, but remaining the same would make for a pretty dull existence. All my projects at work have published, so I’m treading water, not doing much, getting bored (which I have very little tolerance for), and feeling useless. I start the new semester taking two classes, which I had previously vowed never to do again. I quickly remember why. My grandfather dies and it hits me hard. Three months later, I keep thinking I’m finished mourning, but I think about him nearly every day. I miss him at Thanksgiving (even though I never saw him for Thanksgiving) and Christmas, and I worry about my other grandparents.
10.) October: We have our first anniversary and celebrate in our favorite Hocking Hills cabin. (http://www.buckeyecabins.com/the_dogwood.htm) It’s a luxurious three days and on the way home we stop off for breakfast at the restaurant where we had our first date.
11.) November: I vote in a state other than Ohio for the first time. We watch the election results with much joy and revelry. I’m busy with homework all the time. We accidentally double-book our guest room, and the Mister’s friend visits from Pennsylvania the same weekend my friend is in town from Tennessee. We all have a fantastic time together, and I hope that Jessica comes back. We unexpectedly spend Thanksgiving alone with the cats. I write to a sick friend whom I haven’t talked to in a year and a half, and we reconnect. I plan a New Year’s Day visit with him.
12.) December: The Mister barely sees me because I’m spending ten hours at a time at the lab working on my pictures for photography class. He helps me make the book I do for that class, and has done all the laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning all semester. I finally finish my classes and feel utter relief. I’m now halfway finished with my degree. In contrast to my busy academic life, I continue to have little to do at work, for roughly four or five months now. I do a half-assed job on the work I do have because I do my best work when I am pressed for time, not when I have all the time in the world. I hate this, and I hate how worthless it makes me feel. I have my annual review next month, and first have to evaluate myself, which I’m dreading because I do next to nothing, but my boss doesn’t seem to have caught on to that yet (even though I told him two months ago that I have nothing to do because I couldn’t take the boredom anymore). I realize that I’m happier and do better work when I’m stressed out, and I hate that about myself. We have four enjoyable Christmases with the families, but have yet to exchange gifts with each other. Husband reminds me for the umpteenth time this year that I’m unhappy when I have free time and that I don’t know how to relax. I wonder when this happened to me, because I’m certain that I used to know how to relax.
It wasn’t a spectacular year, but it was mine, and I liked it. But we have good things planned for ‘09, and I’m confident that I’ll watch the Hampden Baby New Year (http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=2310 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBZ6okqXG1o) with nothing but excitement for the year to come.
Be safe, be joyous, be hopeful.
