By now most of the toys you bought from Stephen Tindall will be lying broken or unused, apart from your underpants and socks.As usual you're lying back wondering where the hell the money went.
You look around and you wonder why you just never seem to please your teenagers, demanding little creatures that they are.
Then you say to yourself, "Hell I've got to wind up for another year to go through this all again and next year it's our turn to visit the in-laws."
By now you're starting to wonder what it's all about.
You're out in the sun and you fleetingly look down wondering what happened to your six pack that has moulded into one.
The fish don't appear to be biting and for some unknown reason the Mrs is a bit more short-tempered than normal.
The kids never clean up after themselves and you always seem to be the demanding dictator when you know you are absolutely right. A man's got to wonder whether this is as good as it gets.
Then I realise I have just felt the love, the cuddles and that special smell of babies that compels the unconditional love of our first grandchild, and know that all the other things do not really matter.
They do not matter because despite the ups and downs of being a father, husband, grandfather or uncle, New Year's Eve is not a time for ending a year but rather continuing a great journey.
The smell of a Kiwi barbeque, the guitar out, the kids performing their talent quest, the smell and special jingle of birds that only a Kiwi bush can lay on and the gurgling stream as it meanders out to the never-ending, throbbing power of the sea.
Look up to the majesty of your own mountain or hill range and celebrate just how well off we really are.
Aussies call their country the lucky country.
The grandeur of New Zealand owes nothing to luck, it is a country God thought up on his best day.
Yes, while the kids could be more helpful, the Mrs less short and people more grateful, where else in the world can you live and experience the greatness of a beautiful country shared in large part by hard-working genuinely good blokes and blokesses.
The New Years honours list requires some comment.
I am a republican who has always been suspicious of honours bestowed by the Crown.
Further, I am from Ngati Porou and one of our chiefs was offered the option to lead the Maori King movement.
We chose not to, citing the mana of his own genealogy and estates above anything the concept of a King could bestow.
I have, however, not been able to come up with an honours system steeped in tradition that has lasted hundreds of years and upheld by many of my ancestors (who have accepted their awards) in battle for the country.
So I end this New Year by saluting a man who has contributed more than many will know in building a just society, a great democracy and bridges between Maori and others – Sir Mason Durie.
Sunday News, January 3, 2010