My Relationship With Resolutions

Me: Pfft. Resolutions. I don't do them. I, in fact, turn my nose up at them. I don't need them.

Resolutions: Why not? Imagine the possibilities!

Me: Yeah, but why should I just set myself up for failure? Every year I say I'm going to write every day and every year I don't live up to my own expectations. Every year I say I will eat healthier or be more creative or stop drinking Pepsi or shave my legs and then it never happens! Why bother?! A new year is just a higher number, nothing more.

Resolutions: Come on! It's a time for reflection and fresh starts and blank slates and such. You could make lists.

Me: ...Lists? I like lists.

Resolutions: Sure! Think of all the wonderful plans you can make for the coming year and the various blank pages that could be filled up with pen marks!

Me: Well, I guess I could make a few goals. Like trying to be more healthy. But the problem is that you can't just say, "be more healthy." There are so many specifics involved and if I don't address each one, I'll just be flailing around not knowing what to do. I mean, there's the food aspect of it and the exercise aspect. And the overabundance of sugar in my diet has so much to do with how I feel, but should I say eat healthy or don't eat sugar? Because one is positive and one is negative, but the positive is vague while the negative is specific. And should I include trying not to eat out as often? And if so, shouldn't one of my goals/resolutions be to learn to cook more meals and be more organized with my shopping and meal planning to make sure that we actually don't eat out as often?

Resolutions: Um....

Me: Okay, and writing more. I could focus on output, like number of words, or pages or stories. Or I could just be vague and say, "write more." And do I include blogging or not and does journaling count?

Resolutions: Yes?

Me: What about other creative pursuits? Knitting, drawing, crochet, various other crafty things? And money! I want more of that! That's got to be considered in my goals as well. And I want to move out of Vegas, so I should put a timeline on that. I want to travel more, drive less, be with my family more, be more environmentally conscious and have chickens. I think I better go get a three ring binder and some labeled dividers. And I'll have to make an appendix and have some footnotes. Maybe a whole different volume that refers back to the first one.....

Resolutions: Maybe you're right. Maybe resolutions aren't your thing....

Me: Hell yeah, they are! Bring it on, 2011!

Chuck and Morgan

So, for Christmas, Santa brought Harper a hamster cage and some money to buy some hammies. A couple of days ago, Harper picked out two little guys and brought them to their new home. These are they. The dark one is Chuck, and the lighter one is Morgan. It was hard to get any good pictures of Chuck though because of his color. So there's just one blurry one.

Christmas!

Life, 'Round These Parts

This rat sleeps on her head.

Silas loves the ratties and squeals with excitement when they are near.

Cookie decorating.

Same.

Irina was doing a puppet show.

Silas loooooooooves smoothies. He always gets a little bit on his forehead from the cup.

We made a jingle bell flower garland, using this tutorial from the Crafty Crow.

Sugar Cookie Dough

We are making sugar cookies tonight. As with everything in my life, when I make plans to bake cookies it usually ends up being rather disorganized and not too well thought out. Thus we will probably be decorating them well unto midnight. That's okay, though, we don't have to wake up early for anything. What's life if you can't have a late night cookie decorating party anyway? We finished making the dough a few minutes ago and wrapped up the beautiful, golden, squishy log and stuck it in the fridge to firm up.

Other things done: cut paper snowflakes to hang from the ceiling, went to the library to pick out some Christmas books (only to discover that they were ALL already checked out), wrote letters to Santa.

Today we went to a park day of a not Life Learners homeschooling group. It's something I've been meaning to do for a long time because Harper has been feeling very lonely since her friends moved away and almost all of the girls in Life Learners nowadays are around Irina's age or younger. Today she met two girls around her age and had a good time playing with them for a couple of hours.

Actually last week at Life Learners she played tag with the boys for the whole time and said she had fun then too, but she has really been craving some good girl friends to hang out with. She said, "Playing with the boys is fine, except for when they talk about Pokemon." Which she says is boring. Also, she doesn't know if they're talking about Pokemon or Bakugan or Yugioh or whatever thing boys are into nowadays. It made me laugh and wonder what Silas will be like when he gets older.

I'll Title it Later

So, I came up with something for the advent calendar for today, but not until this morning, luckily before Irina or Harper woke up. (And Saren, but my waking up before Saren is a given these days.) It was using window crayons to decorate the back door with Christmas-y designs. Which we haven't actually done yet. But we will! And now I have a panicky sort of feeling because I don't know exactly what I'm going to do for tomorrow. Okay, maybe I do, but beyond that, I'm not sure. This is why I need at least a vague list. I still do like to do it one day at a time and in fact I have to because Silas pulls down the advent calendar (not the stocking one) several times a day and all the little drawers go all over the place.

Here are two things I have observed about this time of year. Or rather, this time of year, as it pertains to me. Every year I say I am going to work on various crafty endeavors all year long so that I'll have lots of homemade gifts to give to lots of loved ones at Christmas time. And every year that never happens and I have to limit it to a couple of things that I stress out about because I don't think I'll be able to finish it on time and sometimes I don't and end up giving the whatever-it-is to whoever-it-is sometime in January or February. Or worse, I just put it away and say I'll finish it for next year.

This year is no different. I've got one big project and it looks like I've bitten off more than I can chew, but I'm determined to finish it. Plus a lot of other things that are just in my mind. If I actually want to do any of them, I need to get them out of my mind and into the world.

On top of that, I really need to finish knitting up a couple of wool soakers for my little man because he is very much in need of more diaper covers. He's also in need of more diapers themselves because my washing machine is slowly eating the ones he has, but that's another story.

The other thing that always happens is I say I'm going to get all the Christmas shopping done early and it doesn't happen, not because I don't have the drive, but because I don't have the money. I've got money budgeted for Christmas, but it won't be available until December 17th. Why do I always end up doing all the Christmas shopping a week before Christmas?