Your Unemployed Daughter

photo credit: Peter E. Lee

January 3, 2010. AKA, Day of Great Domesticity. All around the Internets it seems people are cooking and baking and huddling in their tiny and abnormally chilly apartments because it’s 20 degrees and snowing here in New York City.

I, for one, am cooking a lentil stew, with liberal use of red wine vinegar. I have watered the plants and checked to make sure they’re not freezing on my window ledges; I have dressed in ski socks, a flannel shirt, and am trying out the American Apparel shiny leggings. I think I might even like them.

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photo credit: rocketlass

Well, hello there. Welcome to 2010!

Yesterday, despite all of my mother’s advice to start the year out right, I actually did no writing at all, but instead went to brunch, then a movie—It’s Complicated, and I’d just like to say that I would like my life to be complicated in the way that Meryl Streep’s life is complicated if it means Alec Baldwin, a gorgeous house with a huge garden and perfect tomatoes, and my own bakery where I make the most delicious chocolate “cwahsont” in the universe—then Sephora (yay, new “compact,” which I was told was something only grandmothers say, yay, Clinique Youth Surge, which I’m sure will prevent me from being mistaken for a grandmother), then Lululemon (yay, new workout pants with hot pink cuffs), then dinner (yay, dinner) and too many glasses of wine in my hood with L.

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photo credit: bsteve76

My mom has always said that on the first day of a new year you should do all of the things you hope to do throughout the year. I mean, not in a crazy-high expectations sort of way, like finishing your entire novel in one day, but if you hope to write a book during the year, at least spend time on that first day writing a bit, and ditto with all of the other aspirations you have: get some exercise, love yourself more, cook a nice meal, whatever.

But if the first day of the new year is dedicated to those sorts of positive-future-bringing activities, what of the last day of the old year? I would guess, maybe, that it’s for doing all the bad shit we still want to do in 2009. Getting it out of our systems, if you will.

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photo credit: Camila Braga

I recently got off the phone with a good friend who mentioned that her plans for starting out 2010 in as beneficial a position as possible included a bikini wax. You know, so things are “less of a jungle.” (Her words, not mine.)

Now, while I shall refrain from divulging any particular aspects of YUD’s grooming regimen for fear of scaring off my last reader, I will say that a new year is a lovely time to—um—start fresh. And whether that means giving up the ghost on certain no-longer viable plans or bad behaviors, or opening yourself up to new possibilities you might never have thought of, or just being positive about shit for once, it’s a good thing.

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