Cookies, 'Life', and Cyd Charisse-2009

Hello my friends! I have to say, I'm glad I made my blog open to invitation only ( I was getting alot of unsavory visitors) but I am worried that I have prevented some of my old blog-buddies from visiting as often. That's a shame. I miss you guys!

Wednesday night, I made a nice dinner of boxed pasta and cheese bread before settling down with cookies and coffee to await the new year. The boys (the older two) wanted to stay up until 12 so we okayed that, never expecting they could actually do it. We played 'Life', watched one of those over-exaggerated New Years Shows, and cozied up in blankets on the living room floor. The New Years show of our choice was the FOX broadcast, for no reason other than that it was going to show Robbie Kenievel jumping his bike over the Mirage Volcano in Vegas and the boys thought that sounded cool. It was really anticlimactic, as always, and David Cook's performance was ho-hum at best. Nothing else much was happening there so when we finished our game, I flipped over to TCM and showed the boys the That's Entertainment marathon that was on.

'That's Entertainment' is a movie that features clips of the great MGM musicals as they progressed over the 20's, 30's, 40's, and 50's. Something about watching Gene Kelly and Anne Miller dance their way around the stage was phenomenally uplifting and made the new year seem less daunting. Regardless of how much I have ahead of me, how much uncertainty we are faced with-at least we have Cyd Charisse! She was feminine, powerful, AND vulnerable all at once. I could watch her forever. So I did...until midnight, at least.

Daddy had dropped off to sleep at 9 o'clock but the boys and I powered thru and made it to watch the ball drop at midnight. Then the boys dragged themselves off to bed and I continued to watch Judy Garland and Fred Estaire until 2am. As I hung out in my recliner with a cup of coffee, rewinding the 'dancing on the ceiling' scene from 'Royal Wedding', I realized that my new years eves seem to keep getting better.

Jonathan asked me the other day what my Salad Days were. I wasnt really all that familiar with the term so he clarified: Salad Days are the days that most people view as the 'best' of their life. For many people, their college days are their Salad Days. For most, it is the time of their life that they felt the most freedom, felt their best physically, or still had their whole life ahead of them-the 'green' years. Without hesitation, I told him that my 'Salad Days' are now. I can't imagine my life being any better than it is...or not having everyone in it that I currently know. Sure, we've got problems with the economy and maybe we're getting older. But those things pale in comparison to the wealth of things that we enjoy in our boys and our spiritual family. And when it comes to that, I still feel 'green'. After all, the stuff that's coming-I'm new at that.