So, no dog poop on the hand...that's a good sign, right?

Let me just start this post by saying I kind of dread New Year's. The whole shlebanger, the Eve part, the Day part, the learning how to write a new date on checks part. Not that I'm seventy-three years old and still write checks, but if I did.

The last two years have been Bad, in the classical classification sense of how you classify years. 1990 was a Good year. 2008 was a Bad year.

2008 started like this, on the Eve part: I was sleeping downstairs in the frigid guest bedroom while my six-week-old baby slept in his carseat in his crib in his frigid bedroom. At least, I think that's what we were doing. Either that or he was sleeping in his carseat that was sitting on top of the coffee table while I was sleeping on the couch in the family room. For warmth.

My husband and my older boy, almost 2 at that time, were sleeping up in my king-sized Heavenly Bed (not the copyrighted kind, just the kind that I put together from Costco but it's the same feeling). And my dog Binnie was sleeping with them. She used to sleep with us every night, tucked up under the covers until she overheated and then down by our feet.

Sometimes Binnie would have to go potty in the middle of the night. I'd hear her whining at the end of the bed, pick her up and take her out. She's short. The bed is tall. She can't get down by herself.

On the Eve part of 2008, Binnie woke up with a bellyache from eating too much people food. She whined. She whined some more. My husband snored. You can feel it coming, can't you?

And then in the morning, my husband finally woke up. Then I heard some shouting and some water running, and the year started like this: he woke up and put his hand in a warm wet pile of dog poop. The kind that probably accompanied stomach cramps. The kind that ruined my down comforter and sent me to Costco to get a new one. It also included shouting at each other about how she probably tried to warn him and he slept right through it, yada yada. Binnie hasn't slept upstairs since then. She doesn't even want to, it was so traumatizing.

Yeah, that was New Year's 2008. And you know what? 2008 sucked. A family member was exposed for extorting money and gambling it away on the gambling boats. Relations fell apart. Bad habits started as a retaliation for said extortion and gambling. And then my husband's Grammy J died before Christmas. It was a Bad year.

You'd have thought 2009 would have been better, right? Except you'd be wrong.

2009 started with the Eve part that included me getting the stomach flu sometime around 8:00. I was still sleeping in the cold downstairs guest bedroom, only my one-year-old had thankfully graduated to sleeping in his crib without the carseat. It was still super cold, except when you have the stomach flu sometimes cold air feels good.

And then there were car paint fumes in my family room, and lots of screaming, and someone called someone an ugly bitch. And then I spent the whole Day part of that New Year's sick as my dog the year before, vowing to never again start a year or spend another minute letting someone call me an ugly bitch.

And then 2009 included lots of other crap like drama and whatnot that would make a great novel but when it's your life it sucks.

So this year, as we headed towards the Eve part of 2010, I was a little nervous as you may imagine.

Only, the Eve part passed with no drama and so far the Day part has been ok too. I even got to go to the fabric store for an hour and found Pendleton wool for half off. That rocked.

So I guess maybe it's safe, and I can finally take some time to think about resolutions I'd like to make. I can think of the first one already. Never put my hand in dog poop on the first day of a year. Next?

- H