Re: What do you do for New Year's Eve?

On Dec 31, 9:21�am, "Jef." <j...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Where do you plan to be? How will you celebrate? Do you celebrate at all, or
are you usually asleep by midnight?

I'm with Mike (not sleeping with Mike; just in solidarity with his plan....)
in that I stay home. Marsha and I usually get together early in the evening
with my sister and my niece, to exchange Xmas gifts, since everyone's
schedule is too hectic to do it on the day, itself. They usually spend Xmas
with her dad's side of the family, anyway.

Afterwards, we come home and prepare a nice meal for ourselves, to see the
year out with a bit of dignity and class.
Tonight's menu includes shrimp cocktail, a rack of lamb, roasted vegetables
(sweet potatoes, butternut squash, red onions, Yukon Gold and red potatoes,
saut�ed asparagus with garlic, a good bottle of Barolo, and vanilla ice
cream with a homemade sauce consisting of pineapple flamb�ed in Myers Rum,
dark brown sugar, butter and cinnamon. It's every bit as wicked awesomely
yummy as it sounds..!

We often watch a movie; tonight's selection is THE SAVAGES with Philip
Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linnet.

Marsha keeps earlier hours than I do, and is usually in bed and asleep
before 11:00.
New Year's Eve, though, she sits up with me and we turn on the TV a few
minutes before midnight and watch the countdown and the big ball drop in
Times Square. We kiss, and express our hope for better times in the year
ahead, give thanks for the 32 years we've been together, and she totters off
to sleep. In other words, we party safely and conservatively, like a couple
of old farts.

How about you?

Jef, a long time ago, more years than I care to remember, I lived on
West 46th Street in a 5th floor walkup along with two other aspiring
actresses and one dancer. It was a bit crowded but it was also in the
middle of everything. That year I did walk over to Times Square to
watch the festivities, found it less inspiring than I had expected and
never tried it again. Life went on. I soon met a photorapher; hey,
every aspiring actress needs head shots, no? Well, this one was not a
very good photographer and I never used those head shots. But he did
introduce me to a friend of his, also a photographer, who in time
became my husband and the father of my two sons.

Life continued to go on. He and I divorced and he went to live in the
Catskill Mountains. I stayed in NYC; I had a good job and a life of
my own. We kept in touch mostly because of the boys. On this New
Year's Eve, that photographer ex-husband is now in a rehabilitation
facility adjacent to a hospital where he was taken after having fallen
down twice in his house recently. He lives way far away from the city
but our sons do visit him from time to time. Especially the older
one, who has more or less made himself responsible for making sure he
is taken care of.

Yesterday, my other son and his girlfriend called to tell me that they
were on the road, driving from Chicago to the Catskills to see his
father. They will stay in his house for maybe five days and then
drive back. I will get further reports from them.

I know it sounds like a soap opera, but life sometimes does just
that. So I am home and will stay home tonight. It has snowed a bit
this morning and I heard on the news that they expected a bigger crowd
than ever in Times Square. I doubt I will stay up to see the ball
drop. Yesterday, I made a batch of my version of a Chinese dish,
chicken with cashews. I had some yesterday and will have some more
until it's gone. I really do have a Chinese cookbook, but I don't use
it much. I just copy what I know from the way it's made at the
Chinese place down the street.

And when I wake up, it will be 2009. Each year that I live, I am
surprised that I have lasted so long. For a long time, I believed I
would die before I was 30. I don't know how old my mother was when
she died; I know I was about 5 or 6 years old. She had TB and I had
TB when I was 12 or so; spent a year in the sanitarium where all the
TB cases in New York were sent. Can you imagine someone with that
kind of history taking up smoking? But I did, and I smoked with a
vengeance. It was almost as if I was tempting fate.

I think that's one reason why it was so difficult for me to quit; why
I tried and failed so many times. So once again, I want to thank
everyone who is or ever was a member of AS3. You guys have really
saved my life.

And Jef, I wish I had a movie with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura
Linney in it to watch tomorrow. I can't wait until "Doubt" comes out
on DVD. With him and Meryl Streep, it has to be fantastic.

A Happy and Healthy New Year to all of you

Joyce
11 years+
.