New years' eve party shopping list

• 1 bunch sage leaves
• cloth dolls representing 2006
• pins (to stick in 2006 cloth dolls)
• various items representing shitty 2006 events to burn and/or destroy
• lots and lots of booze

This past weekend, my Girls' Night crew held its seventh annual Dirty Santa party. Everyone brings a gift purchased for $15 or less, we draw numbers, and the numbers determine the order you pick a gift. Later numbers are good, because if you don't like the gift you choose, you can force earlier numbers to swap with you. (That's the "dirty" part. The first year, one of the girls thought that the presents had to be dirty, so I ended up taking home a bag of condoms and K-Y jelly.)

The gift part was fun and funny, as always -- gifts ranged from pajama bottoms to Christmas-themed cheese spreaders. I ended up with a tiny bamboo cutting board, two tiny bowls (for miniscule amounts of dip?), a pedicure set, and the above-mentioned cheese spreader.

But the evening was more cathartic than anything else. For the first time in a long time, all of the original group was back together (with the obvious exception of Kristin), and we spent hours ruminating on the events of the past 12 months. Which kinda sucked. In the past year, our various members have dealt with 3 miscarriages, a horribly unjust lawsuit and verdict, spousal infidelity, severe family trauma, and the suicide of one of our best friends. Particularly in the last half of the year, it feels like it's been an onslaught of one bad thing after another, to the point that we're feeling a bit superstitious. Some sort of exorcism or spiritual cleansing is in order.

So, for New Year's Eve, I'm having a party. We're going to jump on a moon bounce, blow shit up, drink lots of champagne, burn sage and poke voodoo dolls representing 2006 with pins. The bad mojo of 2006 will be cleared out, and we will face 2007 with hope and optimism. We have each other, our husbands, our families, our brains and our senses of humor. We will prevail.