New Year's Eve

Such a gloriously craptastic "holiday". For most of the country, it combines excessive drinking and icy, slippery roads. For California it's more of a date ruler - it seemingly marks the end of "that time when it gets chilly" and the beginning of "that time when water ocassionally torrents from the sky".

In either case, when it comes to an intoxicated public, I'm much fonder of St. Patrick's Day - mostly because the Irish people I know actually start drinking during daylight hours, but also because there are absolutely no preconceived notions attached to St. Paddy's.

New Year's Eve on the other hand, is built up as though the whole idea of the celebration is inherently fun - as though good times are mandated for all. And then there's the whole "kiss at midnight" thing. What a scam! I'm making it a point NOT to spend New Year's Eve with a guy I'm seeing, because I can't think of a single guy I've ever spent two with - in fact, hanging out together at New Year's pretty much assures I'll be alone again by March.

I don't have great New Year's, and if I'm honest I blame my mother - when I was 15, a friend and I went to a party thrown by a 19 year old. My mother found out and came to the party, and took me home. I was so humiliated. I was about to drink sake (At least I ran with a cultured crowd)! I spent the night watching the ball drop with my mom on the couch. I think I've only had one really fun NYE, and it was in London. Mom Mojo doesn't travel across the ocean...

There's a Santa Claus...

and he came early this year and brought me something that wasn't on my list.

But before we get into all that, I just need to get something off my chest - nannies should probably not have blogs. I mean, I don't have as much time in front of the computer as I used to - or more to the point, extraneous time.

My daily adventures mostly consist of going to the park, playing some sort of unintentional contact sport, building forts and crafts, and cleaning up filth. Somewhere along the way I make and eat uncomplicated foods that always contain less than 3 ingredients. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do for money, but I'm not naive enough to believe others would be interested.

Which leads me to the other blog fodder - interactions with other people. Again, I come up short - most of the other adults I encounter on a regular basis are either clients, friends of clients, nannies of friends of clients, and random Spanish and Portuguese speaking nannies I befriend at the park. And I have a hard enough time talking to them, much less writing about them.

Then there's what my friends are doing - since a few of them read this, sort of redundant.

And then there's boys. I was taking some time off them. But remember what I said earlier about Santa? Apparently Good St. Nick was working off an old list, one that didn't take certain personal vows into account. Could've been worse - I could have been raising money for charity. At least I know no children are suffering due to my lack of control.

Make a monkey out of me

Okay, so I know he's an ape not a monkey. And I'm sure there's some Old World/New World distinction I'm missing as well with my glib request, but the important thing is that you realize that King Kong is the most entertaining movie I've seen all year. My companion last night has some awareness of this fact, based on the bruises and bite marks he's sporting today.

Yes, I could have shaved 20 minutes off the total run time, but I wasn't thinking that while I was sitting there. I was glued to the screen, despite knowing how the movie ends, and that's saying something. I didn't even want to watch the last 15 minutes, because I was so heartsick about the inevitable climax. Kong strangely reminded me of my dog...

School Days

So I'm hanging out with a 7 year old yesterday, and for some reason I started singing the ballad of Senor Don Gato - oh wait, I remember why - it was to get Mr. Roboto out of my head (we'd spent about 20 minutes changing the lyrics of that song to reflect toilet humor "Spank you very much, Mr. Roboto for helping me to poop just when I needed to!" - come on, he's 7, that was comedy gold!).
Anyway, he wanted to know where I'd heard Don Gato, and I told him I learned it at school in 5th grade. It's a powerful song, to have stuck in my head so long. We had to learn it for a camp performance - yup, in the 80s in Washington State, school districts actually took kids to camp. Public school kids. It was a magical time.
But the other song we learned and sang was Elvira by the Oak Ridge Boys. I didn't think too much of it then, but in these intervening years I wonder at having 10 year olds singing about "funny" feelings up and down their spines.

So I started dating again...

don't worry, my virtue is still intact.
I had one disasterous date who managed to irritate my roommate with his conservative Libertarian (shudder) rhetoric and insult my mother (for being a single parent) in the first 20 minutes, then sulked petulantly when I told him I didn't think it was going to work out.
I'm making plans with a crazy Belgian who only lives in LA every other month, and I'm about to go on a third date later this week with a guy I met at the dog park.
I figure pre-third date is a good time to google someone, and he has a web design company, so I figured he'd have a presence. What I didn't figure was that he'd be a contributor to a website that so succinctly defined my checkered past.
It's some sort of karmic irony, isn't it?