Pathetic New Year

I am an unashamed design show watcher. I love all of them, I watch DIY and HGTV and TLC and the random shows anywhere else I can find them. I admit, it's a guilty pleasure.

Did you know that once, many years ago, I almost enrolled in the Institute for Design in Dallas when I lived there? Only thing that stopped me was that the people I emailed for information never responded, and I got mad, and refused to pursue the issue further.

Anyhow, this is the story of how design shows equaled perhaps the most pathetic new year's eve and new year's day of my life. At the time, I was single and living in an apartment alone in Dallas. I was more than just single, I was extremely single, radically single. Single to the point of having no friends outside of work. Single to the point of getting off work on Friday, renting 6 movies at Blockbuster, and not setting foot outside my apartment door again until Monday morning, when I left for work. I was much more than single... I was alone.

New Year's Eve rolled around, and being as single as I was, I had no plans. I am not sure how I ended up watching Trading Spaces, but it was their New Year's marathon, which meant that they were showing them all that day, through the midnight celebrations and long into the next day. Somehow, I started watching them... and I kept watching them. I watched them through supper, and long into the night. I heard celebrations outside at midnight only because it was in between episodes. I fell asleep on the couch that night watching Trading Spaces with my cat. And when I woke up the next morning, I watched some more, until they started showing the same episodes that I had seen the night before. Then I turned off the TV, gathered up the cat, and went to my bed for a long nap.

Pretty sad, eh? I celebrated the end of the year, and the beginning of a fresh one on the couch, alone, watching design shows.

Wanna know something even worse?

The next year? When I was still in Dallas, still single, still alone? I actually PLANNED to spend my New Year's that way.

Fast forward to my life today. Mike and I rarely stay up to midnight to welcome in the new year. We generally fall asleep at our normal hour, and get up the next day to enjoy the start of a fresh year. This is how we prefer it. Because you know what? Awake or asleep, conscious or not, I am right where I want to be each New Year's Eve now. In the arms of the man who rescued that sad, sad girl off her lonely couch and gave her something to look forward to, something to really celebrate.