Having worked more New Year’s Eves than not, my whole attitude on the holiday can be summed up in one syllable: “eh.”

Seeing the Philistines come out of the wood work–anxious for whatever it is they think midnight will bring–documenting their descent into drunkenness with every broken glass, fielding their babbling amateur requests, and cleaning up after them once they’ve purged themselves of a less than stellar previous 365 days(I’ve been puked at 17 times) has pretty much soiled the holiday forever, for me.

Now that I’ve got a day job, my goal is to get home as early as possible and stay there until the revelry has passed. This year we watched our 6 year old niece and nephew and snacked on whatever meat and cheese we could (how do parents ever eat?!) in between Zingo, Gameboy playing, drawing, Iron Giant watching, couch diving, S’more cooking, kid wrestling, tickle fighting, mommy missing, story telling, song singing, jammy wrangling, cat chasing, and tooth brushing. You can’t look away for a second or somebody’s going straight into the corner of the coffee table. And it occured to me…

It was like handling two little drunks.
Huh.
At least, this year, there was no spew.
(Though I think we were 1/2 a S’more away)