Happy New Years

kitchen 1
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Well, here it is 2009 and I have an orange kitchen and a stomachache. Not bad - the kitchen is awesome, I think, and the stomachache is from making a complete and total pig of myself all day. I went over to my friends J & F's beautiful house way out in Weaverville for a lovely New Years lunch thingie and ate beans and cornbread and greens and hoppin' john and so on until I was blue in the face. This was after eating chex mix all day because somehow or other I managed to inveigle the entire party that was at S' house last night to come on up to my house (I told them they could see the fireworks from my porch - hell, it's almost true; you can kind of glimpse them now and then) and bring the chex mix. And the champagne and the cake. Good cake, too, and so I've also been eating that. I've just sort of been eating through the day. Then I came home from J & F's after all that food and a couple of bloody marys and made some more collards so they'd be here for A & M and then ate more hoppin' john and more collards. And more cake. Burp.

Last year was, as we know, the worst year of my entire life. Last New Years Day, coincidentally, I didn't eat any hoppin' john or any collards. I know correlation doesn't equal causation and so on and also they don't seem to be noticeably less lucky up north where they've never heard of eating special food on New Years Day, but whatever, I'm not taking any chances ever again. This year I was totally determined, just in case, to eat as much hoppin' john and greens as possible. I keep thinking 2009 can't possibly turn out to be as awful as 2008 but then I think, argh, wait, don't take that as a challenge, oh you bored and vengeful gods or small spirits. I know perfectly well it could be worse next year. That's one of those wonderful side effects of aging: you know it can always be worse. Oh yes.

In the meantime, my car is all fucked up and I'm not happy. I took it to the Organic Mechanic to get a new inspection and the brakes looked at, since they're squeaking. No big deal, right? Ha ha. They called me yesterday and said "Why didn't you tell us the clutch was broken?"
"Uh," I said, "Because it WASN'T, yesterday, when I drove it in there."
"Well, we can't get it to shift at all and we had to push it from one lot to the other." said the woman on the phone. Then she proceeded to give me a whole list of other stuff that was wrong with my car. I am not happy and not sure what to do - I've never been to this mechanic before and now I kind of think I should just get my car towed way the hell away from there first thing tomorrow. Argh. Happy New Year.