new year, new you, letting go

It's not as simple as all that, is it? Revolutions, evolutions, resolutions. The tick of the clock to 12:00:01. How I wish that I could scrinch my face up like adorable Hiro from Heroes and make all the things I wish I could change about my life done in an instant. New year, new you. Letting go of the horror that has been 2008 without letting a drop of its dirt sully the unmarred beauty of 2009, the carte blanche we all envision coming to us with the movement of the second hand.

My new year doesn't start until sometime around my 30th birthday. For the day before, on July 13th, the trial begins, wherein I battle for the right to my child. It is fitting this year that my birthday falls on Bastille Day, the French version of our Independence Day. I'd hoped to celebrate my 30th birthday in Paris, watching fireworks shoot from le Tour d'Eiffel and pretending they were just for me and my new decade. However, I'll be in the courtroom with a different kind of fireworks. People tell me I could go the next year, and yes, I can, I suppose, but it won't be the same.

Anyway, 2009 approacheth, and for the reasons laid out above, when my friends invited me to the Seattle Bash, I was less than thrilled. $65 for entry to a party with thousands of Seattlites? Um, hmm. No thanks. I'd much rather spend the money on a nice spread and have friends over. But they'll be there. I'll be on my couch. Alone. And that's okay, because my crappy year clock doesn't stop ticking for another six and a half months.

You can bet your bottom dollar that I'll party my socks off when that final gavel bangs. And you're invited, and you, and you, and you. We'll drink champagne, the best I can afford on my lawyer fee depleted income, because then there will a new year, a new me. I'm sure of it.