Start As You Mean to Go On

Happy New Year!

My resolutions are few and strange this year:

Read a book a week. Yes, a few years ago I tried three books a week and I made it about five months in before giving out. This year, I'm going for a book a week . I've signed up to do the Cannonball Read--though only a "half-cannonball," 26 books in a year, instead of a full Cannonball, 52 books--which raises money for the American Cancer Society, mostly through Amazon affiliate links. (I heard about it from a website, Pajiba, that I read regularly.) Already I'm halfway through my first book, a Jack London novel called Before Adam.

Wear red lipstick every day. I went through my makeup stash and found fifteen red lipsticks (not including duplicates). I love red lipsticks and buy them frequently, but I never wear them. So this year I'm going to wear red lipstick every single day.  I'm going to wear red lipstick whether I leave the house or not. I'm going to wear red lipstick if I'm wearing sweats to go to the grocery store or whether I'm dressing up to go out to a fancy dinner. I'm going to wear red lipstick to weed the garden. I'm going to wear my red lipstick.  Today I wore my new Hourglass Icon lipstick.

Open an Etsy or other online shop to start selling my work. I'm going to have to start selling pieces so that I can make more, so that's my goal this year, to sell work online.

That's about it, really.

New Year's Eve and New Year's Day

Dave and I were up at midnight on New Year's eve. The fireworks and gunshots started about nine p.m. or so, and continued sporadically until midnight, when they went on continuously for nearly an hour. (It always reminds me of a New Year's eve, when I was four or five, and my uncle took me out into my grandmother's yard to fire off his rifle into the air at midnight.) We had a simple midnight supper of soba, briny black-eyed peas, and greens. It was tasty and all very good luck.

We slept in, woke up to snow on the ground!, then got up, had breakfast (leftover Moroccan stew from a few nights ago), showered, and headed over to the studio.

When we got there, Judi was just taking Crunch out for a walk, so we joined her before heading back to the studio. We glazed a bit and then loaded a kiln to be fired tomorrow or on the weekend.  I built a new piece, a hanging wall vase, and then it was time to come home.

We came home via the Co-op, where we bought lemons and crackers to go with our dinner. (We also bought cat food, chips to snack on, beans, bananas, and chocolate.)

For dinner, we made vegetarian posole, another New Year's good luck food. I wish it were menudo, or that we had pigs feet for it, but those aren't really vegetarian options. I had two big bowls with saltines (the way my grandmother always ate it) and Dave had two big bowls with a tortilla (probably the more traditional way).

Now I'm laying in bed while Dave does the dishes. Saba is curled up beside me and we've got the heater going full tilt. It's cold!

Happy New Year.