The decade, that is.
On December 31, 1999, I was childless and husbandless and actually kind of a bit of a bum (I did have a job, however).
I stood with my good friend in the middle of the throng somewhere in Downtown Monterey, California, listening to the repetitive echoes of Prince playing everywhere; and as the seconds were counted down, we started to scream and jump. Perhaps we expected Y2K to plunge us all into silence, and the screaming was some sort of safety blanket.
But as we got closer to midnight and we closed the book on those wacky nineteen-nineties and said forever farewell to a very strange last decade of the only century we'd ever known, screaming and just plain being felt as natural as air.
And as Y2K turned out to be one of those laughable things we now get to look back upon with a delighted sense of what-the-effishnes; and the lights glittered; and the world didn't end; and it was ironically relevant to chant that we'd be partying "like it was 1999"; it also became apparent that even if there was a presumably monumental instant taking place –at least numerically speaking– it was also plain as the cold nose on my face that life continues to be the same.
Ten years later, and a decade in which I've moved from irresponsible part-time bum to slightly more responsible flextime bum, and life is somewhat the same. This silly date still makes me happy and sad and nostalgic and, as the years pass, makes me feel older.
But more and more I am also learning to approach it from the just-another-day ethic: just another day that can be a miniature eternity filled with possibilities for amazement. A day that can be filled with extreme pain or pleasure, or an ordinary kind of day– a jeans kind of day, if you will.
May 2010 have less momentous days for you and your loved ones and more jeans-days, where you can just enjoy life without thinking of the date.
A Daily Dose of Zen Sarcasm! 
Happy new year, cat lady. Cat, husband and kid lady, now. I’d say it all turned out fairly good, yes?
Dude. We apparently had a Dionne Warwick-worthy psychic friends moment on naming our final posts of this year. 🙂
I love the idea of more jeans days! I also like your photo collage, so much so that I borrowed the idea. Happy New Year!
great photo mashup! here’s to a fantabulous new decade! :: clink ::
Great photos! No better way to summarize a year. And I love how you summarize where you were 10 years ago. Funny. I don’t remember too much about 1999 into 2000. It all fades over time, doesn’t it?