Resolved

Well, day one of 2007 prompted a resolution from me after all.

New Year’s Day found me over at my grandmother’s house, exhausted and hung-over from the previous evening’s celebration. (Note: once you are dancing while drinking really cheap champagne-like substance from the bottle, your night is as good as over. There is nowhere to go from that). To get there, I had to abandon the perfectly good patch of floor where I slept, and where I enjoyed several hours of yummy food and terrific bad sci-fi movies in the company of friends. I then had to go home, contend with a pee-soaked puppy, shower myself, and turn right back around and leave. Leave my lovely house, my house filled with wonderful, soft, horizontal surfaces and snuggly pets. And visit my family. With a hangover.

That’s okay, though. I love my grandmother and my presence, however diminished it might be by a post-alcohol-apocalypse fog, would make her happy. If the cost of that is a bit of time spent with the trimmings from the family tree, so be it. Frankly, I probably overdid it by showering, as I would have fit in better had I just wore whatever sodden, smoky, sweaty nastiness that I had slept in. My cousin did. Only she didn’t smell like booze. Whatever.

So I go. Muster all my functioning brain cells to participate in some idle chitchat. Watch some mind-bogglingly irritating game show and find myself participating against my will. Fine, fine, fine. Fine.

After an admittedly short while, I decide that I have done my New Year’s Day duty and have earned the right to go home and nap. Just about that time my aunt takes it into her head to express her objection to gay marriage. She just “doesn’t think it’s right.”

Good to know, Aunt. Glad you’ve given this some thought.

Well, I was tired. And I was annoyed. So my response was, in effect, that she was entitled to any opinion she liked on the rightness or wrongness of it, but that people have rights based on the fact that they're people, and that includes the right to marry. “Well. I just think it’s wrong.”

Well. I think you might be a moron. And your eldest child? She’s definitely a moron. And your two eldest grandchildren? Also morons. But I refrain from expressing my controversial opinions at family functions. So should you. Don’t presume we’re all bigots.

And there formed my New Year’s Resolution. I am going to attempt to significantly cut back on my intake of other people’s bullshit. Unless one is actively involved in paying my mortgage or feeding my beasties, I fear I am going to have to demand one of the following:

1. An attempt at rational thought or discourse. We don’t need to agree, necessarily, but do not use as an argument something that I only acknowledge as fiction. Like the Bible. Or Fox News.

2. Civility. You’re an asshole. Terrific. Leave me out of it.

3. Silence. Not talking to me is always an acceptable alternative.

Happy New Year, indeed.

Oh, say hey and by the way. This archive says that all previous posts were written in 2005. Apparently, blogger has mastered time-travel. It should say 2006. And if I were smarter or cared more I would try to fix it. I'm not.