Nothing says “welcome, make yourselves at home” like a loud explosion in your face when you need to use the bathroom.
Now that we’re a good halfway into January, I feel like I’m finally ready for the new year. The round of sickness that plagued our house over Christmas vacation seems to be done. (Although I hesitate to say things like that, because it sometimes comes back to haunt me.)
It turns out I won the game of “It Strep or Is It a Virus.” My mommy senses predicted correctly and we got a lovely bottle of pink amoxicillin for my six-year-old as our prize. A few days after starting antibiotics she finally started perking up. Now she’s back to her normal self, dancing around the house while singing random songs and correcting her younger siblings about the proper way to do things.
We rang in the New Year at our house with several of my brothers and sisters and their families. It was sort of an impromptu affair. My sister from Rochester helped make the night with a heroic last-minute venture to three stores to find noise makers and shiny hats for the occasion.
Kids and even a few adults helped decorate our dining room by coloring “2013” signs.
Something about the New Year festivities sparked a memory in my husband that he had a box of fireworks out in his shop. Two years ago, in Montana, we sold fireworks at our gas station. What remained of those were the relatively safe (or boring, depending on your perspective) sparklers and exploding booby traps. Yep, we had a hundred sparklers and approximately 800 (not a typo) of those exploding things on strings. You know the kind. Pull on each end of the string, and in the middle, the little skinny tube of something slightly explosive suddenly goes BANG!
Hearing an exploding booby trap again brought back a flood of memories (or maybe I should say “flashbacks”) from childhood. Thanks to my brother, we grew up with booby traps tied on the bathroom and bedroom doors, hooked onto the old-fashioned hook and eye latches. The door opened a few inches, just enough to make you think all is normal, and then POW! An explosion, right at eye level, right when you need to pee.
And coincidentally, just before most guests arrived, my husband installed a new hook and eye latch on the door of our downstairs bathroom. Then he quietly rigged up the bathroom with a booby trap. We forgot about it until my niece opened the bathroom door. BANG! It was a total surprise, so mission accomplished, sort of. I was hoping it would’ve been one of my brothers, but booby traps aren’t selective.
That’s our level of skill as hosts–a little hospitality mixed with a little juvenile delinquency. While we did finally install a lock so people could comfortably use the bathroom without fear of someone accidentally walking in on them, I believe we negated the comfort level with booby traps. Nothing says “welcome, make yourselves at home” like a loud explosion in your face when you need to use the bathroom.
We made up for it, though, with repeated New Year’s countdowns.
With lots of younger kids that can’t make it to midnight, we opted to do our own countdown around 8:00. Through the magic of Youtube, we found the London 2013 New Year’s countdown on the internet. We turned it on, and watched an enormous countdown clock next to Big Ben counting down the seconds, and then saw fabulous blasts of pyrotechnics for another five or ten minutes. Regardless of the actual time here in MN, it looked like a New Year’s celebration, and that’s all that mattered.
Once we got to zero, 15 people in silly hats filled the house with the sound of those annoying noisemakers. It was wonderful.
These noisemakers got a good workout with round after round of New Year countdowns.
In fact, the countdown was enough fun that we did it again about three minutes later. You can do that if your New Year’s comes from the internet. And then we did it again. And again. Why do that very best part of New Year’s only once a year?
Around 10:00, the “late partyers” had another round of New Year’s countdowns. Turns out, even the sixth time around it’s still fun to obnoxiously blow noisemakers in your brother’s face. It really doesn’t matter if you’re six or thirty-four, that sort of thing just reverts everyone to their kid state for a few minutes. And hey, isn’t that what the New Year is for? Starting over new and fresh and excited for a new year?
That night was pretty darn frigid, but we had several packages of sparklers to burn up, so we threw on our coats and headed out to the porch for some good old-fashioned “might poke someone’s eye with a glowing hot burning, sparking stick” fun. Sparklers don’t improve with age, and some of them literally lost their spark, but we lit them off just the same, and it was very festive.
In the smoky haze that encircled us in the freezing air, my sister joked, “Well, at least it will keep the mosquitoes away.” A few minutes later, my brother came outside and walked into the smoky cloud and made the same joke. Obviously, great minds think alike.
Post sparklers, some people headed home and the rest went inside. Back in the house I discovered, much to my dismay, that the auto-play of endless “Auld Lang Syne” songs had now switched to the Korean version of the song. Terrible. I switched it to Meatloaf, always a family crowd-pleaser.
At 11:00 as the New Year rang in over on the east coast, the last of us watched the ball drop in New York. We hoped to see our sister, who made the trip to NYC with her husband for her “bucket list” New Year’s Eve moment. An hour or so earlier, we all stood in the kitchen talking to her on speaker phone, as she stood in Times Square. The wonders of modern life are pretty cool sometimes.
At our crazy New Year’s bash, all of our party-goers left our house before midnight.
When midnight rolled around, my husband and I laughed at hosting a New Year’s party, but celebrating the true New Year with just the two of us. We stood amid a delightful mess of forgotten noisemakers and empty cups, and flipped through channels looking for one last countdown. Thank goodness La Crosse had a wimpy fireworks display on live feed, along with some local commentators, “Oh ya, folks, and here we are, in da new year! You betcha”. After celebrating about ten New Year’s countdowns in the evening, I felt properly ready to welcome in 2013.
The final highlight of the evening? My brother took 144 booby traps, planning to rig up Mom’s house before she got home from her New Year’s celebration that night. Yep, that guy that’s married and has a toddler is still my brother. That made my night. We’re awful sometimes.
I’m guessing it didn’t happen, because my mother never told horrific stories of nearly having a heart attack time and time again upon arriving home that night. And now, I blew his cover. But maybe not.
You never know when the explosions are coming, Mom. You just have to continually open every door with caution. And as everyone knows, it’s not the actual explosion that’s the big deal, it’s the worry that you might be next. It’s the never knowing. Is this the day? That’s the real beauty of those things, the mental torture. No, wait. Maybe it’s not Mom. Maybe someone else in the family will get the booby traps. Open that cabinet door and…BANG! Happy New Year, indeed.
