My family has this weird New Years tradition. It all started 25 years ago with a bottle of cheap champagne. My parents were getting together with this other couple on New Years Eve, celebrating a midnight over said bottle of champagne, brought by the non-host couple. When they emptied said bottle, someone had the brilliant idea of writing out their New Years resolutions and predictions on teeny slips of paper, slipping them inside the bottle and sealing the bottle with wax. Then the bottle was handed over to the host couple with the words, next year you come to our house, with the bottle, and we open the resolutions and see how many came true. So the host couple did just that. A year later, they showed up with the bottle, but the silly young things that they were played a trick on the other couple, pretending they had forgotten the bottle, disguising it in a fruit basket or something. Thus began a tradition that continues to this day. Every year, this couple meets with my parents, they alternate locations. The bottle is brought, decorated or disguised in clever ways. One year it was baked in a cake. Another - my favorite - a Cabbage Patch doll was beheaded, stuffing was removed, and the bottle was slipped inside and carried in all swaddled in clothes, looking suspiciously like a real baby. The bottle is bursting with 25 years worth of resolutions and they have great fun reading them all over again each year. Imagine reading resolutions at 50 years old that you made when you were 25! Every other year, however, around Dec. 27, my parents start running around the house in a mad frenzy, trying to come up with ideas about how to decorate the bottle. It gets tough after 25 years, I guess. Last time I think my dad rigged up this complicated mini-fireworks display, propelled out of the bottle. Silly nuclear physicists! Anyway, my sister and I tried to copy this tradition, with the couples daughter, with a ginger ale bottle, when we were 10. It didnt work as well, nor last as long. Maybe someday Ill have someone to do this with. There is a Greek saying that, roughly translated, goes: Those who walk the streets at night get poo on their shoe. I giggled when I first heard this. But now now I know its true. I was up walking the streets this morning at the ass-crack of dawn, apparently before all the earnest old ladies attack the sidewalk with hose and broom. Dont fret. I didnt get any poo on my shoe. But under veil of night I just mighta. There was shit everywhere! And not just in neat lil piles, but in smooshed lil streaks, as if someone had not only stepped in it, but slipped and fell in it. My heart went out to these poor souls. I imagined them walking home along the brothel street after a nice end-of-the-year paid shag, feeling quite pleased with themselves, when suddenly Shit! Literally. Speaking of weird sightings at 8 a.m. - today I saw two children walking from storefront to storefront jangling bells and singing songs. I thought this very odd at first, another syndrome of the weird Christmas-is-over-but-the-Athenians-refuse-to-admit-it thingie. Carolers? On Dec. 31? Then, as I was sitting here writing this and the doorbell went off three times at fucking 8:30 a.m. and I was cursing and wondering what the world was coming to, I heard the distant sound of more bells and children voices. And I remembered something about some tradition... children door to door singing for change or candy or something? Oooh! How exciting then! Another cultural first! I must research. Eek! I just looked in the mirror and realized I have Brady-Bunch era Florence Henderson hair today! Well, at least I can comfort myself in the knowledge that the rest of me does not look like Florence Henderson. This woman at work really did look like Florence Henderson. I wonder what that feels like, waking up one day, at age 55, and realizing you look like an old Florence Henderson. Let it be noted that I will be seeing out 2001 wearing black knickers, a racy black bra, and black and white striped socks. Such things are important. Okay..off to certain death at the hands of a pair of eight-year-old devils, on armed with a brand spanking new BB GUN. How can parents be so dumb? Kronia polla! MWAH! ~dahling _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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