Last weekend was bad. Really bad. And still, it could have been so very much worse. I shiver at the thought of how much worse it could have been. It was time for my regular MRI scans. Relax everybody, the results were fine. Awesome in fact. I guess that’s something of a spoiler for the rest of this post, huh? So much for my career as a suspense writer. Most everybody has had an MRI in this day and age, and it doesn’t sound that bad, does it? And I’m not even claustrophobic, so I don’t have that fear to worry about. I am trypanophobic, which is an intense fear of medical needles, and no, I did not know the medical name for it before looking it up. After a gazillion operations, you’d think I’d be used to needles, but here’s the thing, all those operations have taken a toll on my veins, which weren’t award-winning veins to begin with. This time, I was stuck five times, in both hands and both wrists, before the specialist who was called in from I.V. therapy finally got a vein. In my shoulder. How weird is that? After the wrist thing though, it was nothing. Then there’s the lying flat for hours. And hours. And hours. Because they scan my brain and entire spine, it’s like having four MRIs all at once. Just how you’d want to spend your Saturday, right? Yes, I had to do it on Saturday because they didn’t have a block of time that large through the week. So the MRI and its associated needle drama lasted seven hours. Then I had to go back to Vanderbilt on Monday to get the results. Which were good, as I said. And that bears repeating because really, how often has that happened? Rarely.
So that’s me whining. Last weekend had me out of sorts all week. Whenever these appointments come up, well it’s just terrifying. I tell myself not to worry about it because I know worrying will do no good, but then I’ll be holding my children and think what they’re lives will be like if the brain tumor that will finally get me is already there, just waiting to be found, craving an audience to start reeking its havoc. Sound crazy? Well, just let me know how you handle the news of your brain tumor. Or your second. Or your ninth. You do that, then we’ll talk crazy. For more than a year now, I’ve been able, for the most part, to forget the VHL and surgeries and tumors. It’s been blissful. But this past weekend, it was all VHL all the time. These check-ups, though only annual and much easier than my prior week-long trips to Bethesda, Maryland, are still able to steal my bliss, if only for a while.
I realize that I don’t sound particularly grateful just now, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. I am grateful. I’m on-my-knees, tears-of-joy grateful. I am grateful for the good report. Grateful for my awesome neurosurgeon who hugged me before leaving the room. Grateful that I have top notch medical care so nearby. Grateful for a whole year that I don’t have to think about this. Grateful for my husband, who held my hand through the whole ordeal. Grateful for my family, who babysat my children so we wouldn’t have that added stress last weekend. And my children, Oh my God am I grateful for my children. I fear every minute that somebody will figure out that I got more than my fair share of blessings and decide that I have to pay up, because trypanophobia, brain tumors and all, I am still one seriously lucky chick.
I realized today that I hadn’t written about last weekend. So this is me, writing out my stress. Michael will have to post it because Blogger no longer supports the outdated version of my browser. Clearly, Blogger does not realize how little time I have for its crap. Of course, if I’d just finally learn to use my most awesome MacBook, this wouldn’t be a problem. But that can be tomorrows stress. Today, I’ll just try to bask in the blessings.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Sunday, January 8, 2012
The Food Tease
It seems that after reading my last post, some of my faithful readers, all six of you, were anticipating a recipe, where in you might have for yourself a crock pot full of the yummy concoction which I so convincingly blathered on about, and were disappointed when the much anticipated recipe was not forthcoming. Sorry about that. But since I aim to deliver, here you go.
If this dish had a name, Liz didn’t tell it to me, so let it be called henceforth – drum roll please – Liz’s crock pot full of Mexican Yumminess. If you can come up with a better name, (and really, how could you not?) then leave it in the comments. We’ll do a giveaway! Except, that you know, I won’t actually be giving anything away and there’s no prestige whatsoever attached to winning. Still, it’d be fun, right? So here ya go:
1 bag (2.5 – 3 lbs.) frozen chicken breast
8 oz. cream cheese
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can whole kernel corn, drained
1 can RO*TEL
Line bottom of crock pot with frozen chicken. Put cream cheese on top of that, then add rest of ingredients. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours, stirring every two hours. Turn off crock pot and let stand for 30 minutes to thicken. Serve over rice, which you do not let a blind woman cook
Where recipes are concerned, I never do leave well enough alone. Were I to make this myself, I would probably ad in some queso cheese, just a little, like maybe a gob or so. Why would I do this? Because I add extra cheese to everything. Really I do. But if you don’t want to do that, the recipe was great without it. Enjoy.
If this dish had a name, Liz didn’t tell it to me, so let it be called henceforth – drum roll please – Liz’s crock pot full of Mexican Yumminess. If you can come up with a better name, (and really, how could you not?) then leave it in the comments. We’ll do a giveaway! Except, that you know, I won’t actually be giving anything away and there’s no prestige whatsoever attached to winning. Still, it’d be fun, right? So here ya go:
1 bag (2.5 – 3 lbs.) frozen chicken breast
8 oz. cream cheese
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can whole kernel corn, drained
1 can RO*TEL
Line bottom of crock pot with frozen chicken. Put cream cheese on top of that, then add rest of ingredients. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours, stirring every two hours. Turn off crock pot and let stand for 30 minutes to thicken. Serve over rice, which you do not let a blind woman cook
Where recipes are concerned, I never do leave well enough alone. Were I to make this myself, I would probably ad in some queso cheese, just a little, like maybe a gob or so. Why would I do this? Because I add extra cheese to everything. Really I do. But if you don’t want to do that, the recipe was great without it. Enjoy.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Adventures in Blind Cooking
I love to cook. Not for any desire for creative expression or wholesome living, but because, quite simply, I love to eat. I have a friend, let’s call her Liz – let’s do that because that’s her name – who also likes to cook. Both of us are stay at home moms who find that even the promise of an awesome meal out is not worth the trouble of bundling up a three year old and an infant and risking the threat of public humiliation that an outing with children, unpredictable little darlings that they are, always entails. That’s not to mention the expense involved in eating out. So we cook at home. Yesterday, Liz was here for our weekly playdate, wherein our boys fight over toys, our girls make their usual constant demands of feed me, change me, repeat, and Liz and I try to have five minutes of uninterrupted adult conversation. Liz had called yesterday morning to say she was bringing lunch. Hooray! I do love it when lunch shows up at my door, don’t you? What, your friends don’t bring you lunch? Well find you some friends that do is all I’m saying.
So she brought this yummy Mexican dish that had cream cheese, chicken, beans, and all manner of yumminess. I was sold at the cream cheese part. Even better, she cooked the whole thing in the crock pot. If I wrote poetry, I would totally write an ode to my crock pot. Better still, Liz gave me the recipe for this culinary marvel. Hooray again! When Liz called, she asked if I had rice. Do I have rice? My rice cooker is one of the best appliances in my kitchen appliance arsenal, and that’s something because I dearly love kitchen appliances and gadgetry. So I told Liz to rest easy, the rice was covered.
So Liz got here, and after we had finished off the leftover New Year’s Eve candy and put a sizeable dent in my stash of smoke Gouda, we thought it might be time for a little lunch. I think this was around 10:45. So, it was time to start the rice. I proudly – okay arrogantly – got out my rice cooker. I also got out the plug adapter thingy because – here’s the thing about my rice cooker – it’s Japanese. I mean really, Michael got it for $5 from a Japanese guy he used to work with who was selling off all his stuff before returning home to Japan. Who knows more about making rice than the Japanese, I ask you? So I plugged the thingy into the wall and plugged the rice cooker into the thingy, all of this I assume is so the difference in volts or amps or whatsits won’t blow up my house. I measured out the rice, measured out the water, then told Liz to go ahead and start it up.
“What buttons do I push,” she asked, not illogically.
“I dunno. What does it look like you push?”
“Are you kidding me? This is in Japanese. How should I know?”
After making a smart ass comment along the lines of “welcome to my world, I did what I always do in these situations, I called Michael. I call Michael a lot, bless his heart. Everything was fine, Michael said, he had written instructions, complete with a diagram, and they were on a sheet of paper in the cabinet. See, it’s all fine. So we found the paper, which Liz studied.
Okay, here’s the thing. Michael is a computer techy analyst systems engineer support type person. You know the manuals and instructions that come with your electronic devices? Yeah, people like Michael write those instructions. So as it turns out, Liz found the Japanese writing on the cooker of more use than she found Michael’s instructions. So after employing my “push a bunch of buttons and see what happens” method, which resulted in hot, crunchy rice soup, we decided to go to plan B. Never fear, I am a woman with a long history of Plan Bs. I had Minute Rice. Of course, I don’t actually eat Minute Rice, oh God no. I’m not in any way a food snob, but Minute Rice is just not for human consumption. I have a big Sam’s Club container of it for Sprout to play with. Everybody knows the basics of Minute Rice, equal parts water and rice and microwave until done. A monkey could do it.
Turns out, the monkeys maybe have something on me. Five minutes, the rice wasn’t done. Two more minutes, the rice wasn’t done. More water and two more minutes, the rice still wasn’t done. And then in one of those forehead slapping moments of clarity, I realized the problem. I hadn’t in fact used the Minute Rice. Flustered by the rice cooker debacle, I had used regular rice. Now it all makes sense. To Liz’s credit, she was undaunted, or maybe she’s just got used to this kind of thing from me, either way, she diligently kept microwaving the rice until finally, we had edible, non-crunchy rice. Yummy. Delicious, in fact.
“You know,” Liz said, “you really should write about the stuff that happens to you in the kitchen.”
And a blog post was born. Thanks Liz – for lunch, for the idea, and for your patience.
So she brought this yummy Mexican dish that had cream cheese, chicken, beans, and all manner of yumminess. I was sold at the cream cheese part. Even better, she cooked the whole thing in the crock pot. If I wrote poetry, I would totally write an ode to my crock pot. Better still, Liz gave me the recipe for this culinary marvel. Hooray again! When Liz called, she asked if I had rice. Do I have rice? My rice cooker is one of the best appliances in my kitchen appliance arsenal, and that’s something because I dearly love kitchen appliances and gadgetry. So I told Liz to rest easy, the rice was covered.
So Liz got here, and after we had finished off the leftover New Year’s Eve candy and put a sizeable dent in my stash of smoke Gouda, we thought it might be time for a little lunch. I think this was around 10:45. So, it was time to start the rice. I proudly – okay arrogantly – got out my rice cooker. I also got out the plug adapter thingy because – here’s the thing about my rice cooker – it’s Japanese. I mean really, Michael got it for $5 from a Japanese guy he used to work with who was selling off all his stuff before returning home to Japan. Who knows more about making rice than the Japanese, I ask you? So I plugged the thingy into the wall and plugged the rice cooker into the thingy, all of this I assume is so the difference in volts or amps or whatsits won’t blow up my house. I measured out the rice, measured out the water, then told Liz to go ahead and start it up.
“What buttons do I push,” she asked, not illogically.
“I dunno. What does it look like you push?”
“Are you kidding me? This is in Japanese. How should I know?”
After making a smart ass comment along the lines of “welcome to my world, I did what I always do in these situations, I called Michael. I call Michael a lot, bless his heart. Everything was fine, Michael said, he had written instructions, complete with a diagram, and they were on a sheet of paper in the cabinet. See, it’s all fine. So we found the paper, which Liz studied.
Okay, here’s the thing. Michael is a computer techy analyst systems engineer support type person. You know the manuals and instructions that come with your electronic devices? Yeah, people like Michael write those instructions. So as it turns out, Liz found the Japanese writing on the cooker of more use than she found Michael’s instructions. So after employing my “push a bunch of buttons and see what happens” method, which resulted in hot, crunchy rice soup, we decided to go to plan B. Never fear, I am a woman with a long history of Plan Bs. I had Minute Rice. Of course, I don’t actually eat Minute Rice, oh God no. I’m not in any way a food snob, but Minute Rice is just not for human consumption. I have a big Sam’s Club container of it for Sprout to play with. Everybody knows the basics of Minute Rice, equal parts water and rice and microwave until done. A monkey could do it.
Turns out, the monkeys maybe have something on me. Five minutes, the rice wasn’t done. Two more minutes, the rice wasn’t done. More water and two more minutes, the rice still wasn’t done. And then in one of those forehead slapping moments of clarity, I realized the problem. I hadn’t in fact used the Minute Rice. Flustered by the rice cooker debacle, I had used regular rice. Now it all makes sense. To Liz’s credit, she was undaunted, or maybe she’s just got used to this kind of thing from me, either way, she diligently kept microwaving the rice until finally, we had edible, non-crunchy rice. Yummy. Delicious, in fact.
“You know,” Liz said, “you really should write about the stuff that happens to you in the kitchen.”
And a blog post was born. Thanks Liz – for lunch, for the idea, and for your patience.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Normal Day
For good or for ill, the holidays are over. The insanity is over for another year. The shopping, cooking, planning, fretting, visiting, gifting, indulging, and merry holiday cheer are over for another year. That makes January either a blessed relief or a depressing let down. I share with you the snippet below about the grace of a normal day to remind us all that normal days are blessings in themselves. I, and I’m sure we all, have had those days where normality falls victim, with lightening speed, to the unthinkable. I often read this to remind myself just what a blessing a normal day is.
Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, savor you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it will not always be so. One day, I shall dig my nails into the earth or bury my face in the pillow or stretch myself out or raise my hands to the sky and want more than all the world your return.
The above is titled, “Let Me Hold You While I May,” by Mary Jean Irion. I came across it in “The Sweet Potato Queen’s Wedding Planner/Divorce Guide” by Jill Conner Browne, a book which I highly, highly recommend.
Happy January 3rd everybody.
Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, savor you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it will not always be so. One day, I shall dig my nails into the earth or bury my face in the pillow or stretch myself out or raise my hands to the sky and want more than all the world your return.
The above is titled, “Let Me Hold You While I May,” by Mary Jean Irion. I came across it in “The Sweet Potato Queen’s Wedding Planner/Divorce Guide” by Jill Conner Browne, a book which I highly, highly recommend.
Happy January 3rd everybody.
Monday, January 2, 2012
The Rosebud Year in Revew
Dear Rosebud,
The year of your birth has come and gone. It seems mere seconds since I held you for the first time. Now, you are rolling over, smiling, and laughing out loud. You are the happiest, most delightful baby I have ever had the pleasure to know. And you are mine. That’s the amazing part. This wonderful little creature whose joyous giggles cause strangers to turn and smile is mine. No matter what gifts await me in 2012 or in my entire future, I am blessed because I have you and Big Brother.
You are using your hands now, grabbing everything. And your favorite things to grab are your own toes. Oh the sheer triumph and joy you showed when you could finally grab hold of your own toes. Well, it was something to witness. You also love baths, and are an ace when it comes to sleeping and nursing. You, like Big Brother, hate tummy time. And I should document here that at three months, you said your first word. Much to your Daddy’s consternation, that first word was … “Granny.” Not Mama, not Dada, not even Bubby, but Granny. Granny stood over your crib talking to you, telling you to say hi to Granny. In Granny’s defense, she didn’t actually expect you to say it, and certainly wasn’t actually trying to get you to, although your Daddy might not ever believe that. And you said it, Granny, plain as day. Then you said it two more times that day. The effort must have plumb tuckered out your talking muscles though, because you haven’t said any words since. I fancy that sometimes “Ama,” is Mama, but I know that’s a stretch.
You are growing like the proverbial weed. At your four month check up, you weighed in at eleven pounds, thirteen ounces, which seems big to me, but is really low on the percentiles chart. Although what you might lack in stature, you make up for in personality. Your hair is a beautiful red, although a different red from your brother’s hair. Your eye color, well that’s up for debate. Some people say blue, some say grey. Aunt Jana says they are exactly like her eyes. What is undisputed is that they are beautiful. Especially since they are almost always accompanying that wide, open mouth grin you have. You’re perfect is what you are.
When you’re older, you’ll know doubt chide me for not recording your every accomplishment as diligently as I recorded your brother’s. It’s true, I’m guilty. But it’s not due to any comparative lack of interest on my part, not at all. It’s just that with two kids, there is exponentially more work to do. And when free time does mercifully present itself, I usually find myself spending it just snuggling with my two babies.
In the year to come, my sweet girl, you will walk, talk, crawl, and perform heretofore unimagined miraculous feats. I’m looking forward to every moment, even as I treasure the moments of this past year, moments of so many firsts—first smiles, first cuddles, first kisses. Everyday, I offer up a prayer of thanksgiving for you, my darling baby girl.
My Love Always,
Mommy
The year of your birth has come and gone. It seems mere seconds since I held you for the first time. Now, you are rolling over, smiling, and laughing out loud. You are the happiest, most delightful baby I have ever had the pleasure to know. And you are mine. That’s the amazing part. This wonderful little creature whose joyous giggles cause strangers to turn and smile is mine. No matter what gifts await me in 2012 or in my entire future, I am blessed because I have you and Big Brother.
You are using your hands now, grabbing everything. And your favorite things to grab are your own toes. Oh the sheer triumph and joy you showed when you could finally grab hold of your own toes. Well, it was something to witness. You also love baths, and are an ace when it comes to sleeping and nursing. You, like Big Brother, hate tummy time. And I should document here that at three months, you said your first word. Much to your Daddy’s consternation, that first word was … “Granny.” Not Mama, not Dada, not even Bubby, but Granny. Granny stood over your crib talking to you, telling you to say hi to Granny. In Granny’s defense, she didn’t actually expect you to say it, and certainly wasn’t actually trying to get you to, although your Daddy might not ever believe that. And you said it, Granny, plain as day. Then you said it two more times that day. The effort must have plumb tuckered out your talking muscles though, because you haven’t said any words since. I fancy that sometimes “Ama,” is Mama, but I know that’s a stretch.
You are growing like the proverbial weed. At your four month check up, you weighed in at eleven pounds, thirteen ounces, which seems big to me, but is really low on the percentiles chart. Although what you might lack in stature, you make up for in personality. Your hair is a beautiful red, although a different red from your brother’s hair. Your eye color, well that’s up for debate. Some people say blue, some say grey. Aunt Jana says they are exactly like her eyes. What is undisputed is that they are beautiful. Especially since they are almost always accompanying that wide, open mouth grin you have. You’re perfect is what you are.
When you’re older, you’ll know doubt chide me for not recording your every accomplishment as diligently as I recorded your brother’s. It’s true, I’m guilty. But it’s not due to any comparative lack of interest on my part, not at all. It’s just that with two kids, there is exponentially more work to do. And when free time does mercifully present itself, I usually find myself spending it just snuggling with my two babies.
In the year to come, my sweet girl, you will walk, talk, crawl, and perform heretofore unimagined miraculous feats. I’m looking forward to every moment, even as I treasure the moments of this past year, moments of so many firsts—first smiles, first cuddles, first kisses. Everyday, I offer up a prayer of thanksgiving for you, my darling baby girl.
My Love Always,
Mommy
Sunday, January 1, 2012
New Year's Resolutions
I know, I know—nobody makes resolutions anymore. It’s just setting yourself up for failure, yadda, yadda. And that’s true, mostly. I think it depends entirely on your willingness to look at your life and yourself with a critical eye and be honest about what things you’d like to change. For example, I need to lose weight. I do. It’s true. But I also know that right now, I do not have the time or mental energy to devote to what experience has taught me will be a time and energy intensive undertaking. So yeah, I need to lose weight, but no, I do not possess the resolve to do it just now. What I like about New Year’s is that it is, or at least can be, such a time of clear-eyed optimism. Once one has been alive for more than a day, there’s really no such thing as a clean slate, but on January 1st, the Christmas and all its associated mayhem is over, and there’s room in one’s life to take that much needed deep breath. It’s just the perfect time to gather in one’s thoughts and plot a course of sorts for the next 365 days.
My number one goal for 2012 is to embrace the chaos. When you live in a house with two small children, chaos is the order of the day. Rather than ruminating on the things I’d do if I didn’t have all this chaos, I want to embrace the chaos, dig in my heels, and find a way to get done those things that I want to get done in spite of the chaos. Because honestly, I love the chaos. Oh sure, not every second of every day, but I wouldn’t change it for anything. If chaos is the price for the blessings I have been given, then I’ll gladly pay it a thousand times over.
I want to be healthier. I want to exercise, which might mean riding the stationary bike a few times a week or taking a walk when the weather is nice. No, that won’t lose me any weight, but it’ll be activity that I can feel good about. Also, I resolve to make healthier food choices. Not all the time necessarily, and I don’t mean I’ll be regularly ordering salad with only lemon juice for dressing, but you know, maybe have the grilled veggie sandwich instead of the bacon cheeseburger. That’s entirely doable. Will I cut out sweets? Oh no. Oh hell no. But I can cut back sweets to, say, twice a week. Wait, maybe three times is more doable.
Writing. Oh God. For more than a decade now, regular writing has been on my New Year’s Resolutions list, and I have rarely if ever managed to make it happen. Right now, I still don’t have a plan for it. What I know is that I love to write, want to write, and want to be a published author. As for having a roadmap to make that happen, I got nothing. But the dream is alive, still alive. Maybe that’ll be my resolution, to foster that dream whenever I can, however I can. So maybe at the end of each week, I will look back and ask, did I foster my dream this week? Did I write on my novel, my nonfiction work? Did I research agents for the completed manuscript? Did I spend some time in an online writing community? Yes, I think that’ll do as a resolution for now. To foster my writing dream whenever and however I can.
In 2011 I resolved to cultivate new friendships. With the exception of the birth of my daughter, the successful follow-through of that resolution as been the brightest spot in a brilliant year. I have met friends, Betties, through my participation in a fabulous online group. I have reconnected with some old friends, and have developed a meaningful and deep friendship with someone who was until recently just a friend-of-a-friend type of acquaintance. So see, resolutions can pay off. I resolve to value and continue those friendships in 2012.
Finally, but hardly of least importance, I resolve to spend more quality time with my best friend, my husband. Most days, we don’t have any time alone together until both kids are asleep at night, and then we’re both so exhausted we usually both fall asleep in the living room. It’s the glamorous life here, folks. But I want to spend more time with him. I want to have actual conversations that don’t occur while both of us have a lapful of offspring. I’m not sure how that can happen, but I resolve to make the effort. Maybe it means we each get up an hour earlier in the morning to have time to talk over our morning coffee. Or maybe we each need to do better about finding babysitting help. I don’t know how it is to happen, but I resolve to give more time and attention to the most important relationship in my life.
So that’s a good start for 2012, I think. There are the usual suspects as well—knit more, learn to bake bread, finally—but you know, I’ll get to those as I can. Primarily, I want to enjoy every day to the fullest. What about you?
My number one goal for 2012 is to embrace the chaos. When you live in a house with two small children, chaos is the order of the day. Rather than ruminating on the things I’d do if I didn’t have all this chaos, I want to embrace the chaos, dig in my heels, and find a way to get done those things that I want to get done in spite of the chaos. Because honestly, I love the chaos. Oh sure, not every second of every day, but I wouldn’t change it for anything. If chaos is the price for the blessings I have been given, then I’ll gladly pay it a thousand times over.
I want to be healthier. I want to exercise, which might mean riding the stationary bike a few times a week or taking a walk when the weather is nice. No, that won’t lose me any weight, but it’ll be activity that I can feel good about. Also, I resolve to make healthier food choices. Not all the time necessarily, and I don’t mean I’ll be regularly ordering salad with only lemon juice for dressing, but you know, maybe have the grilled veggie sandwich instead of the bacon cheeseburger. That’s entirely doable. Will I cut out sweets? Oh no. Oh hell no. But I can cut back sweets to, say, twice a week. Wait, maybe three times is more doable.
Writing. Oh God. For more than a decade now, regular writing has been on my New Year’s Resolutions list, and I have rarely if ever managed to make it happen. Right now, I still don’t have a plan for it. What I know is that I love to write, want to write, and want to be a published author. As for having a roadmap to make that happen, I got nothing. But the dream is alive, still alive. Maybe that’ll be my resolution, to foster that dream whenever I can, however I can. So maybe at the end of each week, I will look back and ask, did I foster my dream this week? Did I write on my novel, my nonfiction work? Did I research agents for the completed manuscript? Did I spend some time in an online writing community? Yes, I think that’ll do as a resolution for now. To foster my writing dream whenever and however I can.
In 2011 I resolved to cultivate new friendships. With the exception of the birth of my daughter, the successful follow-through of that resolution as been the brightest spot in a brilliant year. I have met friends, Betties, through my participation in a fabulous online group. I have reconnected with some old friends, and have developed a meaningful and deep friendship with someone who was until recently just a friend-of-a-friend type of acquaintance. So see, resolutions can pay off. I resolve to value and continue those friendships in 2012.
Finally, but hardly of least importance, I resolve to spend more quality time with my best friend, my husband. Most days, we don’t have any time alone together until both kids are asleep at night, and then we’re both so exhausted we usually both fall asleep in the living room. It’s the glamorous life here, folks. But I want to spend more time with him. I want to have actual conversations that don’t occur while both of us have a lapful of offspring. I’m not sure how that can happen, but I resolve to make the effort. Maybe it means we each get up an hour earlier in the morning to have time to talk over our morning coffee. Or maybe we each need to do better about finding babysitting help. I don’t know how it is to happen, but I resolve to give more time and attention to the most important relationship in my life.
So that’s a good start for 2012, I think. There are the usual suspects as well—knit more, learn to bake bread, finally—but you know, I’ll get to those as I can. Primarily, I want to enjoy every day to the fullest. What about you?
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