Wow, that title is creative, eh?? Hahaha. Sheesh. Let's start this year's entries off with a bang, shall we?!! ;-)
So, how was your new year's eve?
My new year's eve actually involved a party this year, which is not usually how it goes. How does it "go", you ask? Well, that is a good question! As TheMostImportantGuy and I backed down the driveway to head to the party, I asked him to help me put together a list of how we have spent all of our new year's eves past. We couldn't remember all of them. We knew that last year we went to a chanting thing at the zen center. And we also knew there was at least one year (perhaps two?) that included dinner out with my folks followed by coming home to turn on the tube and watch the west coast airing of the New York ball drop on the television. But there were several new year's eves unaccounted for (was there a concert or two in there? if so, who?!). I'm not sure if we are forgetting because we are developing the early stages of age-related brainfog, or if it's simply because we just don't usually do anything terribly exciting or memorable (I should just go back and see if I wrote about any of them on the blog...duh!).
What I do know for a fact though, is that even though I cannot remember what we have done, I can absolutely tell you what we have not done:
Every year since TheMIG and I have been together, I've refused an invitation for us to go to a party at the Warren's.
Who are the Warrens. Well. Back in the day, when I was still together with TheEx, he had met MisterWarren on a train platform and they quickly became fast friends. They had noticed that they were always getting on the same train car each morning to go to work, and one day they started chatting and found out they both had just become dads. When Warren and TheEx learned that their offices at the other end of the train ride were only minutes apart, they quit the train altogether, and carpooled together for years. During those years, TheEx and I were throwing lots of parties, and I would invite my friends, some of whom had partners and kids about the same age as ours, and the Warrens would come, too. Of course, TheEx and I never looked at our friends in the "your friends, my friends" sort of way. They all became "our friends", and in the long run, the families all got quite tight and everybody was inviting everybody to each others gatherings (mostly kids birthdays, barbeques, holiday parties, etc). A few of us ladies started a weekly craft night back then, and the guys in the bunch even created a separate poker playing faction.
When TheEx and I split up, we had our tough moments, but it really was quite the amiable break up. There was never the feeling that we needed to be "dividing up" our friends. Not one bit. But I always sorta felt like MisterWarren and the Warren family were more TheEx's friends (his best friends, actually), and at that time, and TheEx seemed like he could use a little support. I had a pretty solid group of women friends of my own as I transitioned out of the relationship. But Warren was TheEx's closest source of support, and so I kept my distance a little bit. We still stayed in touch, of course, but I always made it a point to avoid the annual new year's eve party the Warrens kept inviting me to. Every year TheEx would say that he had no problem whatsoever if I came to the party ...but every year I didn't go (and after awhile, I was dating TheMIG, so we didn't go....even though we were both invited).
Instead, TheEx and MyFavoriteKid would go to the party (and TheMIG and I would do....whatever), but also going to the party were most of my friends, the friends whose families had become mutual friends of the Warrens by that point, and were also invited.
Are you seeing how this all went?
It's part of how I ended up with the not-so-memorable-NewYearsEve-syndrome, I think.
Well, this year, as usual, I got an invitation to the party by email. And I don't know what came over me this year, but this time I accepted (after talking it over with TheMIG, of course...and MyFK...and TheEx....in that order).
Actually, I do know what came over me. What came over me is that early last year, a beacon of light shone down upon my sad little self, and I realized that I had been behaving like a hermit, and that I had been doing so for years. It just sort of crept up on me, so I didn't see it, if you know what I mean. After months of trying to figure out why I was a hermit-lady, I finally came to the conclusion that I had no friggin' idea! And that figuring out why might not help me solve the dilemma anyhow. I just needed to act. I needed to do something about it.
I spent a few more months trying to get up the nerve to try. And then around September or October I started really making a concerted effort to place myself in the path of people for a change.
It's been good (well, mostly good --- it's been sort of trial and error, and I've blown it several times, and in the process I have lost as many friends as I have tried to make, but that's another post), and last night, we went to the party. I got to ring in the new year with TheMIG, and with my friends, and with all of their kids (who, after a decade, aren't little kids anymore), and I also got to toot a new year's eve party horn with MyFavoriteKid. 
Fuzzy. Because we were all laughing and carrying on ;-)
I am on the path out of hermit-town.
And I am hoping to keep traveling down it during 2012.
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