New Year

2023

2023 will be MY year. I’m putting myself first. For the first time, I’ll do what they say you should do with the oxygen mask in the airplane: First put on your mask, then help the others. You can’t pour from an empty cup and all that.

Now that the stuffiness of the holidays has lifted, now that your holidays expectations were met or crushed or maybe you didn’t even have any (attagirl!), now that the stores are open again and the unwanted gifts exchanged, regifted or put in a drawer for safekeeping, we can all turn the pages to a blank one.

What have I been doing? Read 3 out of the 4 books I got for Christmas, ate all the biscotti and the sugarcoated almonds and I wink at the fir tree every time I past by it to attend to the artsy genius up to her elbows in paint. After all, the tree is too handsome to end up on the dump. YET. As for the artsy genius, as much a darling as she is, I’ve made it very clear to her I hate all activities that require washing my hands after engaging in them. 😉 Like painting. Or modeling play dough.

Workwise I’ve been on a trip out of town already and yesterday a 6 days’ court case began, but since the defendant didn’t show up, we were free to go about out freelance lives. Do I love it? Yes, I do! I don’t know if I can go as far as to say I’ve missed interpreting over the holidays, but as I always remind myself on bad days, I never have a knot in my stomach when I go to work, the way I did back when I worked in an office. Besides, I’ll take work over small talk at Christmas gatherings any day. Life is way too short for small talk.

Happy New Year!

xxx, Alina

The Passing into the New Year

This New Year´s Eve was my personal low as far as I can remember and yet it turned out pretty cosy in the end. After a tearful day with lots of Amy Winehouse “Love is a Losing Game” and the feeling that 2016 would never come and I´d die the loneliest person on the planet, after drinking Prosecco as soon as I got home (13:30) and wailing in the bedroom for a couple of hours, I decided I should take a shower, put on my face, bake a cake and take a cab to my cousin´s, ´cause by that time Sam was already terrified by fireworks and I barely managed to drag him after me 10 feet.

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Next year

Next year I´ll wear my mask brighter

And keep my cards tighter.

 

Next year I´ll be more me and less us,

I´ll build my own shelves

And cry my own tears.

 

I´ll be walking down new roads

Another ones, not yours,

But my own.

 

Next year I´ll be as strong as my look-alike

The one I see in the mirror

Everytime I leave the house.

 

December 2015

 

 

New Year´s Eve party

Happy New Year! We started ours with a terrible head-ache and nausea, so we slept most of it away.  Today, however, was more productive. 😉 I started working and came home with fresh flowers and eucalyptus branches whereas Vuong had a day off and spent it on tidying up. We threw out the Christmas tree and packed away the decorations, prepared the left-over lobster and the duck breast and now we´re snuggling on the couch ready for “The Suits”.

But let me tell you more about our New Year´s Eve party, which was awesome, loud and long, as a real party should be. Melissa, our friend who organized it, gathered 15 cool people under her roof, made enough food to feed an army and was simply the coolest and most glamorous host I´ve ever seen! And I mean it, since I´m pretty good at hosting, myself, so I don´t go around boasting about other people. 😉 haha!

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New Year´s Eve

I´m a sucker for a nice dress and high heels! Any excuse for that! And I love a good dinner party. This year it was our turn to be hosting the New Year´s Eve party and it was lots of fun. Everybody had a good time, or so I like to think, including Sam, our fearless samoyed who lay down to sleep on the ´dance floor´ while one could still hear the fireworks. We had three courses- cheese platter with lemon curd and chutney, tomato bruschetta and Romanian ´salade de boeuf´, turkey and rosemary potatoes with carrot salad for mains and Swiss cake and truffles for dessert. Everybody contributed with a dish since I was a bit fed up with cooking after Christmas. A bit too much to drink, laughs and dancing, in the end we were three girls left gossiping until 4 am. In between all this fun, we sat down and summed up 2013, as well as disclosed our New Year´s resolutions. For my part, I want to give myself some love. I´ll start swimming and doing yoga, since that´s the only work-out I remotely like. We´re planning a trip to Vietnam and New York, so I need to spend less money on clothes and shoes. 2014 won´t only be about career and nothing else like 2013 was, I´ll make sure to be more approachable for my friends and a better wife, sister and daughter. What about you? What are your resolutions? Let 2014 be awesome!
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