Wake me when it is 2010!

I honestly had *no* intentions of staying up until midnight last night. We wound up not having company due to the rather inclement weather of yesterday, though Hubby did make the run out to our favorite Chinese restaurant for our traditional New Year's Eve dinner. We couldn't manage to play Wii Mario Kart while eating, so we flipped around and settled on the 70s classic That's Entertainment, which is the first of a documentary trilogy I adored as a child (and even rented many, many times from our local video store back when my family first acquired a VCR in the 80s. Yes, I was so hip as a preteen, I rented movie musical documentary videotapes) and which Hubby had never seen. We watched until the first movie ended (they were running all three in succession, followed by one I'd never seen called That's Dancing, which I totally would have recorded to watch today except for the fact that 90% of our DVR space is presently taken up with episodes of Bindi the Jungle Girl, aka Kiddo's latest obsession, and there wasn't room). Hubby then, quite sensibly, went to bed around 10pm. I shut off the TV and headed upstairs when he did, but sat down at my computer "to turn it off" ...and the next thing I knew, it was 11:46 and at that point, I figured if I was still up it would be silly not to stay up the extra 14 minutes. Kind of like getting within eyesight of the peak of Mt. Everest and then saying "Eh, I'm heading back to base camp." (Note: I never in my entire life have or will ever climb Mt. Everest, so this is possibly the most farfetched comparison I could make... I haven't even attempted to scale Mt. Clean Laundry that has reached rather towering heights atop my dresser in ages!) So, I shut off my computer, congratulating myself heartily on my fortitude so that I wouldn't get sucked back into the blogosphere (and/or my 23 current Wordscraper matches on Facebook) again at 12:03am. I curled up on the couch with the cat to watch the ball drop. I was happy to see Dick Clark seemed better this year than last. I didn't have the New Year's show on long enough to be terrifically annoyed by Ryan Seacrest or Kellie Pickler (though whatever genius hired her to speak extemporaneously on live TV must be worried about his/her job this morning) and before I knew it, the ball had dropped. Mission accomplished - 2009 it was!

Why I didn't immediately turn off the television and go straight up to bed at that point, I cannot say. Why I chose instead to peruse the channel guide and notice that Chicago was just starting on IFC and decide to flip over to catch the opening number is beyond me. I told myself "I'll just watch All That Jazz and then go to bed." Then All That Jazz ended and I remembered that McNulty from The Wire played Fred Casely in Chicago and I told myself "I'll just watch 'til the first commercial break and then go to bed." Yeah, one slight flaw with that brilliant plan: IFC doesn't have commercials. The crazy cat and I wound up watching the entire movie, which I will admit I haven't seen in its entirety in quite some time, and the next thing I knew, it was a quarter to two. This is the point at which any sensible, extremely tired, usual-bedtime-is-no-later-than-10pm kind of mature and responsible adult would've shut the TV off and headed up to bed straightaway, but some possessed part of me insisted upon surfing the channel guide one last time before convincing myself it was utterly ridiculous to think I could start watching That's Entertainment III which was starting in five minutes, because then I'd be up past 4am. I haven't done an all-nighter in decades, not counting those nights when Kiddo was ill and I *had* to be up with her over the past five and a half years. Seriously, I am the woman who goes to bed well before midnight even when on vacation in Vegas. I need my sleep.

So, I hefted the cat off of my lap and staggered upstairs to brush my teeth and collapse in bed at a most impressive 2:16 in the morning. Why is it, then, that my body decided it needed to be wide awake at its usual time of 6am?? By all rights, I shouldn't have cracked an eye open before noon, at least... Oh, right - my bladder. Darn thing insists on being emptied like clockwork at 6am. I fought it until 7, but then it became a necessity to get up. I attempted to go back to bed, but the smell of bacon wafting up from downstairs where Hubby was cooking breakfast and Kiddo was playing Diego Animal Rescue something-or-other on the Wii became too irresistible. So, here I am, awake but exhausted, and wishing I could spend the start of this new year snoozing away instead of taking down the tree and doing some serious tidying up. Thank heavens I have a decent supply of Mountain Dew Code Red left over from our drive to NJ last week. I may need to inhale some enormous quantities of peppermint bark as well, for purely medicinal purposes, of course - must get ample sugar in the blood to stay upright!

And thus concludes the cautionary tale I will remind myself of next New Year's Eve: I am TOO DANG OLD to stay up until midnight anymore.

Oh, while surfing the interwebz last night - erm, I mean last year (hee hee, sorry, I love those kinds of corny jokes on January 1st), I came across a video that I swear is exactly how I spent my post-midnight TV watching. I must share it with you now; the only difference is that I was watching a musical, not sports:



Hee hee! So, tell me, blogosphere friends, how many of you made it up 'til midnight? Were you partying or at home in your jammies like me? Anyone have any ambitious resolutions? If you are a Wii owner, are you as utterly pathetic at every Wii game imaginable as I appear to be? (Seriously, the only thing I have aced thus far is the Handbell Harmony game on Wii Music, and this comes after ringing handbells in real life for several years... but by that method, I ought to be much better at Mario Kart, tennis and bowling too...) Anyhow, Happy New Year!