New Year's Day -- 12:07 check in

The four of us watched Bill and Megyn at Times Square for the last half hour of 2007, our annus horribilus in some ways, but in other ways, not so bad.

This is the seventeenth New Year my husband and I have welcomed in together.

We counted down the last ten seconds with the girls and then we held up our glasses -- two with sparkling cider and two with fruity Asti. My husband intoned with an ironic grimace: "To a better 2008!"

"To a better 2008," the girls and I choruses, raising our glasses.

I went out on the front porch, which is thankfully protected from the worst of the wind and rain. "HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!" I shouted into the wind.

Our neighbor across the street stepped from the shadows of her front porch and waved wildly. "HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!" she shrieked.

"FROM YOUR LIPS TO GOD'S EARS!!!!" I screeched back, and went inside, shivering.

I went out to the kitchen and found my husband staring into the depths of the wine bottle. "That sure went fast," he commented, turning it upside down. A single drop plopped into his glass.

"What? The year or the wine?" I asked, leaning my head on his chest as he put his arms around me -- a long reach.

"The wine," he said, grinning. "That was one lo-o-ong year."

"Yep," I said, and hugged him very tightly.

I have to post this: we're getting ready to play a game of Sorry! before we turn in. Oh, and I have to make the French toast -- we liked it so much on Christmas Eve that we've decided to do it again, only with an Italian loaf this time.

Happy New Year! See you in the morning!