The New Years Resolution 2023

This time of the year I’m programmed to think about New Year’s Resolutions. Yes, I’m one of those dinosaurs who has been making them (and breaking them) since my early teens. That’s a lot of years. In this century, however, I jumped on the One Word Mantra Movement instead of writing resolutions and that worked great for me in the early years of my widowhood. The idea is to pick a word that expresses your intention for the coming year, an inspiration to apply to your life. “Believe” was a common one back about 8-10 years ago but “Bravery” was my first one word mantra. It worked to chant it  under my breath when I was doing things alone for the first time after my husband died. After 3-4 years of using different one word mantras I expanded to a one sentence mantra like “Be the peace you seek.” which you’ve got to admit is better than the Resolution that made my list of New Year’s Resolutions more years in my life than any other: “Take better care of myself.” I’ve been making and breaking that one since I was fifteen and I finally decided it wasn't working because I needed to be more specific.What does 'take better care of yourself ' even mean? Resolutions need to be filled with more red meat than that.

Not having a clue what I wanted to do this year I did some research online and ran across an article titled 65 Rewarding New Year's Resolutions for a Healthy, Happy Life. Most of those suggestions, however, have made my resolution lists in past years. It’s a boring list of 65 that includes stuff like “Chili Out” “Practice Mindfulness,” “Quit smoking” and “Drink less Alcohol.” For a minute and a half I considered their “Get in a body positive mind-set.” Then I decided that would take more effort than I’m willing to do (and probably a few hours on a therapist’s couch). The only suggestion that almost made it to my resolution list is number 47 which was about quitting multitasking: “Multitasking doesn't make you more efficient, but it does stress you out, says mindfulness expert Pedram Shojai, author of Focus: Bringing Time, Energy and Money into Flow.' If your focus is fragmented, you'll likely find yourself getting anxious as new items come up when old ones are still incomplete,’ he says. Instead, he suggests, organize your activities into chunks of time, such as kid time and cooking time, and then commit to being focused in those allotted minutes and see what happens. It'll help stop you from overthinking everything." Right now as I write this post I’m listening to a book and doing laundry.

Another article I found on making New Year’s Resolutions was titled 12 Inspirational Mantra for the New Year and it has stuff like:

She who is brave is free

The body achieves what the mind believes

In my words, thoughts & actions, I choose kindness

Seek the sweet moments in every day

That last one really appeals to me even if it is just a rehash of the gratitude journey I kept the year after Don’s stroke as per Oprah’s popular fad in 2000. Looking for something positive every day help get me out of the depression the aftermath that his stroke caused in our lives.

But one article on New Year’s Resolution seemed to be written strictly as click bait and it was just a word search image. The first four words you find will be your mantra for 2023. I found care, break-through, money and power on my first try but I didn’t like them and I kept looking and found change, purpose, love and alignment. This is a lazy man's way to pick a resolution so why bother? I’d never pick my resolutions that way but I'm not above using the idea as blog fodder, so there you have it.

Every year when I write a post about resolutions I get a lot of comments from people who don’t make them and/,or think it's a silly idea, a waste of time. Writing them is outdated, I'd agree, but I still think there is value in taking stock of areas in your life that you want to change or work on improving over the next months and that’s all New Year’s Resolutions have been for me. For most of my life I've had an end of the year ritual of reviewing old resolutions written for the year that's ending and beyond. Then on New Year’s Day I’d record a new list in the front of a brand new journals. 

I destroyed volumes and volumes of diaries and journals when I move here 14 months ago, just keeping the ones from my pre-teens and teen years---my naive and innocent years---which were filled with crushes and silliness. To this day I kind of wish I’d kept at least the first pages out of those 60+ years of diary and journal keeping. I miss that end of the year tradition of getting them out and reflecting over how how pretentious, silly, dramatic or lonely I was from year to year. ©

 Happy New Year, Everyone! 

I'll be the one spending next year trying 

to

“Seek the sweet moments in every day.”

Christmas Day in Chaos

Blizzard warnings were all over the United States (except for one place where they had Lizzard warnings posted). Christmas eve and morning blowing winds and snow had already caused crashes and car pileups on the icy roads in the area. I was hoping my nephew would call and cancel their Christmas get-together. But he didn’t and after he picked me and my brother up to go to his son’s house it took us an hour and a half to travel what would normally take twenty minutes and the extra time was not because of the weather. My nephew is into four wheeling and he took us on a joy ride on two-track dirt roads that were buried somewhere under the snow and ran through beautiful, quiet woods full of ups and downs and around curves. No houses in sight, no where to walk for help and no one would come if you did call so I resisted whipping out my cell phone to see if we even had cell service.

My nephew was having the time of his life. Apparently he’d been on these same roads---if you could even call them that---the day before. His wife was in the back seat reminding him every so often that their grandkids were waiting for their presents. My brother, his dad, was also in the backseat sputtering that he never should have built him a dune buggy when he was eleven-twelve years old because he hasn’t slowed down since. “Are you scared?” I asked him. “Darn right I am!” my brother answered. By then I had relaxed and was reliving going through that same, snowing woods back when my husband  and I thought snowmobiling was more fun than anything on earth. My nephew said it was only fitting that he take me four wheeling because it was my husband who introduced him to the sport.

I remember that summer Saturday well. My husband had taken a gaggle of pre-teens to a mud run including my nephew. To this day I believe that people who purposely go on roads where the mud is deep enough to suck a truck down in past its hubcaps are crazy. They came back from the mud run with not only the Chevy covered in mud, so was Don and the boys, and they were smiling ear to ear and ready for pizza.

As bad as the weather was on Christmas weekend, I felt safer there with my nephew on those two-tracks than I did out on the roads with other cars traveling to and from their holiday parties. And I was doing my "I'm impressed" aunt impression. At one point I complimented my nephew's driving skills and the cool sound his jeep was making. Little did I know I was going to get a ten minute explanation on how he’d just changed some pipes on his muffler to get that growling sound.

Finally we got to where we were going which was a mad house of four kids all under the age of six or seven, two large dogs, four pet rats and a cat that was so fat I thought it was ready to deliver a litter of kittens until I was told that was an impossibility. “Do I want to hold my rat?” I was asked before even getting my coat off. “No, thank you.” The floor, by the way, was littered with so many Christmas gifts and their discarded wrapping paper and boxes you could barely see the carpet and no one seemed to notice my brother was picking up his walker trying to wade through the mess instead of using it to support his unsteady walking. I held my breath until he reached a place to sit. And did I mention in the chaos going on there were three drones flying around the great room?

One little boy seemed to take a liking to me and he appointed me to hold his brand new watch off and on all afternoon while he’d go off to fly his drone around his father who was cooking at a huge island on the other side of the great-room and every time the adults turn their back the cat would be on the island proudly showing us how he got so fat in the first place until he finally got banished to the bedroom.

“What grade are you in?” I asked the boy. “I don’t know, I’m home schooled. I don’t even know what real school is.” When I told him I had a dog with the same name as him he asked me how I picked that name. “It’s the same name as a great-grandfather of mine and yours.” Just then his dad called out to me, “Can I fix you a plate of shrimp and dip?”

“No thanks, I’m allergic.”

“How allergic?”

“If I eat it I will die allergic.”

“Where do I stand in the will, aunt Jean?” he teased. 

There were only two places in the living room to sit because the left-overs of Christmas were piled high everywhere which by default seemed to be reserved for my brother and me unless I'd get up temporarily to forage for snacks for my brother and me. Then my spot would quickly get filled in by a large dog whose been part of the household since before the kids came long. Nothing seemed to bother him. Not Silly Putty molded to his head, not flying fairies shot from a windup toy. At one point my brother and I was sitting there like we were watching a movie---all the other adults busy at the island, the kids running every which way burning off the sugar high they were on---and my brother said, “I’ve been here before and it’s always like this.” 

I’m proud to say I survived the chaos of Christmas 2022 and I came home with a half a block of the best smoked Philadelphia cream cheese in the world. My great-nephew does all the cooking in the family and smoking stuff is his specialty. And both I and the cat can attest to the fact that his Christmas ham was to die for. ©

Wind-up to a White Christmas!

It’s Thursday night as I write this. The winter blizzard that as been crossing the country finally hit my side of Michigan. We’re supposed to get a sizable amount of snow dumped on us before the storm leaves our area on Saturday night. Temperatures are in the teens and the winds coming later tonight are predicted to cause whiteouts with snow blowing sideways and drifting on all the north/south roads. We were supposed to have a choir entertain us tonight but that got canceled and judging by the rolling message at the bottom of my TV screen just about everything going on in town got canceled for tonight and tomorrow.

Our activities director let us know our Christmas party entertainment for Saturday night, however, won’t get canceled because the one man band lives here on campus. And I’ve met the guy! He’s a new resident here, and he’s the husband to the woman with dementia who I wrote about a few posts ago while attending a meeting about dementia support. I found a video of him playing at a polka festival last summer. His introduction promo claims he’s “shared a stage with the Four Tops, The Coasters and many other popular artists.” I can’t wrap my head around that kind of music at a Christmas party but I’m bidding his accordion can play just about anything. I wish I could find a way to bring my brother over from the next building for the show. He used to play the accordion.

I’m worn out already. I’m not cut out for all the socializing this holiday bought with it and I’ve still got the holiday buffet and the above mentioned entertainment to go to here and a family party off campus at my great-nephew’s house on Christmas Day. This past week-end we had a sing-along (great fun and I'm surprised I knew most of the words to Christmas songs I rarely listen to). 

Another afternoon I took part in a gingerbread cookie decorating class. For the artist I wish I were, cookie painting was frustrating! I made eight cookies but I only liked the way two of them turned out meanwhile others in the room made such cute cookies that I had cookie envy. Can you believe it, I’ve never done Christmas cookie decorating or cookie exchanges since I was a kid helping my mom. I was a babe in the woods surrounded by super moms and grandmothers with tons of experience. 

Within two days I’d eaten the ugly cookies I made and I intend to take the good ones down to my brothers this afternoon, but I’m wavering on that idea. I’m worried his grandson’s wife will have sent him some in the mail. She’s been posting photos of the ones she’s baked and decorating and they look so professional. Mine by comparison look like a child did them. Ya, I’m that petty competitive.

My great-niece-in-law's cookies

My sad attempt at Christmas cookies

Another morning I spent writing my annual Christmas letter but when I went to print them, my printer wouldn’t work so I ended spending the afternoon hand addressing envelopes and writing notes in cards. My printer picked that time to tell me the ink pads have reached the end of their life. When it tells you stuff liked that it doesn’t give you a warning, it just quits working. I had just installed $80 worth of ink cartridges I can't return, so I was more than upset.

I found directions online for how you change the pads and it's a job I won’t tackle and the Epson website lists a place that is out of business as their authorized service center here in town. I read half an evening about the printer problem I learned there is a way to reset your printed page counter to ‘trick’ your printer into thinking you haven’t actually printed as many pages as you have and that gets you another 1,500 pages out of the black ink pad but it takes a download and a one time code from the Epson company which after talking to them for a half hour they wouldn't give me because the printer is out of warranty. A real catch 22-22. There's a black market download you can buy for $8 but I'm leery about putting something on my computer from an unknown source.

Another Christmas related thing I’ve been doing was just as frustrating as the two things up above…making stuff to past around at the parties. As I mentioned in another post I wanted to use up the pretzels I had left over from making the gingerbread house so I planned to dip the small ones in chocolate and cover the with the green sprinkles that came with the gingerbread house kit and arrangement them in a wreath shape (like the one pictured above) but do you think I could find those packet of sprinkles? No, I couldn’t and I turned this apartment upside down looking for them. I ended up rolling them in pecans instead. After finishing up that job, I grabbed a plastic bag out of my storage drawer to use for trash and there in the bottom of the bag were the sprinkles. Jeez!

On Christmas day---unless Covid or the weather cancels out the plans---my nephew is picking my brother and me up to spend the day at my brother’s grandson’s house. The people and the kids who will be at the party are all super nice and I’m looking forward to that part but the house we’re going to has bathrooms that are no where near old people friendly. The guest bathroom was built kid-friendly and the toilet is literally a child’s size and there is nothing to grab on to to help you get up. The setup in the master bath isn't much better so I learned the only way to do parties there is to not drink anything the day before or day of the event.

Hope your windup to Christmas as been less frustrating than mine! Then again, maybe being frustrated and crazy busy is part of the holiday fun. ©