new year new you

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Revisiting My 2022 Aspirations

I reread my post about my aspirations for this year, and holy cats I crack myself up. Like, some of the things are just ludicrous and others I completely forgot about and others (GALLERY WALL) are just permanent ridiculous features on this list. This is why I do this, not necessarily because I am a goal-oriented person, but because it is so fun and funny to me to see what was important at the beginning of the year vs. at the end.

Personal

Aspiration: Read 50 books. Complete! In 2022, I read 86 books! Woo! 

Aspiration: Work out 5 days a week. Incomplete. 2022 was my worst year ever for exercise. My feet hurt and I felt very sorry for myself and just sat around like a grumpy lump. 

Aspiration: Read a poem every day. Incomplete. I was good about this for several months and then just… stopped. I am not a very consistent person. 

Aspiration: Buy some new shirts that make me feel cute and not like a slob. Incomplete. I returned the shirts I got before I wrote this post and once again find myself lamenting the lack of cute shirts – particularly shirts that are date-night worthy. I need to correct this. 

Aspiration: Come up with a workable weekly schedule. Incomplete. My schedule is even worse this year than it was last year, with the addition of all of Carla’s extracurriculars. 

Aspiration: Try baked oatmeal. Complete! I did try baked oatmeal and I did not like it.  

Reach Aspiration: Leave my phone upstairs unless I leave the house. Incomplete. Hahahahaha. I totally forgot about this one.

Family

Aspiration: Eat more vegetables. Incomplete. I don’t think I achieved this in any shape or form. Is it possible that we eat fewer vegetables than a year ago? Perhaps. 

Aspiration: Do more non-screen things together. Complete-ish, with room to improve. We played games, we went on a road trip, we did lots of skiing, we did a few bike rides, we visited a few museums. We can do more, though. 

Aspiration: Do less “forcing” of my will on the family. Incomplete. I had to laugh tenderly at this aspiration, because reading this goal, and absorbing the frustrated/resentful energy that emanated off of it, it was so clear that my lack of Christmas spirit and my annual holiday overwhelm coupled with yet another open-ended school closure had just pushed me right over the edge. 

Aspiration: Go on some dates with my husband. Complete-ish? I think my bar was “three,” and my husband and I have gone on… three, maybe? Or was it four? And one overnight trip to a local resort? 

Reach Aspiration: Have friends over for dinner. Complete! We had one set of family friends over for dinner in 2022! Now that our ceiling has been repaired and I am not so embarrassed by our kitchen, perhaps we will have friends over again! (Probably it will be the same family.)

Reach Aspiration: Stop treating Carla’s needs as if they are mine. Incomplete. I did not do very well on this.  In fact, I think I kind of forgot about it and even re-reading what I wrote last year, I’m having a little trouble understanding exactly what I meant. 

Work/Finance

Aspiration: Revise my manuscript and start querying agents. Complete! I revised the manuscript, started querying, and got one request for a full and one request for a partial and many, many nos. But it’s a start!

Aspiration: Finish my second manuscript. Incomplete. I did not do this. In fact, I did the opposite which was to start another manuscript and get completely distracted by that one. 

Aspiration: Get a financial advisor. Complete! We got a financial advisor, handed over a big chunk of our savings, and he is Doing Things. It’s been pretty much the absolute worst year in more than a decade for investing of all kinds though, so it’s been fun. (No.) Love reading that monthly statement and seeing our principle dwindle. (No.) 

Reach Aspiration: Take a writing class. Complete. I took a very short class about query writing that turned out to be kind of a dud. But I did it. I’d like to take a more structured, traditional class about writing short stories this year. Maybe.

Home/Property

Aspiration: Install a gallery wall in the living room. Incomplete. This item will be on the list forever and ever and ever. We were so busy with the craft room last year when my husband was off and could actually help that we did not do anything about the gallery wall then. While he was home for a week this winter break, I raised it to him as a possible project and he had forgotten that he’d ever agreed to do it. ARGH. Maybe I just need to give up on this one? Despite everyone’s very good and reasonable ideas every time I bring up the gallery wall project, I cannot do it without my husband. I just can’t; he must be a part of it. And if he’s not going to participate, then it’s not going to happen. 

Aspiration: Hire someone to redo our ceiling and paint our trim. Half complete! I did hire someone to come out and fix our ceiling! And he did indeed do that! The several handymen sorts of people I had over to quote us on painting the trim never called me back though, so that needs to be sorted at a later time.

Aspiration: Hire someone to fix our fridge. As complete as it can be! I did find someone to come out and look at our fridge. Turns out, he couldn’t fix it because our fridge is awful and cannot be fixed! Woo hoo! For reference, our fridge is a GE but made by Samsung. It has a GE logo on it, so when I made the appointment, I told the receptionist that it was a GE fridge. As soon as the service person arrived and realized that it is a Samsung fridge, he said, “I can’t fix this. I wouldn’t have come out here if I had known in advance that it is a Samsung, because I have experience with this kind of fridge and it is unfixable.” He did decline to charge me the service fee just for showing up, which was nice. And then he gave me a very detailed and maddening backstory about why our fridge is the way that it is. (Has to do with the type of cooling system Samsung uses in their fridges, which is very complicated but in a nutshell sucks and causes all sorts of issues including but not limited to the ones we have been having. There has been at least one class action lawsuit against Samsung for the issue, according to the service person, but as I understand it, there have been no major consequences so Samsung continues to manufacture the exact same type of fridge and produce the exact same type of problems.) He also made a couple of suggestions about how to temporarily alleviate the issue (empty it completely, let it sit unplugged for three days), which we tried, and which worked, but was indeed very temporary. So. We still have the fridge, it’s still a piece of crap, but at the time of this writing – I realize anything could change at any time – it cools and holds a lot of food and is very beautiful so we haven’t shelled out the thousands of dollars that replacing it would require.

Aspiration: Clean our basement and finalize a craft space for Carla. Complete! This happened! Carla uses it on the regular! I promise I will post about it in more detail.

Reach Aspiration: PAINT THE BASEBOARDS MY GOD IT HAS BEEN 11 YEARS. Year Twelve, still green, baby! 

By my count, that’s half complete and half incomplete. Since these were aspirations and not set-in-stone goals, I am happy to celebrate the successes and shrug at the things that weren’t a big enough priority to address in 2022. But some of these may make an appearance on my 2023 list… we’ll see. 

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2022 Round-Up-a-Rama

It’s time for my annual year-end recap! 

(If you’re so inclined, you can read past versions of my responses: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 
2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009. This yearly recap originated with Linda of All & Sundry.)

I feel such tenderness for Last Year Me, who was feeling “down, down, down” at the end of last year. This year, I feel the exact opposite. I feel fulfilled in so many ways, so happy, so content. So full of plans and hope for the year ahead. It’s the end of a week at home with my two favorite people, and three days of our joint holiday to go. Christmas is still up, and – while I’m itching to dismantle it – it doesn’t feel oppressive just yet. I’ve been contemplating 2023 plans, but just in an idle, cheerful way. Things are good. I feel so grateful. It’s such a difference from the past couple of years, where I was mainly exhausted and stressed fearful about what new devastation lay in store. I do not take this period of calm and contentedness for granted. Instead, I am soaking it up, reveling in it, all too aware of how swiftly life can change.

Let’s take a look back at 2022. 

One change to note: In years past, I left in the original questions even if I ignored them. This year, I am deleting them entirely. Buh-bye, old irrelevant-to-my-life questions I do not want to answer. 

  • What did you do in 2022 that you’d never done before?
    • Began querying agents.
    • Took an online writing class (about querying). 
    • Went on a family road trip across the United States.
    • Posted every day in November for NaBloPoMo! 
    • Tried acupuncture.
  • Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

As is my newish tradition, I made some gentle aspirations for the year. Out of 22 things I hoped to accomplish, I completed half. Well, there’s always next year! 

  • How old were you on your birthday and what did you do? I turned 41 in February, ordered my own cake (which turned out to be a disappointment), and spent a lovely evening with my husband and daughter. I am sure it involved Mexican takeout and books, because those are two of my favorite things.

  • Where did you travel this year?

My husband and daughter and I made two trips this year, but we visited many states! Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

  • What would you like to have in 2023 that you lacked in 2022?

Re-upping one of my major wishes from last year: I would like to have an agent in 2023. This is part luck and part grit, and I need to supply the grit. 

  • What dates from 2022 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

I absolutely loved our road trip in June of 2022. It was so fabulous. Two weeks in the car with my husband and daughter, and we had fun and saw parts of the country we’d never seen and listened to audiobooks and good music and just generally had a fabulous time.

  • What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Beginning the querying process.

  • What was your biggest failure?

Not finishing either of the new manuscripts I started! I need to work on follow through in 2023!

  • Did you suffer illness or injury?

My husband and I both got Covid during the tail end of our road trip. Womp womp. 

  • What was the best thing you bought?

My new laptop! I kept insisting to my husband that I didn’t need a new one; my old laptop worked perfectly fine. But it really didn’t work perfectly fine and it was slow and the keys were sticky and the lack of memory was a real bother. I am very glad he pushed me to get a new one.

  • What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Our road trip! My parents moving here! 

  • What song(s) will always remind you of 2022?

(Most of these are from our road trip – we listened to a bunch of songs on repeat in the car.)

I Love U by the Chainsmokers

Ojitos Lindos by Bad Bunny (feat. Bomba Estereo)

As It Was by Harry Styles

Ghost by Justin Bieber

The Turning Red soundtrack

The Winnie the Pooh soundtrack

I Hate Myself for Loving You by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts

Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana

Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow) by Fleetwood Mac

Fade Into You by Mazzy Star

Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush

  • What do you wish you’d done more of?

Writing (evergreen item). Exercising. Eating vegetables. Spending time outdoors. Date nights. Game nights. Agent queries.

  • What do you wish you’d done less of?

Mindless scrolling on my phone. Feeling sorry for myself about my feet. Dwelling in a pit of self-abnegation.

  • How did you spend Christmas?

Christmas was just me, my husband, and my daughter this year. But it was perfect. We slept in until 7:30 and then opened wonderful, thoughtful presents from our family. We made cotton candy. We FaceTimed with parents and siblings. We had Monopoly spread out on the kitchen table and a puzzle half completed on the dining room table, so we ate delicious, delicious steak and mashed potatoes and Caesar salad on our laps in front of the TV. Fabulous and cozy and wonderful.

  • What was your favorite (new) TV program?

I did a lot more reading than TV-watching in 2022, which I’m not mad about. My husband and I did watch some TV, though! We really enjoyed the second season of The White Lotus and the most recent season of Stranger Things. We loved Severance – such a creepy, interesting mashup of horror and sci-fi. Bad Sisters was fantastic, riveting television – I can’t believe I haven’t read more about it! We loved Yellowjackets and can’t wait for the next season. We also enjoyed House of the Dragon, despite how horribly violent it is; what can I say, I am a sucker for dragons. I don’t know if I can say that I “loved” The Bear but it was certainly impossible not to watch. Archive 81 was really good until the very ending. We recently started Jack Ryan and are enjoying that so far, too.

By myself, I watched the latest season of Never Have I Ever and continue to absolutely adore that show. I am also re-watching Seinfeld and Schitt’s Creek and still love them both.

With Carla, we started watching Junior Bake Off and Snack vs. Chef, which are fun and light and low-stakes. 

To jog my memory, I looked at a bunch of Best Of TV lists, and wow there is so much fabulous TV available that I haven’t watched! 

  • What was the best book you read?

I read 86 books this year, mostly thrillers, and there were so many fabulous books. I think Station Eleven gets top billing for me, though. It was so well-written and so different and so perfectly paced. I just loved it. (I posted all of my top books of 2022 on the book blog.)

  • What was your favorite film of this year?

As usual, I cannot remember watching any movies this year… I know I was interested in watching the newest Top Gun movie, even though Tom Cruise skeeves me out. But my husband had no interest so I didn’t. He and I planned to watch the Knives Out sequel over the break, but haven’t done that yet. Oh! I watched Spirited, a Christmas Carolian movie starring Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds and I really enjoyed it despite being very weary of Christmas Carol stories and also really disliking musicals. Carla and I watched Turning Red about a million times, and that was okay. Did we watch anything else? 
Anything at all? I have this very strong memory of being in a movie theatre, but cannot for the life of me recall what we saw. Oh well. 

Oh right! We went to see the latest iteration of the Jurassic World movies, as a birthday surprise for Carla! It was… okay. 

Edited to add: Carla and my husband and I stayed up to watch the ball drop, and while we were waiting we watched two movies. The first was Glass Onion with a star-studded cast. It had some adult themes, that hopefully mostly went over Carla’s head. It was fun and funny and frothy and light (despite being murder-y). Then Carla and I watched the new Matilda musical, which was fabulous. The lead actor was amazing as Matilda, and the casting for Agatha Trunchbull and Jenny Honey was superb. The novel was a favorite of mine when I was a kid and lives large in my head to this day, and the actors chosen to portray these fabulous characters did a wonderful job.

  • What did you want and get?

We got to go on our family ski trip in March, which was fabulous.

We got to travel to celebrate my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary and see my brother and sister-in-law. 

My parents are going to move to my state!! I am so excited that it is finally happening in 2023! 

My ceiling is now repaired! (And the repair person is now out of my house, which was an added bonus.)

  • What did you want and not get?

An agent. A solution to my plantar fasciitis. To visit my childhood home, which I got in a literal sense but not in an emotional sense.

  • What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Finishing my second manuscript and getting an agent. Pain-free feet. That’s three things, but I’m leaving it.

  • How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2022?

I am all about the soft pants, as I have been for the past several years. But I did wear more hard pants than I have since 2019. I think my concept was “feel cute but dress the body I have.” It worked for the most part, although I would really like a pair of jeans whose waistline doesn’t sag throughout the day.

  • What kept you sane?

Same as last year: My husband. My terrible, wonderful, unputdownable phone. Books and audiobooks. Carbs. Wine. Reading your blog posts. Long walks. Takeout. Writing here.

  • Who did you miss?

We had such a wonderful family-centric year this year. I felt closer to my family of origin than I have in… decades, maybe? I got to see my parents FOUR TIMES this year, which is unheard of. And I saw my brother and sister-in-law TWICE! Before this year, I hadn’t seen them since 2018! My in-laws visited multiple times, and for reasons of fun rather than reasons of medical treatment which removed a level of worry and stress from their visits. We will continue to see at least my mother-in-law once a quarter. We got to see my sister-in-law and niece twice, which was fabulous. I got to see my childhood best friend for the first time in… five years? Six? So I am delighted and grateful to say that I didn’t do a lot of missing this year. I do, of course, miss the friend I lost in 2019; I will always miss her. I am also missing a friendship that has taken on a new, more distant quality in the past few months.  

  • Who was the best new person you met?

While I didn’t meet anyone new in person (that I can recall, at least), I have met so many wonderful blog friends this year! I wanted to list you all, but it’s funny: I cannot recall how long we’ve known each other. Did we really just meet this year? Or have we been friends all along?

  • Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2022.

Connection, even for (especially for?) an introvert, is so valuable. Sometimes it can be stressful. But it is mood boosting and life sustaining and supportive and necessary. I was so, so fortunate this year to see friends and family more than I had in years. I was so grateful for the connections I built with you, through this blogging community. I was so incredibly lucky to spend so much time alone with my wonderful little family, together and individually. Because I enjoy my solitude, and because I am so socially awkward and anxious, too much togetherness makes me retreat into myself. But there is balance to be had, and the memories and affirmation and intimacy and personal uplift that come from making time for one another – online and in person – are worth the small downsides. I am all too aware just how precious life is, just how fleeting our time together on this planet. I want to remember how simple and gratifying it can be to make the effort to connect.

  • Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

“I love you.” – The Chainsmokers 

Happy New Year, dear ones! I adore you and hope 2023 has great things in store for each of us.

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Dinners This Week

Welcome to the first week of dinners for the new year. An entire year of meal planning and shopping for those meals and cooking those meals (or not cooking them, in favor of something that sounds better/easier in the moment) and eating those meals and cleaning up those meals stretches before us.

While that doesn’t sound particularly appealing, I am feeling a tiny burst of energy about it all. The transition from indulgent holiday food to lighter, more regular meals feels refreshing. I spent a bunch of time this weekend looking through recipe blogs for new possibilities; it sometimes helps to have something New and Exciting – or at least New – to keep me out of the meal planning doldrums. I am going to lean into it while I can, before the inevitable drudgery of making meals day after day after day until death settles over me like a weighted blanket.

We did not make sticky toffee pudding yesterday, so that is back on the list for this weekend. (We did get food from my favorite Indian restaurant for dinner, and it was especially delicious. I would rather have chicken vindaloo ten times over than sticky toffee pudding, so it was a win for me. Plus, leftovers for lunch!)

This week, with Carla doing remote school (and therefore getting to sleep in a little later each morning), I am going to make an effort to have us all eat together. Normally, Carla eats dinner by herself at about 5:30 or 6:00, and my husband and I eat dinner around 8:00 or 8:30. Yes, I hate it, thanks. In an ideal world, we would eat together more often, giving us more family time together… and also giving us opportunities to model things like table manners and conversational skills and “trying new things” to Carla. I’m hoping my husband will get home early enough (people are canceling appointments right and left, which is Not Great Bob) that we can all eat together. This doesn’t mean I will be able to make one dinner for us all, of course, because I want Carla to actually eat something. But I can at least make similar foods (chicken nuggets or fish sticks when we have a saucy chicken or fish dish; raw versions of the veggies we eat) that I know she will eat, and add small portions of whatever my husband and I are eating to her plate. It is very challenging to have a picky child, especially since I am a picky eater myself, and I know how upsetting it can be to try new things. Plus, I know that deciding what to eat and what to refuse is one of the few things that Carla has autonomy over, and I don’t want to rob her of the ability to say no for so many reasons. But I also want her to eat more things than chicken nuggets and frozen peas and plain white rice, FOR THE LOVE OF COD.

Parenting quandary detour over.

There are only five meals on the plan for this week, to give us some wiggle room for last-minute additions or cravings.

Dinners for the Week of January 3-9

Chicken and Zucchini Stir Fry: You know by now that this is one of my favorite dinners. Plus it has a lot of vegetables, which means it fits in nicely with my “more veg” aspiration. Plus my husband suggested it; whether as a peace offering for not making the sticky toffee pudding or because he genuinely is in the mood, I don’t care because I love it. (My spell checker thinks that “peace” is misspelled in the previous sentence… though not in this one. Why are you messing with me, spell checker? Underlining a word I KNOW how to spell is making me question everything I thought I knew.) (It’s definitely not “piece offering,” right? RIGHT?)

Steak, Pepper, & Sugar Snap Pea Stir Fry: I guess I am in a stir fry mood today? This is a new-to-me recipe and sounds different and yummy and veggie packed. I will probably ignore the steak, but my husband will eat it, and we have a package in the freezer at this very moment. Carla likes steak and (raw) sugar snap peas… I wonder if I can persuade her to eat this? Unlikely but I will try.

Follow Up: I loved this — it was such a nice change from our usual stir fries. My husband said it was too salty, though, and I don’t know how to change that since the sauce contains soy sauce. Carla ate a piece of the steak and a piece of the pepper and voted them too spicy (there is sriracha in the sauce as well), but she tried them! (She also ate a slice of beef tenderloin, a pile of raw sugar snap peas, a few slices of raw red pepper, and a big heap of rice.)

Honey-Garlic Glazed Salmon with Air Fryer Brussels Sprouts: Another aspiration is to get my family to eat more fish. I love fish. Carla used to LOVE salmon. But now she and my husband turn up their noses. Well, perhaps if I slather it in a sweet glaze?

Oven Baked Pork Chops with Steamed Broccoli: We will probably have some couscous alongside this old standby, which, incidentally, is another Husband SuggestedTM Meal.

Baked Tilapia with Coconut Cilantro Sauce with Sautéed Green Beans: Listen, there is NO WAY that Carla will even try this. But it sounds amazing and I think my husband will like it. Especially if I can find cod instead of tilapia.

What are you eating this week?