This font color is called "thistle."
It's probably some sort of bad omen to begin a new year with a font color called "thistle," what with thistles being a traditional symbol of curses, poverty, and unyielding land.
But when *I* think of thistles, I think of the brown bundle of them my mom inexplicably kept, for about 10 years, in the garage of my first home. I think of how I used to get them mixed up with cat-tails, and how my dad used to warn me "don't touch that one" when we'd go on little walks out on the county property near our house. I think of butterflies and those little crappy blue flowers that grow all over the damned place. Thistles make me think of childhood, and innocence, and being hyper and running around.
Those are my hopes, kind of, for this year.
I'm going to be a mother this year. I mean, I already AM a mother this year, (as the little one is content to remind me, via an impending migraine and an incessant need to urinate every ten seconds)... I'm going to have a daughter, or a son, at whom I can preach not to try to pick thistles. No, no: don't put your finger in that, that's poopy. No, no: don't play games in the washing machine. No, no: don't pull Uncle John's hair out, don't pull the doggy's tail, let go of Daddy's nose.
I'm going to be a wife soon. Jake and I are going to wait awhile, I think, so we can get our shit together, and so both our families can be there, and so that we can have some time to get to know each other better. But we're both pretty sure. Neither one of us is the "gotta get married so we don't have a bastard kid" sort; we're just the sort who magically seem to love one another.
And all that stuff I said before about marriage? About it being the end of all the fun, and the end of screwing around, and playing...? About getting married and then just sort of dying? I don't really believe that anymore. Not for me. Not for Jake and I. We're both just a couple of little kids, down deep. I can find a party in a bottle of bubble bath and a cheeseburger, and Jake's a dreamer, a traveller, an adventurer. We're both kinda nuts, and we both kinda like it that way. Every morning when I wake up next to him, I poke him and he says something stupid in his sleep, which he won't remember ten minutes later, and then I make fun of him, and he makes fun of me for being whiny and pregnant, and... and then we grin, mutter corny nicknames at each other, and confess stupid squishy mushy things... And I very, very much hope that it could all stay exactly like that, for a bazillion more mornings...
I think 2003 will be a hell of a year.
I still dearly, dearly love Washington, by the way... REALLY, I do. Oh, it's been raining here every damned day for what seems like about twenty years, but I love it anyway.
But watching the elevator on the Space Needle mark the New Year's countdown??? Please!!!
I dunno; somehow, watching the ball drop in Times Square seems much more apocalyptic. Pictures of NYC are ALWAYS apocalyptic, always have been. As a New Yorker by birth (and, often, temperament), I firmly believe that one should end a year with a clearly defined sense of doom and damnation (for example, watching the ball drop in Times Square and counting backwards, loudly...), and should then quickly turn the television off, and eat something delicious. And, preferably, kiss somebody, and gleefully suppose that you've survived some sort of world-ending mass-casualty. Call me morbid, but I just don't think the Space Needle is creepy enough.
I have a headache. I'm going to go do some slacking.
Happy new year...
Love,
~Helena Thomas*
(soon to be Helena Jensen... *big smile*)