Ringing in the New Year With Inertia and PJs

My champagne's going flat fast in a fancy glass from our Las Vegas wedding at Paris. A pair of rich Belgian chocolate morsels with the name of one of my husband's corporate business partners stamped on them are melting langourously down my espophogus right now.

I've watched enough rebroadast for our coast (West), awkwardly headset-crowned Ryan Seacrest to fumble around the nooks and crannies of the couch for the remote and hit the "off" button. But I won't. I'm trying to be a good sport about the New Year.

A shrill baby is crying somewhere in my sleepy neighborhood. Sleepy except for the skater kids smacking their boards against the pavement right outside my oblivious sons' bedroom window. For once, I'm thrilled the wailing child is not one of mine. (Ironically, as I go back and edit this post for a few typos, one of my kiddies IS now crying -- Moody Cheeks McGee, 3, in the top bunk. He's practically never slept through the night.)

All three of my kids were in bed tonight by 7 p.m. In bed, yes. Asleep, no.

It was nearly serendipity. Until they nodded off around 7:45 p.m., I read just "the clean parts" to each of them from my bizarre and hilarious Augusten Burroughs Running With Scissors memoir, long enough to rev them up enough to forget they were exhausted in the first place.

This is the third year in a row that I've ushered in the New Year in boring form, sitting on my ass at home with my husband, who is also sitting on his ass. Except his ass is clad in his cherished wool "old man" cable nicotine smoked laced knit sweater. I'm in the living room and he's in his dude den, the garage, where he's just put up a dart board I gave him for Christmas. Clearly, we need to get a life.

Hey, at least I sit on my ass while clutching a haughty champagne flute, even if it's brimming with cheap Freixenet Carta Nevada Brut. Double fermented in a hurry somewhere in Spain is good enough for me.

This year I'll try not to sleep through the New Year like an aging hag, like I did on New Year's Eve 2004-5. We'd just moved into our new home. The kids were 3, 1 and 2 months. I was toast. Burnt toast. A new number at the end of 200 was the farthest thing from my then overwhelmed, survival mode mind.

For the record, with the kids now nearly 6, 3.5 and 2, I'm still overwhelmed and deeply entrenched in survival mode. Except now I run like a wild banshee to blow off the resulting steam.

I told my husband that next New Year's we are getting a sitter and heading off to the Giant Maximus New Year's Eve party. Nah. I just heard on the news that tickets are 100 bucks each at the door. What a rip.

Maybe we'll settle for the bash at the nearby Queen Mary in Long Beach. Sheesh. Just Googled that one and it's 89 smackers. Another rip. How dull that I'm already financially planning for next New Year's Eve. Wet blanket city.

My resolutions, in no particular order, include:
- Running three-miles three times a week
- Spend more QT with each of my three kids, much of it on an individual level
- Finish my book (hell, I still have to finish the first three chapters due on March 8)
- Rigorous yoga at the studio once a week
- Donate all no longer needed toys/kid clothes to the local women and children's homeless shelter, and teach my children the values of volunteerism
- Raise more funds than last year for our family's annual American Cancer Society Relay for Life walk/run, honoring my father and those who weren't so lucky in their battle against the disease
- Run the 10K Turkey Trot, as opposed to the 3K that I ran this year
- Be a better, more supportive, more romantic wife, planning exciting dates and everyday surprises
- Not keeping any of these half-baked resolutions

How did you ring in the New Year? Uneventfully in your matching pinstriped jammies on your couch like me? Rare and bizarre stories only, please.

Happy New Year.