Here's mine.

New Year's Day, morning, Patricia and I are moving a heavy mirror in the bedroom. She recently bought a new bed frame that we put together (with the help of our friend Vinny), but which necessitated moving the dresser, which necessitated moving the heavy mirror above the dresser. We were doing this when I slid my hand on the bottom of the mirror to get a better grip. And that's when I got the sliver. Deep sliver. It took about five minutes of wrangling with tweezers and pins and hydrogen peroxide to get it free and clear, and even then I thought we'd missed the brunt of it. Right near the wound I saw a thin blue line that looked like a sliver deep beneath the surface, and which reminded me of the sleek blue shadow of a shark beneath the surface of the water. I stared at it. I pressed on it. I compared it to veins in my hand. It looked like a vein. Surely it was just a vein. Or was it? (It was.) But I wasted half the day obsessing over it. That was my first day of the new year.

Yesterday afternoon, the second day of the New Year, I was returning to work with lunch, chicken coconut curry soup from Metropolitan Market in lower Queen Anne, when I felt something splat on top of my head. Things have landed on my head before, of course, but they invariably turn out to be water from a nearby air-conditioner, or some such, but this felt different. It felt wrong. I had napkins in my hand for the soup and I rubbed them on the back of my head ... and the napkins came away smeared with the yellow of bird shit. I spent the next 15 minutes cleaning up at work in the bathroom, then showered when I got home. The chicken curry soup for lunch didn't look or taste as good as it ought to. That was my second day of the new year.

A new year is an artificial construct, of course, which gives us the illusion of a new beginning. I enjoy that illusion—for a day or a week or two. Sometimes I look for signs in it. What will the new year bring? Will the first few days tell me what kind of year I will have?

Per the signs this year: I will be obsessed with the inconsequential; then I'll get shit on.

Today's the third day of the new year. Here I come, world.

HOMER: Sitting here and complaining isn't going to do anything. You got to pull up your diaper and be the best damn Barney you can be.

BARNEY: HERE I COME WORLD!!! (Runs outside and into trash can.)

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