Doom Portends: What’s Your New Year’s Resolution?
I’m so bored of myself I could throw up, but I’m waiting for an email for work, and have nothing to do but sit at my computer to wait for it. I took some pictures of our New Year’s Eve party, half-heartedly thinking about writing a post about preparing for it. I hate myself right now. I never do anything interesting. I hardly ever leave my house. But people seem to like reading about parties, at least until I’ve reached some sort of Internet saturation point. And what will I do then? Blog, miserably.
I’m not particularly excited about 2013. Thirteen is an unlucky number. In the past year, I accomplished a lot, but nothing that I really hoped for. Last January, I made a promise to myself that I’d finish my novel. Didn’t happen. I also promised that I would travel by myself as much as possible. Trips, for a time, seemed to fall in my lap, almost as if God had dropped them there when I most needed to be saved from myself—and travel, something that for most of my youth seemed prohibitively out of reach because it was so expensive, was frequently paid for. No more. Maybe my luck’s run out. Maybe I’ll never travel again. Maybe all of my editors will drop me.
This is probably going to be the worst year of my life. Or maybe it will be the worst year because I started it thinking that.
Our New Year’s Eve party was quite nice, except at the end, when I took a sip of bourbon and started coughing so hard that it filled my lungs, and I had to lie, face down, roiling and burning.
We wanted to do it right; normally, at our dinner parties, everyone eats from plate on their laps. So Caleb and I made an 8’ long table out of plywood and saw horses. I say “we” because I sanded the edges, and then oiled the whole thing until it was stained dark brown, mahogany and gleaming.
We set it up the night before, and gathered the chair forest around it. We had fourteen guests, and eleven chairs. The smallest of the pack, three in all, sat on one of Caleb’s hot pink benches.
For the ceiling, I made four stars out of copy paper. I cut them and taped them and hung them using sewing thread and tacks. They looked pretty, but when the guests started arriving, one of them asked if my little sisters had made them.
For the table, I made two candelabra from boards of plywood and votive candles. I melted the wax on the bottom of the candles, and set them in a pattern. Unlit, they looked fucking stupid. Aflame, they were sort of beautiful. Emphasis on the disclaimer.
For the settings, I made notecards using confetti and a gold pen. We used paper plates, because they’re cheaper, and we don’t have room in our kitchen for dishes.
For the food, I cooked the pigs in a blanket from the frozen paper box. But I also did a lot of the prep work for better dishes. I de-veined the collards. I washed the black-eyed peas for the Hoppin’ Johns. I helped to baste the ham. I wrapped juniper berry glazed dates with strips of pancetta, and cooked them for thirty minutes. I made small toasts with creme fraiche and bites of smoked salmon.
When the guests arrived, they scattered everything all around, and drank all of the champagne.
I drank along with them, in an old dress I found in the back of my closet. It made me feel fat. I drank a little bit too much because I felt unhopeful.
I woke up at 11:15 the next morning. By 2pm, I still hadn’t gotten out of bed. When I tried to buy tickets for Zero Dark Thirty, it was sold out. “Doom portends,” I told myself. I haven’t recovered. It will take me a few weeks to sink into the New Year. Hopefully, by then, someone—ahem!—will drop a fucking blessing.
