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Approaching another blinking new year

I approach 2018 confident that it will be very much like 2017 and so many other years past.

It, too, will be one big blink with a beginning, a middle and an end and whatever else happens in between the bookends of Jan 1, 2018, and Dec. 31, 2018.

Life happens at warp speed.

Look at us. Here we are on the final day of 2017 that on Jan. 1, 2017, probably seemed soooo many days and weeks and months away, far, far off on the horizon. There’s plenty of time to do plenty of things, right?

And, surprise! Here it is — another New Year’s Eve, time for our “Auld Lang Syne” Dec. 31 anthem.

A caller to the newsroom this past week asked what my New Year’s Eve plans were, prefacing her inquiry with what is best classified, I suppose, as an old wives’ tale.

If I understood her correctly she said that whatever you do on New Year’s Eve, you’ll be doing all year long.

Well, that made me laugh, especially since my New Year’s Eve tradition can hardly be distinguished from my “celebration” of any other evening. I make like Snow White, grab the blanket on the couch and settle into a long evening’s nap until Prince Charming, a.k.a Better Half, gives me a little kiss and a command — “Wake up and go to bed, Janice.”

I never argue the suggestion, but it occurs to me that I’m already sleeping in a bed of sorts. Why get up and go sleep somewhere else? And it reminds me of things my mother would say that seemed logical on the surface when I was little, but in retrospective adulthood, not so the case.

These were things my siblings and I dubbed as “Ruthisms,” specifically the admonishment for us children to “go to bed! Your father has to get up in the morning!”

OK….wait a minute, what??!! Can’t Dad just go to bed, and we’ll stay up? I never quite got that until I was a slightly sleep-deprived new mother myself.

But I digress.

I do have plans for New Year’s Eve, no longer the beer fest of my younger days. My drink of choice, truth be told, is actually “high-test” coffee, morning and/or evening. I’m especially enjoying my Christmas gift to myself — a coffeemaker with the carafe on one side, the single-serving thing on the right. I am in caffeine heaven, I can assure you, at my leisure to make a pot or a cup. What java joy.

This evening we’ll head to church for something we’ve never participated in before, mainly because it’s being held for the first time at our church.

It’s a “Watch Night” celebration promoted as a family-friendly, fun evening of games for all ages and good food, which I could stand to pass on given my overindulgence these past couple of weeks.

There will be cards, conversation, air hockey, board games and cornhole.

And toward the end comes a brief worship service and communion to reflect on the year past and the brand new year about to be born.

It’s open to all at the Richmond United Methodist Church, tonight from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

It seems like a great way to prepare for another blink.

Happy New Year!

(Kiaski, a resident of Richmond, is a staff columnist and community editor for the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times. She can be contacted at jkiaski@heraldstaronline.com.)

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