12/30/1999
Thursday
Reading: Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult for my online book group.
Sickness Update: This virus, or whatever it is, continues to hang on. Daniel is still running a slight fever of just under 101. He said he was feeling fine so we sent him to school again. Tab, however, is feeling better today, as are Stephen and Matthew.
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One Year Ago
I was tidying up today and came across one of my old, offline diaries. I've hardly written in it since starting this online journal last January, although every once in awhile I'll jot down some of my less coherent rants.
I thought for fun I'd include here my entries from last December 30 and 31.
December 30, 1998
Here I am getting a jump on one of my resolutions for 1999: to write in my journal every day. I hope this one lasts longer than most of my resolutions. I'll have to give up something in order to make it happen. The logical time for me to write is at night before Tab comes up to bed, but those few precious minutes are almost the only time I have for pleasure reading during the day. Nevertheless, I must make the time for this. It is important to me to capture my days, or at least a piece of them, as my life goes hurtling past me.
I go to bed tonight with an unsatisfied feeling of things left undone (laundry, dishes, Christmas thank you notes and unreturned e-mails; of things poorly done (the floppy drives on my PUP machine now no longer functioning, thanks to my meddling with its insides); and of things I shouldn't have done (agreeing to the Coleridge project way back in Oct. and becoming possessed by acquisitive mania on eBay). My only consolation is that tomorrow, as Scarlett O'Hara says, is another day. A fresh page, a new leaf, a clean slate. Funny how all those old clichés have to do with writing. Each day we live, whether we record it or not, is another page written, another leaf turned--in whose book?
Strangely enough, I did manage to keep this resolution, though when I made it, I was not thinking of keeping an online diary. I wrote almost every day of 1999, although I didn't always post what I wrote in a timely manner (or at all, sometimes).
December 31, 1999
A very quiet, unexciting New Year's Eve for us. Stephanie spent the evening in our living room watching Diagnosis: Murder and ER. Tab hung out on the couch, stripping CDs out of the jewel boxes and putting them into plastic sleeves for his new storage system. I was at the computer, re-installing Internet Explorer since something with my Dial-up Connection inexplicably stopped working after I uninstalled another, totally unrelated application. At 11:45, I shut down the computer and joined Tab on the couch to watch the ball drop in Times Square in the company of Dick Clark and half a million foolhardy souls who braved the freezing cold temps of New York.
We talked about New Years Eves past: twelve years ago, my first with Tab, he came up to visit me in Portland and we attended the First Night festivities and the fireworks in Monument Square; seven years ago we went to Williamsburg after Christmas with Stephanie and Mary and we toasted in the New Year in front of the Governor's Palace; other years we hosted parties on New Year's Eve with music, games, and good food.
As Tab said, "We used to have fun. Now we have children."
Somehow, I doubt our New Year's Eve tomorrow will be very different from last year's.
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