Yeah. Except for Too Much Salt my normal taste in food is a dietician's dream: sparing use of olive oil and margarine in place of butter, lots of grains, brocolli, and leafy vegetables, fruit and yogurt rather than cookies/cakes, not going overboard on the fatty meats except the good kinds like salmon. Despite that, my cholesterol is pretty damn high without medication.

One grudgingly-good-thing about my no-beef, no-milk products diet is that it really helps with the cholesterol. My four closest blood relatives (brothers, mom, aunt) are all on cholesterol drugs.

The New Year is starting off kind of bleary here. I tried to go to sleep around 11 but it didn't happen for a while, and to judge from the hullabaloo drifting in outside, I was awake for midnight.

Timelies all!

I'm sorry, ita.

Happy New Year, all. First Night Alexandria was fine aside from a) having remoulade sauce spill all over me as the server put my dinner down and b) the crappy trolley schedule for getting to and from the Masonic temple. (A 30+ minute wait outside for a trolley on NYE? While being subjected to crappy street musicians? And the trolley that was supposed to pick people up after the countdown that didn't? At least the weather wasn't =too= cold)

Ugh. I don't feel as crappy about life as I did yesterday. However, please, when I try and leave for the movies this morning, let there be nothing stopping me. Let today go uneventfully, and *please* let me get to the ER tonight, and let those meds work. I'm almost dizzy with the amount the head is hurting right now. The crying jag yesterday was especially unwise.

But if I don't get out and see a movie, the terrorists will have one.

Speaking of movies, I have a silly crush on Tina Fey. Watching her improvise lines in the credits for Date Night gets me every time. I've never seen the movie from start to end, but I seem to catch the credits a lot.

Happy New Year, everyone! My BFF and I managed to stay awake to see the big ball fall down and then we went to bed. Exciting lives!

Man, poor Dick Clark looks like a marionette. They had some serious makeup on him. I'm glad he's still able to ring in the NY for us though.

Today I plan to wash the bed linens, go see a movie, and try again to get my frakkin' wireless router to work.

Hubby is making scrambled eggs with ham and cheese. My Hubby, I think I'll keep him.

ugh, ita ! I'm so sorry. Catching up now. I hope you get your movie/ER wish.

HPF is going to a friends for loud playing and DH and I are going to nap. Black eyed peas, check. Greens, check. 2011 drummed out of existence with pots and pans and lots and lots of noise? check, check checkity check.

Hard dough bread and nutella. It's sort of a shortcut to my childhood mainstay of Milo and bread and butter. Apparently when I showed up at other people's houses in the family, they'd ask what I wanted, and I'd ask for bread and butter first, Milo second, and then go steal a book which they might never give back. Constant pattern through age 13.

My grandmother died thinking of me as the bread and butter girl. My mother's older sister still goes straight back to that when reminiscing about me. Every year.

Every year certain patterns play out with the extended family. Aunt G (christened Gillette, doesn't go by that) talks about the pudgy little girl with the death grip on the bread that ignored everyone else. Aunt C remarks on how great I look *this year* (every year). However, 2011, she actually checked my finger for a ring, because she needed an explanation. And cousin M gets irritated that I won't keep trying to pry her out of the closet. (She sleeps with women. I need her to admit she's bi. It is not appropriate, my asking. But it's for her own good), but less so each year.

This year, however, is the first year that Aunt C and cousin K didn't try and preach Herbalife at us. Remarkable. But we still had the standard "Oh, those Jehovah's Witnesses..." conversation, since her older daughter is one, and therefore never comes over for dinner. In fact, she does remarkably little this time of year, because everything's tainted with too much celebration for her.

Completely unrelated (to everything but my breakfast), I only ever keep 2.5 cups max of water in my (large) kettle. I don't want to waste electricity boiling a bunch of water I'm not going to use. My sister battles with me on this when she's here, so I spend a fair amount of time pouring water down the drain when she's not looking.

I have no idea if it's significant, but I feel comfortable that as long as I'm boiling it dry every time, it's some small amount more efficient not to boil extra water. Throwing it away once it's been poured is probably a stupid waste, but I can't help it. I feel more for the electricity than the water here. Which means I'm not used to semi-desert yet.

Right. Tea's brewed.

Happy 2012, everybody. Let's hope it's a little kinder than 2011.

We went to the neighbor's last night, which was fun. They had another couple over, and the kids watched their three-year-old while the grownups went to dinner (we joined the party when they got back). M., the little one's stepmom, was incredibly sweet, and at the end of the night handed me a few rolled up bills to give to Sara, in thanks for her part keeping Ella occupied and happy all evening.

I didn't unroll it in front of her, because that seems rude, but I assumed it was a couple of dollars. M. said she'd given some to each of the girls for their help, although the neighbor's oldest, Isabel, was ostensibly the official babysitter.

I got it out of my pocket to give Sara this morning, and it's twenty freaking dollars. Of course, they're long gone, and I don't know them, so I don't have a way to protest that it's way too much, but wow. That's a lot of money to give an eight-year-old you just met for playing Barbies with your kid for a little while.

Woot! Looks like I'll be starting the new year out right with a movie date this evening.