The Time of My Life...or not

So did you have the absolutely awesomest night last night? Was it full of hip, happening clubs, limos and champagne toasts surrounded by all your friends who were all also having the time of their lives? No? Me neither. I spent my night playing eighty-five hands of Uno with a seven year old, although, my evening did also include a large amount of good champagne.

Is it me, or is New year's Eve the single, most overrated night of the year? While my current life circumstance eliminates any pressure, I still remember what it felt like in my late teens and early twenties to make amazing plans for the big night and, somehow, they always fell short of my expectations. I think I always felt I should be at some big, beautiful, formal party with tons and tons of fun people and where I usually wound up was in some dive bar surrounded by idiots with one of my gals in a fight with their boyfriend. One memorable New Year's, spent in Albany, the bar featured a drink called Moose Piss, which was a half-pitcher of shots poured over ice and I spent the five minutes prior to midnight running away from some guy intent on a 12:01 lip-lock. Obviously, H and I were apart that night, he in New Jersey doing something equally lame, and in this time before cell phones, this also wound up being the night I called my future in-laws house seven times, not remembering the first six calls, looking for H, at which point my father in-law asked, "Do you need me to come get you somewhere?" How he allowed his son to continue dating me, never mind marry me, is still a mystery.

Once we graduated from college, my girlfriends and I admitted our defeat finding venue that suited our tastes and did not include drinks with reference to mammalian waste products, and decided to take turns hosting an overnight getaway each year at our respective newlywed homes. And while this solved the locale dilemma, the specter of new Year's expectations still floated about, causing the New Year's 1998 freak-out, where upon I stomped out of H's and my apartment, my two best friends in hot pursuit, telling B to stop using her "therapist voice" on me to calm me down and wailing in the street, "Why is this party so dead?? I thought we'd have more fun than this!! Why aren't we dancing???" To which my sage friend, M, replied, "Maybe if you stopped playing Frank Sinatra things might liven up."

For the foreseeable future, there will be no pressure for H and I to make any grand plans, as #1 has now reached the age where she wants to stay up and watch the ball drop, which is why two of my most honored guests are Milton and Bradley. And while this will continue for years, as more of the offspring join us watching Carson Daly (Dick Clark is too depressing and Ryan Seacrest is too eager for him to die, reminding me too clearly of my own mortality on the last night of the year), that pressure is still there, lurking in the background, waiting for them to all be teenagers and ditch their boring parents. At that point my vision of the perfect New Year's Eve will return, because as I have matured, I have finally distilled this idea down to its essence. It will be at a party like the one at the end of When Harry Met Sally, in a big ballroom, with me wearing some gorgeous gown, dancing with H as confetti falls around us at the stroke of midnight. And, dammit if I have to throw it myself, so be it.