So yesterday was a New Year's journallers brunch at Tamar's.

She had had a get-together last year (not on NY day, but slightly before), and when I called her when I got into town, she mentioned that Diane was coming down and I said that Mo was coming down, and hey, did she want to give another party? I never claimed to be polite. Lucky thing too, huh?

Tamar stuttered a little about having to talk to Dan and painting the living room, but a day or two later there came an official invitation email. Hooray! So the brunch was yesterday at 1p.

I got up at 10.30a and had to go on the great "Search For an Open Store on New Year's Day When You Cannot Go to Vons Because of the Strike" quest. I had forgotten to get sugar and raisins for the bread pudding the day before, I realized at 1a when I was about to start making it. Oops!

I ended up finding a funny little store on Cahuenga West that just had crap everywhere--not dirt, but just stuff. And two of those items of stuff were sugar and raisins! I went home and made the pudding, or put all the ingredients together to soak and Mom would put it in the oven later.

Then I took at bath and washed my hair, finishing at about 1.05p. When the phone rang. It was Tamar, saying, "Where are you?" Jesus, I thought, it's only 1.05p and it started at 1p, was there something special that she wanted to do that had to wait until everyone was there? "I just got out of the bath." "Oookaaay..." "I'm only a little bit late!" "Two hours!"

Oops! I remembered it being at 1.30p, but it was in fact at 11a. As I said when I got there, I never write any appointments down, I keep them in my head and it always works. Except for when it doesn't. Again, I never claimed to be polite.

The party was lots of fun, and I only left at about 8p because Mom and I were having our New Years Day dinner of the honeybaked ham and the bread pudding and so on. As I left, I called Mom and she said that I could have stayed, but hey, I wanted the honeybaked ham and the bread pudding too!

Diane and Darren and Sophia and Simon were there, and Jill and Jay, and Mo, StealthPunch, and a non-journalling friend of Tamar's whose name I never got, and of course Darren and Damian. We had bagels and homemade scones (I was just going to have the bagel until Tamar pried my jaws open and started cramming a scone in there. She's like me with my bread pudding--everyone have better eat it and tell me how good it is! Also, as she put it, anything left behind, she was going to have to eat.

So there was much eating and gossip and playing with kids and cats. Dante fell in love with Jay and lay down on her lap for a long winter's nap, while Simon became enamoured with the other cat whose name escapes me. The black one. You know, thingy.

At any rate, Simon and I spent a large portion of the afternoon running around after the cat. He would look expectantly at me and babble something that seemed to mean "Let's go see the kitty!" so I'd say okay, and we'd go see the kitty. Simon would absolutely freak at the sight of the cat doing something wild and amazing like lay down on the kitchen floor, or walk. He's stomp his feet and jog in place and point and shriek, "Mama! Mama!!" It was all very, "You have got to see this! It is unbelievable!!"

In the middle of the party, Omar called me, and I went into the other room and we talked for an hour and forty minutes. See above me not being polite. But it was the kind of party where that kind of horrific bahaviour was considered acceptable. Also, everyone knew it was him and so they cut me a huge amount of slack.

He is in Lancaster, he went up to be alone for the New Year, and is running up that phone bill to his heart's content. I told him, "You do realize that it's a local call from your cell to my cell, don't you?" "No, I don't think you're right about that..." Anyway, he called me the day before and we talked for half an hour or so, but that wasn't nearly enough after the radio silence. I needed to hear his voice, to spend time with him even over the phone. I'm so glad he called.

Anyway, I went back to the party, chased the cat with Simon, etc., had a terrific time. Mo said goodbye to me while I was on the phone, but when I came out half an hour later, she was still there. It's a hard house and hard company to leave.

I told Tamar and Dan, you do something once and it's a party, you do something twice and it's a tradition. So that's it! Next year I'll be a polite and good guest and bring something, or I'll try, since as we all know so well by now, I am not polite.

Tamar gestures a lot.

Sophia and Damian have mac and cheese.

Mo loved playing with the slinky.

Dante on Jay's lap, sleeping the sleep of the just.

That other cat. What the hell was that cat's name?

Dan and Dante.

That's Simon, my new boyfriend. He's at my favourite age, not really talking but comprehending what you say. Not a baby anymore, a real person with a real personality.

I never wrote my traditional New Years entry, instead writing my quarterly I love Omar no matter how fucked up he is entry, so I'd better get it in here before I've broken every resolution before having the opportunity to write them down.

Not that I am doing the resolution thing so much--I will lose fifty pounds, I will clean my apartment, and blah blah blah, the change that I would like to make is a bit more broad than that.

What I'd like to do is get more control over my life. I feel as though I am flailing wildly, that everything is out of control, and I'd like to feel a bit more as though my life is something that I am in charge of. And of course that includes losing weight and getting my apartment under some kind of control and a lot of other things, but the goal is to get control of my life, to grow up, not to be thin or neat. Of course, if I was thinly and neatly in control of my life, that would work for me.

So when I go back to NY, I'm going to go back to Weight Watchers and try to start losing weight again, and I'm going to start throwing things out in my apartment and I'm going to do things like that. Because this is the year that I turn 40 and I should stop acting like I'm still in college waiting for my life to start.

The other thing that I am doing is another no buying year. Because it was such a success last time.

But if I am trying to get control of my life and my apartment, buying new things and putting them into said apartment is not helpful at all, plus I haven't got any money and I need to not spend what little money I have on things that I never look at.

There are exceptions, of course. I can replace something that breaks or I use up, like when I need new jeans or if I run out of shampoo, but I can't buy new shampoo until I use up the old. And I can buy props for a show if I need to, or blank cds to put mixes on, or presents for other people and I haven't gone to Disneyland yet so when I do go I get my yearly dated t-shirt. And if I go to a concert I can get a shirt, since basically I collect those. And I need a new mixer.

Sounds like it's all exceptions, doesn't it? But the real point is no more books and DVDs and cds and bath products. That's the real clutter. I have a million unread, unwatched, unlistened to, unused of these items in my apartment, and I don't need any more.

Also, I want to every day watch a DVD or listen to a cd. I have so many and I have them because I love them, but I never look at them! So unless I'm in the middle of a show, I want to start looking at and listening to the things that I already have. So hopefully when the year is out I will have nothing that I have yet to see.

Notice how I am not vowing to read all of my unread books, that would take longer than a year.

Anyway, buy nothing new, use the things I already have. That's 2004. And that's a control thing too, it goes right in there with the whole goal.

Best Films of 2003

Finding Nemo
Love Actually
In America
Spellbound
Lost in Translation
Shattered Glass
Die Mommie Die
Down With Love
Big Fish
Bend it Like Beckham

Still going until the Epiphany!

Today's horoscope:
While there's still so much time ahead of you, do something purely for fun. Your ideal adventure probably includes food and conversation like you've never had before. Body and mind alike deserve these pleasures.

One year ago today:
On Christmas Eve my friend Susan had emergency surgery to remove her appendix, to which event most of our mutual friends reacted "What a terrible way to spend Christmas!" while I said, "What a brilliant, perfect Christmas, not dying!" since I still have Diane's death in my head.

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Last Updated Sat 3 January 16:26:09 2004