New Year's Eve, 2021

This is a post to mark the passing of time. Full disclosure, ya might wanna skip it. It’s not the usual mood around here, but as everyone’s aware at this point, the glossy half of social media is just that: half of it. This post is for that blip in the future when one of us turns to the other and says oh yeah that christmas was crazy. What happened that year? And I head to the digital journal of blog and instagram to check my trail of breadcrumbs.

Future Me won’t find much on the grid at the end of this misbegotten year. 2021! The year Covid reached legal drinking age, invited all its irresponsible friends over for a house party, got TOTALLY WASTED, and in the morning left the rest of the world to clean up the wreckage. 

The party landed on us both at exactly the same moment (because we do everything together), right after we’d spent an evening making an innuendo filled Egg Nog video (because nothing says innuendo like Granddaddy’s Egg Nog). Of course we didn’t know it was covid until later, since New York turned up the volume to Threat Level Eleven overnight, and testing meant an hours long wait on cold streets. We just assumed we were part of the avalanche of (vaxxed and boosted) omicron cases, canceled the handful of dates we’d made, kept ourselves isolated, and worked from home through sore throats & body aches. After a few fever free days, I masked up and ran out for new toothbrushes, and—a Christmas miracle!—rapid tests. Our corner drugstore was hiding them behind the counter with no signage, only handing them over if requested, like some morbid version of ordering off the secret menu at In ‘n Out Burger.

To be honest we’ve both been sicker—Rob had a case of food poisoning a month ago that was worse, and I recall a 2018 post Thanksgiving garden-variety-plague where a hoard of water-soaked Gremlins set up a mosh pit in my head. Ah, fond memories of just being plain sick, instead of being interminably wrapped up in a preventable pandemic! 

Comparisons aside, these past weeks were still worse. Because the worst part about being this kind of sick is that we don't have to be. 

Christmas Eve came with the unsurprising announcement that our NYE concert at Zinc Bar was canceled (like many indoor events in the city at the moment). On Christmas day, we watched a little Bake Off. Then a little Die Hard. Rob went to bed early and I stayed up looking at the lights, and our weird little peppermint striped tree that I bought because it reminded me of my Nan.

We’d planned on taking y’all on a stroll around the city to share some real holiday diplays, and just how pretty it can be here at Christmas, but that night found me with zilch to edit, and just about as depressed as I’ve felt, ever. We’ve certainly been in worse situations, but we tend to put on our game face and head into battle. Like everyone else, I got to the point where I had no more game face. 

But they say you have to figure out why you’re putting content out there, what you’re doing to serve your audience. We decided early on our goal was to make people smile. So I thought about what I wanted—to laugh—and thought about what our goal was with our content—to make others laugh—and I sat up on that quiet night making a bloopers reel. It cheered me up to splice togeher our generous amount of ridculouness. It's nothing that's going to, you know, end a pandemic or bring about world peace; but maybe it’ll give you a giggle.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and although we’re 95% good, I’m shelving the 95% finished metallic-gold off-the-shoulder concert dress in favor of something a little more housebound. Though I’m normally down for sewing a gown for no reason whatsoever, I’d rather not look at the thing I should be performing in tonight. All is not lost though, as you can see, I'll still be rocking technicolor--inspired by our week of binge watching Gillian Anderson float around in billowy yards of jewel tones. (Side note: watch Sex Education. It is BRILLIANT. For a mixed chick, this series looks like the world. It is made up of every type of human coexisting in every type of situation with no need to explain the why or how. And that is a *very small* part of what makes this series one of the best things on Netflix. If you’re not into sex, the title is, erm, an obvious warning. But if you want kaleidoscopic, beautifully created characters set to a hilarious and heartaching soundtrack of high school, don't walk, run.)

That’s it, that’s the blip in time! If you’ve made it this far, here's the most important part: although I've spent a good bit of the end of this year in that decidedly 2020s mood of being furiously depressed by the situation, I'm also acutely aware of the larger situation of the world, and those who have things FAR worse. I’m extremely grateful that I can head out to the store, pick up something festive, and toast whatever the hell is coming our way in handmade technicolor.

I hope the switch to 2022 finds you doing something enjoyable, or even just something manageable. Me, I'm off to pick up the makings for a New Year's Night in. I'm thinking nachos. New Year's Nachos, baby. Sounds achievable! 

Happy New Year, friends 💗