New Year Shindig

I’m getting too old to party like I did on New Year’s Eve. Sheesh. The music was just too good and the folks we partied with were just too much fun and Ron and I didn’t get to sleep until close to 4 AM. I am never up at 4 AM unless I have insomnia worrying about money. We stayed in the guest room at the Frogsong Co-Housing Community in Cotati where our friends Mrs. Eris and Mrs. Leslie once again hostessed us, wined and dined us, and welcomed us into their community. Ron and several other musicoholics at Frogsong spun the tunes and everyone danced; young, old, and in-between. I wore an Evan Picone black fancy dress that my daughter gave me for Christmas with the stipulation that I shave my armpits to wear it. (I did not; OK, I trimmed them, but shave them? Never.) I felt terribly overdressed but my girl has style and the dress looked good on me. It beats me how she knew my size.

At one point during the evening, someone played that ABBA song “Dancing Queen,” and suddenly the women and girls got up on the wall-to-wall bench that runs the length of the Common Room and performed animated synchronized hand motions and high foot kicks and other chorus line moves as they sang at the top of their lungs. ABBA is just not that good. What was up with this? I sat that one out and watched in bewilderment. Afterward, a woman sidled up to me and whispered, “I don’t even like that song. But it’s an annual tradition.” Then of course there had to be a male response so they played some hip-hop style song called “Be a Man” or something of the sort and the men all got up on the bench. Except Ron, whose legs don’t bend enough for such frivolity. After attempting to mount the bench, he gave up and sat down on it instead. Which prompted several other guys to sit next to him in sympathy. Which created a row of lap-dancing guys all seated on a hard bench. I’m not describing this very well. Use your imagination.

When we finally went to sleep, we didn’t sleep for long. I crawled down to Eris and Leslie’s for breakfast at around 10 the next morning and Ron soon followed. I took one look at him and burst out laughing. “Baby,” I said, “you had such a wild night that you forgot to put your teeth in this morning.” He had left his bridgework for his bottom four teeth in our room. In fact, he found them buried in his suitcase somewhere. Better than finding them embedded in the headboard of the bed, I guess. Ron never forgets to put in his bridgework. Is this a taste of what the year holds in store for us? I could use a fun year right about now, with or without teeth.