Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ With your one wild and precious life?
1. What did you do in 2010 that you'd never done before?
Fall in love.
2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I'm not sure that I made any concrete resolutions, but I know that I must have wanted to (a) work on fostering my current relationships with family & friends, (b) work on finding new relationships, (c) work on my writing. I could have done more in all of those categories, so I'm going to continue working at them in the coming year (and the year after that and the year after that and the year after that, &c.)
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.
5. What countries did you visit?
The wild and utterly thrilling Country of Wyoming. Twice!
6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
A job that I'm excited to go to & a pay grade that is correct for my set of skills. A firm butt. A firmer mattress.
7. What date from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Uuuuuh, this is a hell of a thing to just dump in a meme, but: 2010 will forever be one of the years of my life that changed me forever -- no, where I changed myself forever. This was the year that I stopped coasting on charm. This was the year that I stopped lying to myself. This was the year that I started telling the truth to everyone else. This is the year that I stopped doing drugs. This is the year that I started respecting myself again. This is the year where I started controlling my emotions instead of letting them control me & using them as an excuse to continue failing. Essentially, this is the year when I stopped waiting to be rescued & rescued myself instead.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Well, it wasn't "read all the questions ahead of time so you don't prematurely answer question #8 in question #7". Not hitting the eject button. Getting an awesome pink, strapless, ruffly number for NYE for $20. Finding satisfactory employment. Hitting the 10-mile marker. Getting enough sleep. Doing a good job on my Yuletide story.
9. What was your biggest failure?
My one regret is that I avoided dealing with my parents by ignoring them, and they deserve better than that.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Not really. I have a scrape on my left knee right now from when I slid across the dance floor a la Travolta a few days ago. Pro tip: Don't do that.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
Every single Americano I had this year. Running pants. Bobby pins. Fresh spinach with the little pink parts of the stems still attached to them. Whole red snappers. A bamboo steamer. Pork bellies. Pig's blood. Irn Bru. Jaffa Cakes. This water bottle. Kiehl's Creme de Corps.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Karl, because this is really happening. Carrie, because she never asks me why there's pig blood in the fridge. My ladies, because they get it.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
My parents, for not listening when I tell them things that contradict with what they want to hear. People who can't let go of things that happen on the internet. Me, during the times when I let getting attention become more important to me than gaining understanding.
14. Where did most of your money go?
In my belly.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
BEING IN LOVE YOU GUYS I NEVER THOUGHT IT WOULD HAPPEN. Also, moireach started running and I wrote up a little My Feelings About Moving My Legs Kinda Fast treatise and it ended up being super long and flaily and while I was writing it, I realized that I sincerely and seriously enjoy running to a degree that I could never have predicted. Life is so full of surprises, and that in and of itself is really, really, really exciting, too.
16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
Rill Rill, Sleigh Bells. Weekend Warrior, MGMT. Odessa, Caribou. Down By the Water, The Drums. Boys of Summer, Don Henley. Heartbeats, José González. Acts of Man, Midlake. Between the Bars, Madeleine Peyroux. The Balcony, The Rumour Said Fire. Magic, Ladyhawke. Tracking Elevator, Shugo Tokumaru. Can You See Me Now?, Johnny Flynn. Trouble Is a Friend, Lenka. Mykonos, Fleet Foxes.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? Happier.
ii. thinner or fatter? In my belly.
iii. richer or poorer? Richer.
18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Listened. Hugged. Emailed.
19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Complained. Procrastinated. Bargained.
20. How will you be spending Christmas?
For the first time since I was in the Peace Corps (so...1999, holy shit), I spent Christmas without having to go through the rigmarole of the holiday season with my parents. Although I feel badly that we currently have the kind of relationship where I'm much happier to be away from them, I don't feel badly about how much happier I am. It was a quiet celebration, but a deeply satisfying one. I woke up around 6:30, like a little kid, super excited about the little gifts I had bought & it was a salve for all the bad Christmases of the past to have them received with sincere joy & to rip into my presents and find them to be so thoughtful & personal. We started the day off with bacon sandwiches (and, really, that's just an excellent day right there, we could have just stopped), then gave the holly & pine needles & spruce branches & some kind of other red berry twig things the ikebana treatment, then dove arms first into the cooking. There were Brussels sprouts with pancetta, creamed spinach, roasted sweet potatoes & carrots & parsnips, and a perfect little chicken from a local farm that was so pretty raw that I kept crying that we would ruin it by roasting it. Seriously, this thing was the pinkest, nubbiest-skinned thing I have ever seen and I kind of wanted to create a distraction so that I could steal it away and cuddle it. I don't care if that's gross. You didn't see this chicken! Anyways, we roasted it up and it was fucking nom, so it wasn't meant to be, the pretty chicken & I, I see that now. I knew Karl was feeling homesick, so I tried to insert the day with as many British Yule things that I could, with surprise clementines and Cadbury chocolates and stuff like that, and my loveliest swmbo helped by sending along some Christmas crackers so we put on our paper crowns and dug in to the massive amounts of food along with my new favorite holiday wine, a 2001 Bodegas Beronia Rioja Gran Reserva, and, woah, that got long, but it was basically the best Christmas of my life, you guys. And that was before the sticky toffee pudding.
21. Did you fall in love in 2010?
Whoops.
22. How many one-night stands?
Lolololol, this meme.
23. What was your favorite TV program?
I really enjoyed catching up on the first season of Modern Family but I lost interest in season two. For new-to-me programs, I really enjoyed League of Gentlemen, and Spaced, and I was one of the three people in the entire universe who thought the Lost finale was good. Ah! And I introduced Karl to the US The Office, and he ships Jim and Pam so hard, heeeeeee, it's fucking adorable.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
No.
25. What was the best book you read?
Disappointing. but nothing really grabbed me. Although I'm reading Ian Frazier's Travels in Siberia right now and it is excellent so far, and I haven't checked out David Mitchell's latest yet.
26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I don't know why it took me so long to check out MGMT's Oracular Spectacular, but once I did, I pretty much listened to the entire album, from beginning to end, nonstop.
27. What did you want and get?
To trust. To compromise. To not give in. A spinach artichoke dip recipe that is more spinach & artichoke than it is cream & cheese. For Carrie to get hooked on Mad Men -- oh, dude, what am I thinking? The answer to my favorite TV program of 2010 is for sure Mad Men, because daaaaaaaaaaamn.
28. What did you want and not get?
A definitive solution to the whole birth control issue. Like, seriously? There's only one option that doesn't involve hormones and isn't permanent and it still requires a foreign object inserted into my cervix? Really. Really?
29. What was your favorite film of this year?
Touching the Void and District 9. The Runaways, which, although not very good, had Kristen Stewart & Dakota Fanning being unbearably hot.
30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Uuuuuuh, that was eight months ago. I am only human. This is why I need to update my journal more often, incidentally.
31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
For more annoying people to have gotten publicly pie'd in the face. Related: more yoga & meditation.
32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?
Augh, I really, really hate to admit this, but my every day clothing choices are getting more and more Colorado with every season. There's a lot of disturbing North Face & Merrell action happening right now. I'm really hoping Spring will organize an intervention.
33. What kept you sane?
Karl & all the things we do together, the therapeutic & expansive & nurturing benefits of cooking & hiking & snowshoeing & camping & climbing & pootling & snuggling & cleaning & shopping & laughing together. My friends & all the ways in which they enrich my life, with information & humor & support & stories from their own lives, with hand holding & long conversations & taps on the back of the head & random links to check out in the morning. The time I spend alone, running, one foot after the other, breath after breath, a little bit further & a little bit faster & a little bit clearer headed as I go. Coffee.
34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Ooooh, that woman who plays Pam on True Blood and also the pretty little thing that plays Jessica. And His Hardness, who made me degenerate to pure snorting sounds at certain points of this year. And very recently, my Hyun Bin attachment has gotten a re-spark, thanks to Secret Garden.
35. What political issue stirred you the most?
It seemed like every time I opened up a tab of New York Times updates this past year, I started pacing the room and wringing my hands, and that I raised my voice a lot at the dinner table when talking about current events, but mostly it was the same stuff that got to me: (lack of) reproductive rights, privilege, bigotry, cowardice, intolerance -- and we had all of it in spades, from both sides of the political spectrum. The one specific "issue" that really got to my heart was North Korea.
36. Who did you miss?
My Bo! I should note that one of my goals for 2011 is more face time with her.
37. Who was the best new person you met?
Lara, who I met in one of those situations where you come across someone you don't have a lot in common with but you click instantly with her and feel the pull of true connection with her, and then 5 months later you find out she used to write Thundercats slash.
38. How will you be spending New Year's Eve?
Carrie got us tickets to an event at a local museum here through the museum's owner, who she knows, because she knows everybody, and although I disparaged it as the Boulder "Museum" of "Contemporary" "Art" to my ladies, when I got there, I found out a) it wasn't the museum that I thought it was (meaning, Boulder has more than one museum! WHAT.) and b) it was in this awesome, old, rickety building where they'd just torn down most of the walls and done a rush white paint job over the hardwood floors and it was super cool and the art was actually really interesting! Anyways, we started the night with Karl and Carrie and I and a bunch of friends at a pretty fabulous Indian restaurant where the owner set aside an area for us (even though we were morons and didn't have a reservation) and sweetly complimented the pretty women in the group (i.e., all the women) and then kept plying us with free drinks during the dinner, which is great in and of itself (free drinks! never not awesome!) but was particularly nice this evening because then we all split up to go to our prospective things, some people to different house parties and Karl and his friends to their watering hole and me & Carrie to the fancy thing at the museum, whereupon we discovered that absolutely nothing there was drinkable. Ohmygod. Have you ever heard of 303 Vodka? No? STAY AWAY FROM IT SO GROSS. They were the sponsors for the night, so everything, everything had this toxic substance in it. Vodka & tonic? Disgusting. The vodka punch? Execrable. All right, just give this poison to me straight? HORRIFIC. We littered the tables with almost-full glasses until we gave up. Still! There was a DJ & there were 40-something upper-middle class white people dancing to house music (HILARIOUS) and 70-something upper-middle class white people dancing to house music (SO CUTE AAAH) and champagne and a cheesy yet endearing "art drop" at midnight and then we went and met up with Karl & his friends where I was promptly snogged & handed a double Laphroaig & Carrie was a hit with everyone and it was a magical night, essentially.
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010:
Decide what to be and go be it.