New Year's odds & ends

• I'm slowly making my way through the Stirrup Queen's annual Creme de la Creme list for 2010, which was posted on New Year's Day and features the best (self-selected) entries of the past year from almost 300 ALI bloggers (and counting). Mel puts an amazing amount of effort into this annual project, and it's a wonderful sampling of great writing and thought-provoking posts, covering a broad spectrum of topics. Lots of great reading there, so if you haven't checked it out yet, please do!
• Yes, I have a post on the list. I picked "25 Years: Our silver lining" as my contribution (#24). I posted it on & about our 25th wedding anniversary in July, and I knew right away that it was the post that best summed up the year for me & my current state of mind.
• Had lunch on New Year's Day at FIL's. Also there: stepMIL's son, his wife, her 22-year-old daughter from a previous relationship (!), & their two-year-old son together. This is stepMIL's only grandchild, & of course the sun rises & sets on him. ; ) He IS a cute little guy, and dh & I were both enjoying him. I even found myself thinking that I was doing very well, wasn't I? And then -- I reached a point where all I could think was, "OK, enough already, time to go," lol. I reached that point somewhere around the two-hour mark, between stepBIL's wife ravings about how it's "so great" to be a mom (again), what a happy child her son is, & how she's been talking with a high school girlfriend about how weird & wonderful it was that they all had families now (she's a nice, friendly girl, but tact has never been her strong point...), & then stepMIL's gushing about how wonderful her grandson was.
• Was reading the NYT Book Review section tonight, and a review of the new memoir by the Duchess of Cavendish, nee Deborah Mitford, when I stumbled on this paragraph (we bereaved parents are everywhere...!):

So in 1950, when his father died, Andrew became the 11th Duke of Devonshire, and the couple moved to Chatsworth, the family’s vast country estate. With them came their two children, Emma and Peregrine (who became the 12th duke on his father’s death in 2004). Three other children died at birth — tragedies that Mitford humbly, feelingly describes. But in 1957 another child, Sophia, was born. Although there was “much rejoicing,” Mitford recalls, “I was so apprehensive that I did not buy any new clothes for the baby, and the washed-out woolly things and old-­fashioned gowns surprised the nurses in the smart maternity wing.” She adds, “I could hardly believe it when they said that she was perfect.”

• Went to see "The King's Speech" today. Even my anti-monarchist husband thoroughly enjoyed it. Colin Firth looks nothing like King George VI, but does an amazing job of conveying what the man went through. (And, of course... he's Colin Firth!! ; ) lol) Geoffrey Rush is wonderful too, & so are the supporting cast.
• Still off tomorrow, but back to work Tuesday (boo, hiss, lol).