A Tumultuous Year and Resolute Horseshit

2009 is on its deathbed. It's hooked up to life support and winding down its final days, hours and minutes until it will cast its last breath and be over with in time. Not only ending a year, bringing on the first decade completion of the New Millennium.

And what a tumultuous year it's been.

I found myself still reeling with the damages the tail-end of 2008 left for my poor son and fighting court battles and restraining orders against his father.

I lost my job for 5 months and had to figure out how to survive, cashing out my 401K, which let's face it had next to nothing in it, and try to stretch it to keep a roof over our heads.

I got to deal with Governmental state agencies; Food Stamps, Unemployment and thanks to my son's father DCF.

I went from being in a relationship, to being cheated on and single in an instant. To then a few meager months later finding out he is now engaged to the adulteress whore, making me yet again wonder about my own misgivings. And the realization that I am Chuck and every ex I have is either married to or still with whomever they dated directly after me…with the exception of maybe less than 1% who happened to be let’s just say un-dateable in general and how I ended up with them will forever remain a mystery my family will continue to throw in my face until I die.

I moved. Not only my home of the last 3 years, by my office as well (since I thankfully got my job back...even if I'm technically still a "temp").

I lost an Uncle, a dear sweet and funny man who I loved very much less than a week after my birthday very suddenly, but he died doing what he loved. One minute laughing with his wife of 50 years on a boat with friends, the next minute, on the bow, dying of a heart attack.

I lost a friend. A tragic accident that left his wife and 3 kids struggling for answers and an entire community pulling together trying to figure out why. An officer, a soldier. A true American Hero.

Friendships changed or ended. Friends I had known forever gone and ones I have known a short time stepped up and were there when I needed a shoulder, a hand. The ones I least expected were the ones who helped me most, while the ones I thought I could count on until the day I died let me down harder than I thought I could ever fall.

My health as always an issue, since for some reason I look the part of my 30 year old female self (ok so I like to think younger....) but on the inside I resemble that of a 65 year old man. I got diagnosed with asthma. Solidified my heart condition, tore and herniated discs in my spine 3 times.

And that's just 2009.

When I think that a decade has past, it's mind boggling. That in the past 10 years, I got my driver's license (late bloomer yes I know), that I remember people freaking out over Y2K and potential banking disasters. I remember where I was September 11 when the entire world changed in an instant when terrorists took of from my city and changed another's skyline forever. I remember my best friend getting diagnosed with cancer at 27. The birth of my son, the best thing that ever happened to me; that made me a weaker and stronger person both at the same time. That I lost my Noni, my Papa, and then my father...

And so they say that New Years are supposed to be about resolutions, and about change. I think it's all crap. Idealistic and romanticized horseshit.

You get all amped up for a "new" year. "This" is my year! "This" is the one, the one to change it all! And then nothing changes. If anything it either stays the same or it gets worse. Sure there may be moments, ones you remember, good moments, but everything supposedly has those. (I mean I'm still waiting, but that's what they say)

So in order to keep with placated and ridiculous traditions, I will pretend to be resolute.

I will try to be less cynical and jaded in 2010. I doubt this will happen as people have a tendency to keep proving me correct that they are all assholes, so thus my theories that "People Suck" seem to be pretty right on, but for the sake of argument and resolution sake, we'll put it out there. You know, for shits and giggles.

I will try to make my body have an invisible bubble around it and try to stay out of hospitals/doctors’ offices as much as humanly possible in 2010. Now granted, I realize that this I likely have less control over, since I am pretty convinced my body is out to get me, but I will listen to those fabulous M.D.'s and follow directions and try not to slip, fall or trip on any objects that may reinjure anything that may already be screwed up.

I will try to be less vehicularly retarded in 2010. Ok, those of you who know me, know I'm lucky I can pump my own gas. My check engine light has been on for 6 months, I have a whopping red "Rejection" sticker taunting me on the front windshield of my car and I perpetually forget to have my oil checked. Yeah I know, I am the devil (you men are glaring at me with laser beams in your eyes I can feel it). I also partially blame the Evil Vortex that kills ever car I come into contact with in my driveway, but seeing as I have moved and the Fucus has been around a miraculous 2 years (a new record!) I will try to behave.

I will try to be less digestively pyrotechnic in public places when partaking in the consumption of adult beverages in 2010. Now, I give cause here because this does not happen often...in fact very infrequent, however since the last time was a mere 2 weeks ago and I was essentially carried out of said bar by my cousin and some friends after thinking at 30 that Scorpion Bowl races on an empty stomach were a good idea...

I will try to be more content with what I have in 2010. I say content because let's face it, none of us are ever actually happy because we can always do better, but content is an acceptable goal for me. I have come a long way and I have done it by myself. I have lost a lot and ended up learning more about myself and finding out who my true support system was and if anyone else comes into my life, they can take it or leave it because it is what it is.

I will try to do better to get myself in a better financial situation on my own in 2010. I haven't gotten child support in over a year, and it was pretty sporadic before that and I am pretty sure at this point my son's father owes me about $14,000 according to the State. I have my own messes to clean up sure, but I have current bills to pay and a 5 year old mouth to feed and I never want him to know there was ever a struggle in his life. He's been through enough. I work full time and I try to do my Mary Kay, which isn’t cutting the mustard, so looks like a part time job will be in order, but I will do what I have to do if that's what it takes.

I will try to lose 20 pounds and have abs of steel before 2010 is over. Yeah this one is never happening but I figure you have to put in that whole I will lose weight and get in shape resolution in there to complete the cliché or it just wouldn't count.

Hallelujah Can Bite Me

SO it’s over. The months of planning, the decorating and spending. The tireless hours of wrapping and smiling and cooking all over in a flash and a fervor of ripping paper flying about. Shouts of "Awesome!" and "It's just what I wanted!" and "Mama look!" and then it’s over.

The living room resembling the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and my bank account similar to the FEMA funds.

The family niceties are over and through, although in my Griswoldesque life, this wasn't the case. No, nary a year goes by where an argument of monumental proportions doesn't arise between someone in my immediate family. Although, this used to be tradition of my father and I, seeing as in high school or soon after I was kicked out of the house theoretically 2 Christmas Eve's in a row...but you get the idea.

NO this year's Asshole Award clearly went to my brother for sheer instigational purposes. The pompous ass.

Now mind you, my brother is "that guy" The one who has to have the last word, has to be right in every situation, even when you clearly know he'd wrong. He is a perpetual button pusher. He will find the tiniest thing that will get you going in the slightest and just harp on it until you are ready to dive across a table and throttle him. Ahh family.

So, in the month or so leading up until Christmas, my brother in all of his pompousness needed to remind his single mother sister, his sister with her rent, her car payment, with bills and debt up the wazoo, that he had gotten her a grill for her 30th birthday. Yes. A gift I appreciated. However, he negated to remind the world he had also not gotten her a gift in say the 3 or so years prior to this birthday so he now looks like a hero. He also got the grill on a ridiculous sale, otherwise he never would have bought it.

And that obviously the moral of gift giving, the "reason for the season" is not about one-upping, no. It's about the joy you can bring your loved ones. Blah, blah, blah.

So, I go back to the month leading up. He goes on and on about his stellar gift giving skills. About how much I now "owe" him a great gift since I didn't get him a birthday gift. (clearly forgetting the almost $80 dinner I took him and my mother out to for his birthday but clearly food doesn't)

Now remember, my brother lives at home. Has never paid rent in his life. Lives off of his unemployment checks and the random side work he can get from time to time and spends most of his free time smoking pot and drinking beer.

Now, after bitching and moaning for a month about what he wanted for Christmas, this specific part thing for his truck. One in which I went to 7 different stores to find, and couldn't and finally had to special order and have overnighted so he had something to open on Christmas morning, since the mere mentioning of waiting until my next paycheck to get it for him sent him on yet another rant so I essentially put my account in near negative status to shut him up and ordered it anyway, being the loving and thoughtful, selfless sister that I am. (ok and partly to shut him up)

The asshole gets me a $25 gift card to a gas station....that I don't even go to. Along with a condescending note to not let my car go below a 1/4 of a tank.

Now granted, during a by-week of paycheck on my way to a gas station a couple weeks back I ran out of gas in the cold, but that doesn't allow for the whole asshole gag-Christmas gift in front of my family to be presented and after I drove around the state of Massachusetts to shut him the hell up and make sure he got exactly what he wanted.

Schmuck.

So then the aftermath of the holidays, ridiculous attitudes from people you don't need them from, like people who are supposed to be your best friends.

People who then turn around and accuse you of using them as a backup plan, as a fair-weather friend when you left your own family party early to make sure you could go to their family party because you promised you would. Last time I checked, a back-up friend didn't rate a visit on a major holiday, but I perhaps misread the manual.

Then again, I maybe misread the manual on best friends in general, since after 20 years of friendship I seemed to have gotten another one all wrong too, but I digress.

So in an effort to help yet another friend forget her troubles, the day after Christmas we head to my favorite watering hole. Ahh yes. Nothing says post holiday debauchery like a dive bar.

And what a weird night it was. Not only were there several of what I believe to have been cast-offs from Jersey Shore there, one of them apparently decided to fall in love with me (he told me as much) and decided that serenading me by doing Beyonce's Single Ladies dance was clearly the way to my heart. Yeah not so much.

And all this while I was sober, since in all of my motherly responsibility I was the designated driver.

But I decided having a dance battle ala Bring It On with a deaf African American guy was clearly a better alternative for me. So Step It Up I did. Naturally, I was sweating like a fat man in a sauna and I step outside, and run into a guy who somehow knew my father. I was completely dumbfounded.

I went to the Patriots game the next day and got to see them clinch the Division, although walking 986 miles from where we parked gave me a blister on the bottom of my foot the size of Puerto Rico and am now limping like I broke my foot, aside from being in extreme pain because dance battling with a deaf African American while you have a torn disc in your back is not the brightest idea I have ever had.

Needless to say, the end of 2009 has thus far been an interesting one and I can't fricking wait for this year to be over.

I’d chant Handel’s Messiah in my head, but it’s still friggan Christmas music, and Hallelujah can bite me.