With the holiday festivities slipping past, we're running out of leftovers. After our Sunday family bash, the fridge was stocked to the gills with enough salad fixings, spiral-cut ham, candied yams, cheesy potatoes, and pumpkin pie to feed half the folks in Peoria. It looked like an eternity of ham sandwiches. Just a few days later, and it's time to stock up on groceries all over again. This weekend, the decorations need to get packed away for another year. The lights boxed up and the baubles packed away in tissue. After a week of good food and good conversation, I'm feeling rested and relaxed, and almost ready to get back to the real world.

In the meantime, here are a few thoughts for 2005.

~This year, I am NOT going to resolve to lose weight yet again. Enough!

~Instead, I resolve to take lots of long walks and to enjoy every step.

~I resolve to finish knitting Randy's Christmas sweater right away. Really. Even though it is getting kinda boring, and even thought the dastardly Victorian 2-Ply yarn makes me cranky every time I have to wind a new ball of the stuff, and even though I followed my own notes on the sleeves line-by-line but for some reason they don't match up at all, I am going to finish this sweater. Pout.

~The theme for this year's knitting is "Practical and Classic." Every winter, I say, "Gosh it would be great if I had a cute black sweater to wear with this dress." Yet for some reason I keep knitting sweaters out of varigated yarn that are fun to knit but never go with much of anything. This is the year to knit that classic black sweater that compliments everything.

~What's more, this is the year to start that vegetable garden. And it is not too early to start planning now. Better start rereading the Square Foot Garden by Mel Bartholomew and browsing through seed catalogs.

~Read, read, read. It just isn't a full day if I haven't spent some quality time with a good book. True, the librarians at my college tell me I'm their best customer, but this is because I've discovered how to use the "auto-reserve" feature in the computerized card catalog, and my fellow colleagues may be clueless about this time- and money-saving feature. Why stop by Barnes and Noble with the good folks in the library can ILL it for me? Best of all, as a staff member at the college, I get to keep books for loooooong periods without any overdue fines! Heh-heh-heh. Still, I feel that I really haven't been reading as much as I'd like lately. Especially fiction. It's been a while since I've been lost in a good book.

~More phone calls to the sisters. I've never been much for talking on the phone. It seems like a favorate hobby for most folks, but even when I was in high school I never spent a lot of time on the phone. Once I remember a girlfriend of my saying " Why didn't you all me to tell me you Matt What's-His-Name called you collect to ask you to prom!?!" All I could think was "Gee, I knew I was going to see you the next day, so why bother with the phone?" Anyhoo, telephone issues aside, it can feel a little far from the "place of my people" here in Peoria, and talking with the fam helps.

~Stop worrying about work when I'm off the clock. It's an 8-5 job, and I've got to keep it that way.

- posted by Laurie @ 12:10 AM