How do you Measure a Year?

Five hundrend twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year
In daylight, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee,
In inches, in miles,in laughter, in strife,

In Five hundrend twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life
How about Love

How do you measure the life of a woman or a man
In truth that she learned or in times that he cried
In the bridges he burned or the way that she died
It's time now to sing out though the story never ends
Lets celebrate, remember a year in the life of friends.

**RENT

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Every year at this time we reflect to all the things we did and didn't do in the year gone by. We think of all the people we missed and the ones we actually got to spend time with. And the utmost important thoughts of.... resolutions for the year to come. This mornings MSN homepage had a cute pic followed by "New Year's Resolutions You Can Keep." Things like: *Kiss more and make each one last longer than 15 seconds, *Learn a new skill like a new dance, *Spend your money on a personal trainer instead of plastic surgery, *Talk on the cell phone less in public (ok, I get the hint!!), and *Take a different way of transportation to change up the people you meet each day. All of these are great ideas and better reditions of the old. We are always making resolutions that we just don't do... by the time the snow has melted we have forgotten about all of it and come next December we will look back as we are now and think "Damn, I never did lose 10 pounds or stay in touch with my friends." I want my New Year to be better than the last. I am not saying that this year was bad at any rate - in fact it brought me many things and many opportunities that I did not think was going to be possible. I was able to remodel my house, update many parts of my life, pay to go on a cruise this coming spring, get into full-swing of my new job AND get a promotion within a year, and gain more life-lasting relationships. It has been a great year but like everything I do - I do not want to move forward by moving backwards, I want this year to be better. I want to overcome the obsticles that I have been fighting for a few years now and move on, I want to have more parties and get togethers so I can see my friends more (I love a good party), I want to excel in my job. I think these will all be doable with a little effort (always comes down to the damn e-f-f-o-r-t).

Christmas went well. I want to say as well as expected but my expectations were all over the board. I had images of my mom being a total flirt in front of my dad-she was good about that. I imagined Dad continuing the drinking binge he seemed to be on at the beginning of the week but I don't think he consumed much beyond the Diet Coke and a full pack of cigs! It really was a typical family day and weekend. We played games, ate good food (nice to have Larry home!), and got little sleep. My aunt expressed how strange it is to have the kids providing the meals and snacks instead of the grown-ups but we are all grown-ups now. Even Chrissy is now 20! Now we are all just a little slow bringing in the "new blood". Admittingly it would be nice to have little ones around. I had such a good time taking gifts to my friends kids that I realized just what we are missing. Time will tell - things are changing every day and life changes with the motions.