New Year's Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

Mark Twain, in case you were wondering.

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Hey this is a total bonus! I am not sure how I will explain the $.49 charge on my credit card bill to H., but it’s not like he’ll mind, just be curious. He already thinks I am obsessed, that’s all I need is to be downloading books now. But I ADORED Time Traveler’s Wife and want to read more Niffenegger.

I read a Ruth Rendell, The Babes in the Wood, which I started after reading this article on Salon. Okay, it was a well-written book, and I enjoyed the character of Wexford, but the mystery itself – completely lame. Solution out of thin air. I HATE when that happens. I wasn’t wildly impressed, as I expected to be. Which is a shame because otherwise, I’d be delighted to have found a wealth of decently written novels to plow through.

I read Sophie Kinsella’s newest, The Undomestic Goddess, in something like three hours last night. It’s pretty much a rehash of her Shopaholic books, but I liked the character of Samantha Sweeting better. She wasn’t as…dumb? irresponsible? annoying?... as Becky Bloomwood. I had a tough time not screaming at those books, “For God’s sake, the solution is simple - STOP SPENDING MONEY you haven’t got!” after a while. Anyway, there are worse ways to spend a few hours than reading a brain-candy book.

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I went to bed at 9 p.m. last night. If people shot off guns and firecrackers at midnight…I slept right through it all, though Terzo was up at 12:30 to eat. My big brother is in town for the weekend, come to visit his nephews and give them waaayyy too many Christmas presents. Not that I don’t appreciate his generosity.
So we played with Primo’s new games – Pit and Battleship (Does anyone else remember that commercial: “You sunk my battleship!”?) and ate most of a huge spinach lasagna and drank wine and watched the second half of “The Polar Express” and went to sleep.

H. baked another cranberry-walnut piecake and has declared that his version is better than mine. Fine. He can take over the baking anytime. When he has managed to bake something perfectly while getting the two older boys lunch and holding the baby, then I will be impressed. Until then, I hold my tongue. At least around him.

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Now, about “The Polar Express.” I anticipated hating it – the animation in the previews creeped me out. But I found myself enjoying the film, and not being too distracted by the weird-ass animation – even if the facial expressions particularly were very odd. And the Hobo character was just plain creepy. But I found myself really liking the Conductor. And Santa Claus was wonderful – he looked like a cross between the typical “Coca-Cola” Santa and a religious icon of Saint Nicholas. Perfect and lovely. So while I think making it a full-length feature film was a mistake, I still liked it well enough to add it to the Christmas canon.

The Polar Express theme? Very reminiscent of a particular Sibelius theme, that I can’t get out of my head. I need to go see which Sibelius it reminds me of.

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Badger mentioned the Harriet Carter catalog on her blog yesterday and I spent a pleasant half hour perusing the website and laughing so hard I nearly hurt myself. So I decided to go shopping for H.’s family, virtually speaking. And God, did I have a good time. And lots of laughs. I am not a nice person. But you knew that. Didn’t you?

For my Perfect sister-in-law, this apron. It should accentuate her new boobs and flat tummy.

For her husband, this pig crumber. Because apparently he carried around with him for quite some time, instead of a WSJ article about re-hymnenization, a silver table crumber. But I’ll bet this one makes noise. And if it doesn’t, it should.

For my mother-in-law, these toaster bags. I don’t know why, they just seem to fit her, ahem, culinary style.

For my father-in-law, the man who really does have everything, as anyone who has ever tried to shop for him can attest: this lovely silver…toothpick holder???!!!!

For my beloved husband, this tissue dispenser, because it’s just so damn classy! Who cares that he married someone just one step up from trailer park?

Or wait, this cotton-ball-shitting bunny is even better.

And this melon thingey is for the sister-in-law for whom we once bought a microwave onion cooker. Because she can’t. Cook, that is. At all. I do actually really like her, but her lack of culinary skills is astounding.

Ok, enough pettiness and mean-spiritedness. My New Year’s resolutions this year? Something like being a nicer person and not yelling at my kids so much. We’ll see how that goes. Losing fifteen pounds might be easier.

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This fill-in-the-blank thingey (do I dare use the M word?) snagged from Blackbird.
Mine is not yet filled in because I wish to ponder on it a bit longer. So think about it. I will. And then we will all be enlightened…or something like that.

Here are the fill-in-the-blank sentences:

1. Stop buying -----because -----
2. Use more of -----
3. Get rid of -----
4. Change my -----
5. Concentrate on -----
6. Try to be -----

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And now – church and then to my in-laws for that New Year’s huge delicious porky hunk of porky goodness, as Joke put it. Or maybe it was Badger? I forget. But you get the idea. Pork flesh. With that pineapple soufflé thing and Hungry Jack biscuits and good-luck sauerkraut and for dessert, good-luck pretzel (is this only a ‘burgh thing?)