Happy New Year, sweep the needles and pass the black eyed peas please

Happy New Year!

Here is hoping that 2008 is healthy, productive and allows you to achieve whatever bliss you desire. Yesterday (New Years Day) we started the New Year with the removal of the Christmas tree and all Christmas adornments around the house. It's great to clean away the decorations we have enjoyed for more than a month as a sort of symbolic cleaning of house and preparing for the new year. This year we had a mammoth tree, over 10 feet tall and not actually pine, but Douglas fir. Thank goodness for the new wood floor- after we were done clearing out the tree I swept up 2 litter boxes full of needles!


New Years Day is such an interesting holiday to me. Not only is it the beginning of a new year, but it is considered national hangover day. Did that apply to you? So many of us connect what we do on the 1st to how the rest of our year will go. There are so many interesting superstitions surrounding the day as we attempt to guarantee, through our acts, a fantastic new year. I usually make soup or chili on the first day of the year. Into which ever recipe I decide to use I always add black eyed peas. Eating black eyed peas on New Years is a southern tradition which hopes to attract both general good luck (financial in particular) to the one doing the dining. I'm not from the south, but adopted this tradition many years ago. Monday night, after dinner, I made a big pot of split pea soup, but forgot (because I hadn't bought any) to add the black eyed peas. Regardless of my two trips to Safeway yesterday I still forgot to buy the peas so we supped on non lucky soup. I was a little bummed about this omission until I happened upon another New Years legend. This one is called "first footing". To paraphrase what I discovered: The first person to enter your home after the stroke of midnight will influence the year you're about to have. Ideally, he should have dark hair, be tall and good looking. Blonde and redhead first footers bring bad luck, female first footers should be shooed away before they bring disaster down on the household. "Aim a gun at them if you have to, but don't let them near your door before a man crosses the threshold." The first footer should knock and be let in rather than use a key. and a final note, first footers may not be cross-eyed or have flat feet or eyebrows that meet in the middle. Now, why do you think I've adopted this as my 2008 lucky charm? (remember that I didn't follow through with my black eyed peas). Monday night Randy and I stayed up to midnight and then off he went to get some pre-garage sale sleep- I stayed up knitting and watching "Weeds" (to which I am shamelessly addicted) anyhow, both boys had made plans to stay at friends houses. At about 2:45 am Randy heard a noise outside. He got up, checked doors and before coming back to bed heard a knock on the door- it was Kyle who decided to come home after all. Randy let him in and lucky for me, he is tall, dark haired, good looking, without crossed eyes, flat feet or eyebrows which meet in the middle. Based on this, 2008 should be quite good for the Harrell's