starting slowly

 This New Year's Eve, I wanted to do something special. I try not to play up the "woe is me, my parents are divorced" thing, but in all honesty, sometimes it sucks to have your holidays planned out for you because that's the only way you'll see both your mom and your dad and your weird step-aunt-in-law. Besides the fort, it was hard to find time for just Ben and I over the holidays, to make new traditions in our tiny little baby family, just us two.

So my plan for NYE was to sit on the couch with my husband, drinking whiskey and talking about what a wild year 2012 was while Carson Daly and Ryan Seacrest did their thing in Times Square. Instead, we ended up hanging out at Ben's parents' to spend time with his sister and brother-in-law on their last night in town. There was a fire going and we played Scattergories while we counted down to the new year, and when the ball dropped, we all found our spouses and gave them a giant kiss.

The time alone that I had been hoping for happened the next day instead. January 1 started slowly, continued slowly, and ended in the same way. We had no plans all day, so we slept in a bit and when I was ready to start my day, I rolled out of bed, kissed Ben on the cheek, and started a pot of coffee. I woke up on the couch as I journaled a little bit with our Christmas lights twinkling around me. When Ben was up and we finally felt like being productive, we took down Christmas decorations, cleaned the place, and rearranged the living room. I'm usually one to hold on to Christmas as long as I can, but a fresh start somehow just felt right that day. When all was said and done with that, we got cozy on the couch. It was an evening of Ellen, "We Bought a Zoo" [which obviously meant I cried like a baby], and one of Ben's favorite Christmas presents, "Planet Earth". And when our friends who were supposed to come over texted to say that they weren't gonna make it, we finished the night with another movie.

 Something about starting the new year so slowly and deliberately and together was perfect. Our downstairs neighbors finally put a password on their wifi [damn them!], so we didn't have Internet. We didn't get to our to-do lists, we didn't think about school or work or any responsible things. I'm glad for that. We had each other and a whole day off to do whatever we pleased, so if this is what 2013 is going to be like, then let's do this.