Why I hate New Year's Eve

I guess it started as a teenager, my romantic notions for what New Year's Eve celebrations should be like. Perhaps I watched too many Fred and Ginger, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and Audrey Hepburn movies during those impressionable years. I think when I was fourteen or fifteen I had my first big New Year's disappointment (staying home watching the ball drop on t.v. while everyone else in my family had parties to go to), and it hasn't really improved ever since. There is just too much pressure to "start the year off right," and for some reason I have bought into that notion that you can't be asleep when the calendar changes so I am usually sleep deprived when the year begins. I have certainly had some that were less disappointing than others, and those were the years where I had absolutely no expectations what-so-ever. So that is my New Year's resolution: no expectations for New Year's Eve. I might even be able to keep this one--usually I make the same resolution every year, and that is to floss every day.

I don't even consider Jan 1 the beginning of the year, anyway. As a student (and former student), teacher (and former wife of a teacher), and now mother of a school age child, my year has always "begun" in September, for as long as I can remember. That is how time is marked in my mind - the year is a big elipse, with September at one end.