Plus, I love the Even Numbers (Goodbye 2009)
I love this day so much - New Year's Eve. I love thinking about how it all starts fresh again now. I don't make actual resolutions like exercise or less cookie dough (NEVER that one). I make ethereal ones like, I'm going to enjoy every minute, be more grateful, be more brave. They're impossible to live up to every moment, and yet you really only have to keep them in mind in order to feel you're accomplishing them.
The theme of my memoir - besides in true memoir-style, being all about me - is other people and all the things we learn from those around us, those who love us, and those who reach out beyond themselves to teach us something valuable.
I'm thinking about all those things and all the people who taught them to me today. I'm very lucky in family and in friendships.
If you like the more tangible things though - here are some of the good things I plan to add to my life in 2010.
A new dress. Charity (above left) wants to have a grownup dinner this summer during a family reunion weekend we're having. She wants the boys to wear suits and the girls to wear fancy new dresses. I've always wanted to buy a fancy new dress that didn't need a groomsman and a bouquet. I am very into this idea.
A painted hallway. We moved into this house in 2002, and we have never painted the hallway. Which needed painted before we ever moved in. It's hideous. And I don't know why we've put up with it so long when paint costs about eleven dollars.
Jake's baby album. Yes. He'll be four years old on January 9th, and I haven't yet put into an album all the pictures of us holding him when he was first born. The only reason I'm not ashamed of myself is because I've spent all those moments when I could have been filling that album, loving the puddin' out of the real thing.
Another book. I'm writing a really fun one this year - all Anneish and sister-filled and delightful. I can't wait.
And much more of the same. I've loved so much of life up to this point, I just want more of it. More time with my boys, more laughter with Michael, more plans and dreams, that new dress, the painted hallway, and lots more years like this one.