Insights and Ramblings About New Year's

     The other day at lunch I explained the tradition of celebrating New Year's Eve to GD. I told him about staying up late, throwing confetti, and blowing noise-makers. My ever-practical five-year-old was terribly unimpressed. He looked at me as if to see if I was just making it all up, blinked a couple times, and then asked very blandly, "Why would people do that?"

     "To celebrate it being a new year. It's 2017 and it's going to be 2018."  

     Again, he stared and blinked at me and said, "But it's just like any other day."

      Then my husband chimed in and told him about the ball dropping in Times Square and how everyone stands outside in the cold waiting for a lit-up ball to fall and then makes a mess with confetti. 

     GD looked very perplexed about the inefficiency of it all. "Maybe we could just watch a movie and get out the new calendar or something."  

      I'm with you, kid. I don't understand all the hype about New Year's either.   With all of the Christmas festivities over the past couple weeks my kids are holidayed out. My toddler doesn't even want to celebrate his birthday this week. So if they want to eliminate the New Year's celebration I'm ok with that. KM would just eat the confetti anyway. 

      But then G and I started to wonder as we boycotted watching the ball drop, Why do we celebrate New Year's Eve anyway?  What are we celebrating?  The passage of time?  (This was part of an extended conversation involving humans celebrating in general and our lack of endurance for extended partying). I asked the omniscient internet this question, and it took me to a Psychology Today article that said that the celebration of New Year's is intrinsically linked to our motivation to survive. 

       Now I feel like we should do more that just watch a movie and change the calendar.

        I also had told GD about New Years resolutions. To be honest, I just told him because I was curious what his unfiltered efficiency-minded opinion on them was, and I was not disappointed.
        "I really think all this New Year's stuff is pretty silly," he told me.

       I'm not totally opposed to New Year's resolutions. I just don't understand why they have to be made at New Year's (in case you were wondering, these too are linked to our motivation to survive). G and I have, in the past, made resolutions for our family for the new year and kept them.  And we've also made resolutions and quickly realized that we were just trying to be people we are not and joined the 88% of people that do not keep their New Year's resolutions.  

      Like last year, we decided that we needed a break from house projects and would not be starting anymore projects in 2017.  Before the ball even started dropping we were discussing what walls we were going to cut holes in for more windows and how we wanted to redo the kitchen.  

     Or the year I decided that we needed to be "organized."  I downloaded pretty planner pages I found on Pinterest and even bought a pocket calendar.  I was going to be an organized "planner person" (I do believe in the blogging world this is an actual term).  I didn't even end up printing the planner pages.  The five days I kept that pocket calendar updated were so very stressful for me.  I ended up giving the calendar to GD because he liked the "teeny tiny numbers" in it and went back to just remembering everything.  Writing things down just takes too much time.  

     So, for 2018 we did not make any resolutions, we did not throw confetti, and we did not watch the ball drop.  We did get out some noise makers for the kids, but did not end up watching a movie because they were so busy playing with the noise makers and passing around slobber (which might explain why we've all been sick for the past week).  I don't know if we'll even change our wall calendar in the morning.  It still says November.  

S-W-I-N-E

    GD told us a couple years ago that he did not want to raise animals for meat if those animals had eyes. I guess he didn't want to look his food in the eye, which I don't think is unreasonable for a preschooler.  However, about a year ago, right after eating a delicious Christmas ham, G started talking about getting some pigs.  

     GD was excited about the prospect of pig farming. My mom asked him, "Would you be all right with raising pigs for meat even if they have eyes?"

     "Well," GD answered, "I really like bacon." 

     And so it was tentivitely decided that we would be getting a pig and naming it Christmas Ham. 

     But after a rough winter losing 21 chickens and a goat, we decided it was best to wait to add to our livestock collection.  Until a few weeks ago when we were sitting around the table watching the boys chow down on ribs. That's when G started talking seriously again about getting some S-W-I-N-E. 

      G has learned it is unwise to just show up with livestock without warning me first. I don't mind surprises, I would just rather they not have four legs and require food and housing. So over the next couple weeks he asked me several times about getting a S-W-I-N-E.

      And then gradually that became two S-W-I-N-E, because "it really wouldn't be much more work for twice as much meat."  Whatever. 

       

         Now, there are two reasons to refer to your pigs as S-W-I-N-E. 

1.  You automatically spell everything because you think you're fooling your children but, really, there's no fooling them (after all, I have been trying to teach them to spell). 

2. S-W-I-N-E is much less endearing than calling them P-I-G-S. P-I-G-S conjures up images of prancing piglets and children's storybook characters. It's harder to become attached to S-W-I-N-E before you send them off to the butcher. 

After putting a down payment on two partially grown S-W-I-N-E (yes, around here you do need to reserve your craiglists swine before someone else snatches up the bargain), we did finally tell the boys we were getting some future bacon.  

     They were pretty ecstatic at the prospect of being swine farmers. They insisted on going to pick up the swine and go out to check on them everyday saying, "We're going to eat you someday."  We do have an agreement with them that they won't be required to do any chores for the swine because they don't want to become too attached to them. 

       I think that's wise.  I don't do any chores for them either. The pink one is just too happy to see me for me eat him someday.   He (or she?  I didn't ask, I don't want to know, my food does not have a gender) looks at me with those happy eyes and all I can think about is Babe or Wilbur. 

     And that's why food shouldn't have eyes. 

(No picture of the swine, we may get too attached to them if they're in our photo album)