New Years Resolutions

For the last 21 years, I have lived my life by school year calendars.  For as long as I have had any concept of the passage of time, the year has begun for me in late August or early September.  Andy begins another semester of grad school tomorrow, and it just occurred to me that for the first time since I was four, I neither attend nor work in a school.  This is very scary.  My concept of time is diminishing - I have no place to be at any particular time on any given day.  Mealtimes and the rising and setting of the sun are the only things keeping my routine regular and human.  Now I don't even have the refreshing, exciting sensation of a year beginning anew, accompanied by the purchasing of crisp notebooks and sharp pencils, to mark the passage of time.

I think now would be a good time to make some New Years Resolutions.  I feel like something momentous has to occur to punctuate this point in time when I would normally embark on another year's journey.  Perhaps my slavish attachment to the academic calendar might also explain my failure to adhere to New Years Resolutions made on December 31sts of the past.

On the eve of 2009, I resolved not to have even one hangover in the upcoming year.  For me, this is a big deal, not because I'm a drunk, but rather because I have no alcohol tolerance.  Whatever small and alleged percentage of Native American DNA I inherited seems to have rendered my liver about as effective as that of an Asian toddler.  I get drunk pathetically easily, and my hangovers are epic.  We're talking entire 24-hour periods of projectile vomiting and general incapacitation.

So, as the ball began to drop and idiots across an entire timezone began to count backwards from 10, I was feeling very smug and self-righteous.  I thought 2009 would finally be the year I would learn to drink responsibly, which, for me, would probably mean drinking very little or not at all.  I didn't get drunk that night, so I figured I was off to a pretty solid start.

My resolve lasted for about 43 days.  Then, tragedy struck.  I like to call it the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of My Liver.   It was a Thursday night.  February 12th.  Andy and I both had off from work the next day, so we went into Philly with his friend John to get some drinks at National Mechanics.  I stole a pub glass with Frank Rizzo's face on it, so the night wasn't a complete wash, but it was ultimately an epic fail for my liver and my dignity.

A couple of pitchers into the evening, I had had about 3 beers and was feeling pretty ridiculous.  Andy and John were way ahead of me and keeping pace with one another.  Despite Andy's considerable height advantage over John, Andy was visibly drunk yet John was holding steady, lucidly lecturing us about libertarians and Ayn Rand.  I tried to jump in and contradict him with something about Hobbes' Leviathan that sounded really intelligent in my head, but in retrospect almost certainly made no sense. 

Fast forward another hour or so and we are walking back to the PATCO.  Walking is a generous term, though.  Zombies and rickets-sufferers are more graceful, and I'm pretty sure John had everything to do with our actually making it to the train station.*  But we made it to the platform and eventually we were homeward bound.  I fell asleep in my seat, although when you're that drunk, it's probably called 'passing out.'  I regret this, because I would give any amount of money to actually have witnessed what happened next.

The train was approaching our stop.  Andy got up to wait by the doors, presumably so he could lunge out of the train and vomit into the nearest receptacle or possibly onto the ground.  Time was not on his side, however.  As the train began to grind to a stop, he threw up IN HIS MOUTH.  Valiantly, he tried to hold it in, pressing his lips tightly together, his cheeks puffed out.  Alas, the pressure was too great.  Like the Deepwater Horizon, he spewed forth his toxic sludge, all over the closed doors of the train.

By this point, I was awake and staggering to the doors myself, but I had already missed the show and the regurgitated-Yuengling-coated doors had already parted and slipped out of sight.  I didn't learn of Andy's performance until we were almost home, where I immediately ran to the bathroom to unleash my own horizontal geyser of poison.  As I paused to come up out of the toilet bowl for air, I realized that I was not alone.  Andy was behind me, puking into the sink. 

The next day was brutal.  Eating was not an option.  Advil was no solace, because any foreign substances, including water, were immediately ejected from my body.  Around 3, we decided something had to give.  I rallied and took a shower, and we set out for Toscana, hoping that an early Valentine's dinner of pizza and soda would cure us.  Despite the shower, I was still feeling awful, so I wisely threw a few plastic bags in my purse for the car ride. 

We arrived a little after 4, and the parking lot was deserted, save for a Jeep and a handful of other cars.  For reasons I can't understand, Andy decided to park next to this Jeep, even though he had practically the entire rest of the parking lot to himself.  He whipped into the parking space and I felt an uncontrollable eruption brewing.  I frantically threw my face into a bag without a second to spare.  As I lifted my head to wipe my mouth, I saw a man sitting in his Jeep, staring down at me in disgust.  We quickly drove away and found a more remote parking spot.  I threw my bag of shame on the ground near the car and we went inside the restaurant.

Like the parking lot, the restaurant was largely deserted.  They sat us in a dark corner, but I'm sure the waiter could still see my bloodshot eyes.  He was certainly judging me and probably thought I was a crackhead.  No, I wanted to explain.  You misunderstand - I'm not a crackhead, I've just been vomiting all night and all day and I'm very, very hungry.  I made Andy order for me, because I wasn't sure I could speak a complete sentence without barfing.  Then I went to the bathroom to throw up some more.  Horrifically, a worker who spoke no English was mopping the bathroom and wouldn't let me in.  I slunk back to my seat, breathing deeply and doing everything in my power not to explode.

Eventually, I gained entry to the bathroom and barfed a few more times before the food came.  I ate about half a slice before I realized it was still too soon, so we boxed up the rest and drove home, our tails between our legs.  It was a sad day for New Years Resolutions.

Properly chastised, I managed to pass through the rest of 2009 without any more major incidents.  My liver even rallied and I somehow was able to attend my class reunion and consume an inordinate number of gin and tonics.  I don't know how I wasn't falling down or gravely ill, or how I managed to attend my cousin's 11th birthday party the next day without inciting questions as to why I smelled like a distillery.

After 2009's abject failure, I was determined to make 2010 a success.  I made the same resolution, and solemnly vowed to keep it.  This would be the year I would really become an adult.  I would finish grad school, get married, become a librarian.  I could do all those things, AND not be hungover.  I would be a Super Adult.

This year, my resolution lasted about one hour.  New Year's Day was very confusing for me.  I awoke on a bed in my future in-laws' house, with my then-fiance on a trundle bed below me.  I don't remember leaving the party, or throwing up in the car on the way home, but I'm told I made quite the exit and had to be carried into the house.  I was fully clothed in fancy dress and pantyhose, which would have been a sufficiently awkward and uncomfortable reality to wake up to, except I also had a splitting headache, cottonmouth, and increasingly dire urge to purge.  I spent the next few hours drifting in and out of consciousness, trying to drink water, regurgitating said water, and falling back to sleep.  By late afternoon, I had changed out of dress and pantyhose, just in case I had to be taken to the hospital for dehydration.

The next morning, Andy left for Idaho, and I didn't see him until March.  I'm amazed he still wanted to marry me after he spent three months carrying around a last impression of me puking and skulking around looking like a heroin addict. 

So, clearly, the problem with keeping these resolutions isn't my lack of resolve.  It's just that I'm making these resolutions at the wrong time of year.  There's no sense of renewal or of wiping the slate clean in barren, bleak January.  Fall is clearly a more appropriate time, when we are renewing our ambition and sharpening our intellect.  Now is the time for resolutions!

This year, I resolve to do the following:

1)  Get a job.

2)  Knit a scarf.

3)  Write at least 3 chapters of my book.

4)  Not get a hangover.  Seriously.  For real this time.

5)  Not poop myself while running.

What are YOUR resolutions?




*Andy just reminded me of the part where we walked through Washington Square past the tree that had been to the moon (as a seed, as a sapling, I'm not sure).  I guess we were very excited to see the moon tree, and to express my excitement, I did something that really isn't out of the ordinary for me:  I mooned it.  


Also, now that I'm thinking about it, we walked through the park on the way to the Wawa at 9th and Walnut, at my urging.  It's like I have built-in superhuman sonar for Wawas.  I probably couldn't have told you my own address at that point, but I still knew exactly where to get my Wawa fix.


For those of you who have never been to the Mid-Atlantic states, Wawa is the single greatest convenience store ever created.