One of my Crazier Nights

New Year's was one of the most entertaining I've had in years. It began sort of slow with me running around grocery shopping, picking up champagne (excuse me, cheap sparkling wine) along with neccessities, like bubble bath and lightbulbs. I ate my New Year's Eve dinner at home, a McDonald's Happy Meal with Champagne, I mean Brut. It was fabulous. Then I took a bubble bath, got dressed to kill and prayed as I began dialing my friends to find out what they were up to for the evening. Because I didn't want to spend the ridiculous amount of money to get into even the lowest bars- seriously everywhere that generally had five dollar drinks was suddenly charging one hundred dollars for the five dollar drinks and some balloons they'd blown up. I was horrified.

So I ended up at a party held by a friends neighbor I hadn't ever met but thought would get to know over the course of the evening. I walked through the cold enjoying New York. I think it's a wonderful place to be in winter, if you have to be somewhere with below freezing wind-chills. THe air was crisp, people were laughing and already half-way drunk (something unusual before ten p.m.) I found my way to the UPper West Side and ended up partying like a champ all night long, something I haven't done since high school. Usually I'm not much a party hopper, or crasher, but New Year's Eve I was both. Please, allow me to explain.

When I arrived at my friend's building, I stood outside pondering which door to buzz. Generallyl people tell you the apartment number of a party you go to but not so much this time. This time I was examining the last names on the door- except one was T-Bone?- and finally another group of people who looked to be about my age came up and asked if I was going to the New Year's Eve party. It didn't occur to me at that time that there would be more than one in the same building, but later on this made perfect sense. So I lit up, said yes, we made the awkward introductions that people do when they're meeting each other mostly sober and headed inside. The apartment was AWESOME- two stories with a YARD, and a full dinner buffet out on the table, including turkey. Theey had an open bar and about ten bottles of champagne along with a refrigerator full of other goodies.

So I walked in, started to mingle, and suddenly realized I didn't know a single person there. After perusing the rooms, I found no one that I even recognized as friends of friends. My stomach began to sink as it occurred to me that I wasn't supposed to be at this party. I was crashing. Finally someone asked who I was here with and when I said my friend's name, gave me a strange look that meant I was definitely crashing in on someone else's party. So out I went, waving bye to my "new Friends" and trying to remember Friends cell phone number. Even the background noise was different. Finally I found "my" party two flights up, and just as busy. Squeezing in and talking to new people who were already clearly on their way towards passing out, I found people to hang out with and hte fun began. We danced, drank, ate, and played random games.

Then C and B found out that I had crashed on a party with a lot of boys and a great apartment and watned to check it out. We ended up floating back and forth between the parties, flirting madly and coyly grabbing drinks that we weren't paying for. At midnight I was doused in champagne as we all screamed and raised our glasses to 2006. New Year's is the most optimistic of holidays, in my opinion. You spend all year trying to live up to who you think you could be at the beginning of a year. Suddenly you believe everything will change and for the better, of course. Drop those five extra pounds, take a course in French, cruise around Greece. As you can see, I fall right into this optimism when I make my resolutions to essentially be a better, more contributing citizen of this life.

Naturally I say that every year and wonder if it affects my perception of what it is to be a better person. Maybe I'm being a better person already and don't even know it. Maybe we all are. Our optimism may get in the way of seeing what we're already doing to be better people. I try to go out of my way to do something good for someone else at least a couple of times a week, be it holding open a door for someone with packages, giving up my seat in a crowded subway when someone older or pregnant comes on, buying dinner for some of hte homeless people that live down here. It can be so easy to focus on what you're not doing that you don't look at what you have done for other people. Especially in places like New York, with millions of people, the chain reaction of doing something good can be huge.

So this New Year's Eve was amazing, and wonderful and made me so happy to have friends to share it with. But what I'm looking forward to is keeping that feeling going through the year, especially as we head towards the most depressing months- January and February. I'm expecting they'll be cold and windy and make me want to keep on the extra weight, but have to know, and hope that April and May bring something green and beautiful to the surface.