The last day of the decade

On the last day of the last decade I somehow got wrangled into selling these silly glow-in-the-dark 2000 glasses. You know, where the two middle zeros are for your eyes? Seriously. I was living with my boyfriend in Israel at the time and a guy I knew, the boyfriend of a friend, had this idea to make lots of money selling these things around the country and he convinced me to be his "Southern Region Representative." I don't even remember what the split was but maybe I made a buck for every pair. So imagine this American girl standing in front of the mall trying to pawn these things off. I won't even make you imagine. Here's a picture.

I mean people must have thought I was a total lunatic. Toward the end of the day I called the dealer guy and told him I was still sitting on a giant stack but I was done because this was not how I was spending the last day of the friggin decade. The MILLENNIUM, for the love of ginger! And he was annoyed. And I was like, back off mon frere (he was French). He actually wanted me to stand outside the clubs downtown at night and sell these things. Um, no. I made one final attempt to offload in bulk at one of the clubs to no avail. So I washed my hands of this venture, went home to finish making my dance mix CDs for the party that my future brother-in-law was throwing, and, freed of my obligations, I partied like it was 1999.

Flash foward ten years. On the last day of this decade (a great one by the way) we decided to take our kids skiing for the first time, an equally ridiculous notion. We piled on the clothes, piled them into the van and drove over to rent our equipment. Except there's a giant line and no one has our reservation  and it's a hundred degrees in there and unfortunately the 12-person family of first-time skiers from Mexico has walked in before us. Fantastico.

We finally get our stuff and go out to the van except my brother-in-law can't find the keys to the other car (we took two cars fully expecting my son to hate skiing and want to come home). We look everywhere. No keys. So we drive home in the van. As he walks in the door he realizes the keys are in his boot. Apparently he missed his bib pocket and the keys slid all the way down his ski pants. I'm not sure how you don't feel something like that but ok. We fuel up on protein and carbs and pile the kids back in the van.

Finally around 2:00 we make it to the slope and, after some initial concern, both my kids learned to ski. It was actually totally incredible. My daughter went down a few times held by her armpits but my son actually learned how to ski by himself and stop by himself (more important). We were completely amazed. I love when that kid surprises me.

Later that evening we went out for dinner and ended up at cocktail party discussing New Mexico's budget crisis with the State Secretary of Finance who was very interesting but could not pick up on social cues, like the one where you look at your watch and yawn. We also had lively conversation with a sexologist and his partner who does PR. Get me out of here! The evening ended with me going to sleep at 11:30.

Flash forward another ten years. I'm sitting with my husband at our favorite restaurant in the yet to be determined place where we finally settled down. Our son, who is FIFTEEN is at home watching our daughter, 13 and our twins (just kidding chamud, only one more...) because we paid him $300 since the going rate for babysitters is now $50/hour (holy crap). We're celebrating the success of my third book (a novel about a mom who has a very active imagination - somewhat autobiographical) and my husband's most recent invention (a hearing aid that wraps around your head like a turban because after years and years of devices getting smaller and smaller, giga is the new nano).

Can you hear us giggling? It's because we still feel like we're 26.