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170th Friday Blog Roundup

Welcome back, Little Roundup.  Oh how I missed you last week when you were preempted by the Creme de la Creme.

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This is the story of a New Year’s kiss one decade ago:

I broke up with my boyfriend right before it turned from 1999 to 2000 because I was trying to do the right thing by releasing him once I realized we had no future rather than hold on to him so I could have a date for New Year’s Eve.  Except now I had no one to kiss at midnight AND it was pretty much the most important New Year’s Eve ever.  Millenniums, after all, only come around once every 1000 years…

My friend and I went to a party that night downtown and an acquaintance, M, offered to kiss me at midnight.  Around 11:45, I couldn’t find him and I started panicking that he had forgotten his promise, but at 11:58, I felt his hand on my shoulder and we counted down the last seconds until midnight when he gave me a great kiss right at the turning of the millennium.

Immediately after, he took my hand and led me up to a fire escape and we climbed out onto the roof.  We were completely alone and it was freezing, but someone was setting off firecrackers, so we had the city below us, and the firecrackers in the sky, and he gave me a long kiss up there as well.

He checked to make sure that I had gotten the moment I wanted to have, and when I agreed, we went back to the party, and life went on as usual.  I started dating Josh a few weeks later, we often bumped into M at parties, and the rest is history.

Or is it?

A few months after I became friends with Lindsay, she sent out a mass email for a New Year’s Eve party and M’s name was on the list.  I immediately wrote her about it and it turned out that M was a close friend and now I see him from time to time through her.  He is currently engaged and I couldn’t be happier for him.  I hope his wife-to-be knows what an amazing man she is getting–one who didn’t mock me for needing a pity kiss at midnight and who delivered a great moment ten-fold (fine, he may not have arranged the fireworks, but leading me up to the roof was a stroke of genius).

But that’s not even the end of the full circle.  When I told Lindsay this story, she told me that her millennial New Year’s kiss was also a just-friends kiss with the best friend of a fellow TOOTPUer.  How crazy is that?

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Weekly What If: Who was your millennial kiss if you had one?  What if you could pick anyone in the world to share a millennial kiss with and have that story to tell for the rest of your life, who would it be?

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I am still updating the Creme de la Creme.  I’m finishing up some work (you know, actual work that I get paid to do) so I’ve been sidetracked, but there are still over 40 posts that need to go up so I will keep rolling them out.  Whenever I update the post, I also update that note in the top right corner of my blog (under “Today”) with the time updated, the number of posts on the Creme, and the number of posts in the queue.

My goal is still to hit 300 by March 1st.  As of writing this, there are 236 on the list or in the queue.  Which means 64 of you still need to step forward with a favourite post from 2009.  If you haven’t submitted, do it for the sake of the new record if not for the love of being part of the community.

The Creme has made me massively behind on actually reading blogs in the here and now instead of trekking back to random months of the year.  So forgive me if I get my life under control and start commenting on three-week-old posts from Reader.  You’ve also probably noticed that I’ve been posting the LFCA the night before.  I’m not sure how long that will go on for–I’m easing into a new schedule, trying to get in a daily workout, and everything is getting shoved around for a bit.

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Skip this section if you don’t want to read about the twins:

For those invested in the story of Befana’s request (that saucy, audacious minx!),  tonight is the first night that they can leave their binkies on the top step for pick-up.  The ChickieNob has pointed out an obvious hole in the story–why would other children want used binkies, especially since she knows she’s not supposed to put someone else’s things in her mouth.  Well played, ChickieNob, well played.

After they held a post-bedtime meeting on Wednesday, they returned with negotiations: they may decide to give up the binky tonight, but only if she will promise to trash the binkies instead of giving them to other children.  They can’t stand the idea of someone else enjoying their binky when they can’t.  Since we make them do so much volunteer work, we told them that it was okay to leave the poor, binky-less Italian children high and dry this one time, but they may want to give extra tzedakah that week to balance out the binky wastefulness.

I know it’s time–I mean, three years ago was time–to give up the binky, but it’s the last babyish thing they have/do.  It’s hard to watch them give it up, though I’ll also be holding my breath tonight at bedtime to see if the binky stays in the bed or goes on the step.

Stay tuned.

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And now, the blogs…

Little Footprints has a post about missing Maddie and what she thinks when people lament that terrible mothers have their babies when AKD no longer has her Maddie.  She writes: “how does someone else losing their child make Maddie less gone? It’s not a bargain – their child being born healthy isn’t what caused Maddie to pass on.”  It is not a post condemning this line of thinking; but more why it doesn’t work for AKD and I loved the way she twisted the thought on its head.

BYOB–Buy Your Own Bean has a post about a meltdown after an ultrasound; not just because it was painful, but because it also felt like a bodily violation, even if it was in the medical sense.  She writes, “I felt like a kid being punished and I just wanted to pull up my pants and run out of there, never going back.”  As Mom Genes states in the comment section, it is a relief sometimes to hear someone ask the question aloud: “Do I really want to do this?”

The State That I Am In has a post about how her blog has evolved over time.  I think viewing yourself as a diarist, perhaps with a leaning towards one or two topics over others, is the healthiest way to allow a blog to stretch and grow rather than continuously uprooting and building new homes.  She writes: “So many blogs simply die out when life circumstances change.  My blog and I have evolved together, and I’m so happy that we have.”  I love how she discusses this idea in blogging and I think it’s a helpful post for so many who find themselves as a life circumstance crossroad.  I have thought about how my title essentially ties me to infertility forever unless I become a horseback rider, but I’m fine with that too.  This is the community where I think my heart will still belong long after family building is over.

Lastly, on the side note of community, The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow (I Hope) has a post that made me smile about our commonalities despite our differences.  Unafraid to figuratively sing a little stanza of Kumbaya, I think it’s an important reminder to return to when we’re feeling as if no one understands us.  Of course they don’t–no one can ever perfectly know the life of another person.  And it’s ridiculous to make statements about what any other group does or doesn’t know because we’re all lacking information about any life outside of our own.  Coming from that spot, we can still support one another through listening, head nodding, and as she says, remembering “that commonality. Our situations are all different, but the emptiness is the same.”

The roundup to the Roundup: return to your millennial kiss.  Answer the Weekly What If (who would it be, who would it be?).  Read and participate in the Creme de la Creme (and forgive my tardiness with everything else).  Befana’s request update.  And lots of great blogs to read.

32 comments

1 Missy { 01.08.10 at 9:20 am }

Would it ruin your story if I reminded you the millennium did not really start until a year later? Still a great story that shows what a small world it is. I pick DH to have my millennial kiss. Our first date was on NYE, but it was a few years late for the millennium.

2 LJ { 01.08.10 at 9:40 am }

Luckily thanks to the ISO 8601 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 – it is indeed considered by the global scientific community as having been the millenium. And she was a really good kisser, btw.

3 loribeth { 01.08.10 at 9:53 am }

Smart cookie, that ChickieNob. ; )

My Millennium New Year’s Eve kiss was from dh, but as I recently blogged, that night was a big disappointment all round for me, & likewise the midnight kiss. Being at FIL’s, the kiss was more of a peck than a real kiss. Sigh.

4 Lavender Luz { 01.08.10 at 9:54 am }

Just shows to go ya that the ALI community is EVERYWHERE and will soon take over the world.

Eager to see where the binkies end up!

5 Eve { 01.08.10 at 9:59 am }

Your little ChickieNob takes after her momma…wise and logical! GL with the binky-ridding. My ds was only two when we de-pacified him, so we cruelly cut the tips off of them to reduce the happy sucking sensations and then let him sleep with them (he would hold them like a precious stone in his fist) at first.

My Milennium New Year’s Eve kiss was from my dh…and filled with pre-infertiity passion! Oh, to be a newlywed again!!!!

6 Rayne of Terror { 01.08.10 at 9:59 am }

I’m pretty sure I didn’t have a midnight kiss because my now husband, then boyfriend had to work at the power company to make sure Y2K didn’t bring down all the power in central IL. But I was at a rockin party where we danced like it was 1999. And when Bob got home from work he brought some lovely gifts from the power company for their whole IT department.

7 serenity { 01.08.10 at 10:08 am }

I didn’t have a millennial kiss. Didn’t think twice about it at the time, but now I’m all sad that I missed my once in a millennium moment.

And your ChickieNob is one smart lady. 🙂

8 tash { 01.08.10 at 10:09 am }

I seriously had one of the worst NYE’s on record that year — I’m going to spare the who here, but Mr. and I (engaged, not married until ’00) went to a wedding on NYE (thank you for scheduling it then, people, and no it was not one we could miss, and yes we had to give up our hotel room downtown that we had booked months in advance so we could watch the fireworks and drink to excess) that was simply awful: really fundamentalist xn crap ceremony where he told us all we were going to hell. And a Happy New Year to you, too!

On the plus side: Apparently my first boyfriend and I made some deal that we’d look each other up NYE ’99 if we were single so we could spend it together. I completely forgot (he was kinda an asshole), so was shocked beyond words when my phone rang on 12/30 and it was him, keeping his promise. He was married, I was engaged, we had a nice 10 minute chat and he went up a few points in my book.

9 Blanche { 01.08.10 at 10:10 am }

I’m pretty sure 1999/2000 is when DH (as boyfriend) and I tried to throw a New Years Eve party that ended up being more of a disappointment than spending the evening together as just the two of us would have been. So my NYE kiss was with him, but it must not have been too memorable as it has been overshadowed by the party or lack thereof. 2000/2001 is the memorable one as that is the night when we got engaged, but not at midnight because DH couldn’t stand to wait that long.

10 a { 01.08.10 at 10:32 am }

My Millenium kiss was with my husband – we had just started dating a month or so earlier. I found out later that he blew off plans with another girl he was dating to spend NYE with me. I had to think about it though, because what I mostly remember is that’s when I quit smoking. I’m so romantic.

What a nice guy your M must be!

Chickie-Nob is a smart one, isn’t she? Have you sent in her law school application yet?

11 Kymberli { 01.08.10 at 10:38 am }

My kiss was from Frank the Fantastic. We were heading into our fourth year of marriage and also the the end of our second year ttc with no luck. On that night, we had our Kwanzaa karamu (feast) and we were surrounded by my family and the two families in our cul-de-sac who we loved like family. The tradition (not Kwanzaa, but for one of the visiting families who were Puerto Rican) is that the moment we cross over into the new year, everyone we would outside to bang on pots and pans and do a whole bunch of celebratory yelling. Frank and I had our kiss in the middle of the street amid all of the pot-banging and yelling. I felt a weird blend of joy at being surrounded by such good family and friends, but there was also a gut-wrenching despair that I felt. The pain of finiding out at Thanksgiving that my then 17-year old sister was pregnant was still raw. One of the odd, but somewhat related things that I remember from that night is the weight of my new puppy, a tiny full-bred rat terrier. She was so small that I put her in my sweatshirt’s hoodie when we ran outside and almost more than the kiss, I remember the feel of weight on my back as she curled up in the hood. She was my consolation Kwanzaa gift to myself. I couldn’t get pregnant, so I went and bought a dog.

12 Carrie { 01.08.10 at 10:47 am }

I just stopped the binky usage three nights ago. Mine are 15 months old, and they did not have one problem with getting rid of them. It was all mommy who just didn’t want to say to one more baby item.

13 niobe { 01.08.10 at 11:11 am }

My millenial kiss?

I’ll never tell.

14 Valery Val { 01.08.10 at 11:28 am }

yay for niobe!
Don’t Kiss and Tell!

15 Half of a Duo, Raising a Duo { 01.08.10 at 11:29 am }

Interesting topic about the Millenium kiss.

My millenium kiss was the DH. I was recovering from a very, very horrifically difficult surgery at Hopkins. It was post cancer.

Due to the loss of my twins my intestines and the rest of me was totally decimated from tons of bad surgeries. This surgery was supposed to “fix” the issues. Over time, it has.

However, that New Year’s, I had just returned from being cut from Stem to Stern, hipbone to hipbone, in a ginormous upside down “T”. It was a brutal recovery.

We watched TV and saw Greece celebrating their Millenium 7 hours before the USA. They are 7 hours ahead of us. So, we kissed then. Because, I could not handle staying up until midnight, given how weak I was, post surgery.

That is my Milennium kiss. A gratitude for life kiss. Not a gratitude for a stand-in kiss. I was and am so independent, I have spent many New Year’s alone and uncaring for the kiss.

That kiss had total meaniing to me. It meant, I was alive and the hope was, that my messed up body, due to the loss of my twins and the subsequent crappy surgeries that followed to mix that mess… would make me “all better”.

It did turn out that way but it took almost a decade to happen.

The anniversary of my mother’s death is this week. She was a beautiful, regal, classy woman who made really bad choices. Bad choices in choosing my father, who abandoned her. And choices that left my mentally impaired sister swinging in the wind, upon her death at the age of 61, looking like an angel…

I wrote a blog entry for her, and about, Defying Gravity. The song, from the Broadway musical, Wicked, was featured in one of the most moving Glee episodes EVER, which was on Thursday night as a repeat from Season 1. That episode can be seen online, on Fox, and the episode name is “Wheels”.

It totally resonated with me on many, many levels. This entry is one of the finest pieces I have ever written in my life. I cannot believe, reading it back, that my fingers actually wrote it. And, I wrote it with Mel’s Show and Tell in mind. It is this week’s Show and Tell.

It covers a lot of ground. A lot of topics.. Not just a tribute to my mother. A tribute to my sister T who is mentally impaired and how it affects me. About parenting boys and defying gravity all the time to keep them independent (we tossed their binkies at 3.5 mos the 2nd they slept thru the night and so glad we did).

I’d love it if y’all would come on over and see… the wonders of Defying Gravity. And learn about this phenomenal show called Glee. Listen to the song, and LOVE IT. Be moved, by the voices of two young angels. Lea Michelle and Chris Colfer. It will give you goosebumps to hear the song and it will make you DVR the show and become a SUPER GLEEK like me.

http://micrimas.blogspot.com/2010/01/defying-gravity-weightless-and.html

16 jesspond { 01.08.10 at 12:08 pm }

My millenium kiss was Travis (my husband Travis) and it was our first New Year’s together.

17 Queenie { 01.08.10 at 1:07 pm }

I don’t even remember my millenial kiss, but since T. and I have been together for 15 years (the anniversary of our first date is next week!), it was certainly him. It’s so funny how things take on a different significance, depending on where you are in a relationship (or, NOT in a relationship).

I totally love that you’ve been posting the L&F at night. It gives me something to do when the middle-of-the-night insomnia that’s been vexing me strikes. The only problem is trying to type comments without waking poor T.

18 Kate { 01.08.10 at 1:35 pm }

I wanted to submit to Creme de la Creme but I changed blogs three times and so my good stuff is in my old password protected blogs. I will look to see if there is anything worth posting in the few months I blogged in my current site of 2009 though.

19 Caro { 01.08.10 at 2:01 pm }

My millennium kiss was with S (my then boyfriend), we were in Edinburgh with friends and it was a fun (but cold) night.

20 Ellen K. { 01.08.10 at 2:27 pm }

My millenial kiss was with a college friend who liked me and whom I was trying to convince myself I might be happy with in the long-term. It was a pretty good kiss, followed by more powers of persuasion the next day, since he was visiting from out of town. Three weeks later I met D., and we started dating. I think I would have liked to have been kissing someone else on that NYE… maybe “the one who got away.”

21 Kristin { 01.08.10 at 4:56 pm }

My millennium kiss was from my hubby. Yeah, I’ve been married that long.

22 Geochick { 01.08.10 at 4:58 pm }

My millenial kiss was DH after we had been dating about 6 months. Ironically, that night was a turning point for us and may have been the first time I thought I could marry this guy I’ve been seeing for a while. I don’t know who I would pick other than him. Yep, that’s the right answer. 😉

23 Vee { 01.08.10 at 5:05 pm }

My millennium kiss was from Max, we had met on Boxing day the week before. We went to a party then went to the beach and kissed as we lay in the sand on a beautiful summer balmy night.

24 HereWeGoAJen { 01.08.10 at 9:25 pm }

I was dating Matt then, so I kissed him. And he is just who I would have picked anyway.

25 Paz { 01.08.10 at 11:22 pm }

Oh, I had a doozie. And I won’t tell either.

26 coffeegrl { 01.09.10 at 12:32 am }

My millenial kiss turned into my husband. We had literally just started dating the night before (after knowing each other and communicating long distance for 6 months). We were finally in the same place and celebrated in a big way. To this day, Dec. 31st is a far more meaningful anniversary to me than even our wedding anniversary which came more than 5 years later. When I consider that we’ve only been married for 4 years it seems sort of silly since we’ve really been *together* for 10 years now. I wouldn’t trade that moment for anything!

27 luna { 01.09.10 at 2:32 am }

I was lucky to be with my hub and spent the new year dancing outside under the stars with him and my cousin and his girlfriend. there may or may not have been illicit activities involved.

er. and on another note. that chickienob! well played indeed. I love their little analytical minds. can’t wait to see what happened.

28 Manapan { 01.09.10 at 10:52 pm }

Gotta love ChickieNob. Logical kids are the cutest!

I was barely 14 years old on NYE 1999. My best (female) friends and I had a slumber party. We watched intently as the time changed in the Eastern time zone to make sure there weren’t going to be any Y2K issues. Then, since we live where the time zone changes from Central to Mountain, we stood next to the dividing line at midnight Central time / 11 pm Mountain time and hopped from one millennium into the other over and over again, laughing all the while. Kissing? I’d say we were way too immature for that kind of nonsense. 🙂 And I wouldn’t have the story any other way.

29 Erica { 01.10.10 at 12:18 am }

Poor me. I had no millenium kiss. Just a lot of booze.

30 Battynurse { 01.11.10 at 12:53 am }

Oh man. My millennial kiss. As long as I live I will never forget that. No matter how much I would rather I did. 1999’s move into 2000 I was with my ex D who to put it quite mater of factly was a serious alcoholic and I was dumb and stupid enough at that point to think I could fix him. We decided to get some whiskey and put it in Soda bottles with soda and go downtown Spokane for the party that we were sure was going to happen. It had been snowing a lot for several days. We took the bus so there would be no driving. Walked around a lot and were having fun at first. Went on the Merry Go Round and tried ice skating (not a good plan). Then as was the usual progression of events, D started to get mean and nasty. He took off walking, leaving me behind. This freaked me out because he’d miss the last bus and my house keys were locked in his house. Plus it was my “job” to keep track of him. So I followed him. Which led to a very loud and noisy fight on a street corner in which there was some shoving and there might have been more (I was fairly drunk and things were hazy). Ended up with D getting arrested about 15 minutes before midnight and me getting a ride to the jail to get his keys and then back to his house in the drunk van. Yeah. Sucked donkey balls.

31 Kate (Bee In The Bonnet) { 01.11.10 at 4:17 pm }

Ugh. The millenial kiss. That would be with the guy who I shared one of the worst relationships I’ve ever been in. I dated him for two years and pretty much hated him the whole time. I still don’t know why I did that. Anyhow, we had just started dating two months prior, and I broke up with my last partner in order to date him. However, my prior partner and I had been friends for years before we dated, and were still friends afterward. So I kissed the awful boyfriend at midnight and then kissed the prior partner immediately afterward. I preferred the friendly kiss with the prior partner, frankly.

However, if I had to do it all over again, I would have kissed my husband at the millenium turn. I didn’t even know he existed yet, he was dating someone else, living almost 2000 miles away, didn’t even know that he would be moving to my town in just a few months. But he did decide to come to the PhD program at UT and he did meet my friend in a Sanskrit class, and his girlfriend did break his heart while they were overseas for his research, priming him to meet me on his return from his overseas research. It’s weird to think that this person that is so central to my life now wasn’t even a whiff of a thought in my head when this millenium began. So if I could do it over again, I would have had him in my life back then. My millenial kiss would have been with the love of my life, the one I can’t imagine being without, not with the train-wreck of a person that it was actually with.

32 Jamie { 01.11.10 at 10:07 pm }

I had my first job as an RN in 1999. All the nurses employed in the unit were required to be present at midnight. I remember standing by my patient who was on a ventilator and waiting for the clock to strike midnight – the doctors and administrators thought all the equipment was going to go kaput – when I noticed the date on my ventilator’s screen said August 23, 1986. I thought to myself, “What a waste of my freaking time.” I could have been doing something cool!

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