Happy New Year's Eve!

 

When Loki and I went for a walk last night, the grass was frosty and the night quiet.  This morning the temperature had warmed, the frost melted and the ocean loud.  Bear in mind that the ocean is two miles from our house so if she is loud enough for us to hear her, she is very loud indeed.

Amy’s and my New Year’s company has cancelled so we have made alternate plans to go to lunch and Les Miserables in Seaside with our friend Kathleen today.  I certainly hope that Amy likes it better than she did The Hobbit.  Of the three of us attending that, I was the only one who liked it and intends to see the sequels.  Amy declared it too scary and I have to admit that the goblins and orks were pretty nasty looking, but I am anxious to see what they do about that dragon!  Hopefully singing will make the French Revolution palatable for my daughter.

I think I earned a day off.  I cleaned my mother’s apartment from kitchen to bedroom, including the bathroom.  I am hoping that we can get a new chore person to keep it up and that my mother won’t fire whomever they send.  I believe that if the agency gave a little more of what we pay to the help and kept less for itself they might find better folks.  There is the great debate over what happened to some fancy hangers I bought for my mother and a missing bottle of perfume.  And then there was the young woman who didn’t know how to make a bed.  Apparently some of these people receive no training from either their mothers or the agency.  My mother wants the sheets and blankets tucked under the mattress and the covers to come up high enough to cover her shoulders.  When she complained she was told not to expect hospital corners.  We just expect the covers to stay on the bed.

The fireworks stands began popping up in town yesterday.  I forgot about the fireworks.  I don’t remember fireworks being a part of New Year’s except on the television.  When the children were little I let them stay up and take pots and pans and wooden spoons out into the yard to beat at midnight.  Now New Year’s has become another night for dog anxiety and I left Loki’s 4^th of July medicine at home.  He and I may end up on the couch for a while tomorrow as for some reason he thinks that it is safer downstairs than up.

Have a safe and happy New Year's!

 

Cleaning Up for 2013

 

 

As Loki and I came down the back steps in the pre-dawn dark, the grass twinkled in the glow of the Christmas lights around the backdoor and crunched under foot as we made our way over to the barn and cottage with the laundry.  Amy and I have company coming and besides getting caught up on the laundry I wanted to turn up the heat in the cottage.  Considering the frost I was none too soon.  I’d thought the house seemed chillier than usual in the night and snuggled under the flannel sheets, looking for my furry heater with my feet.  Although smaller than last night when I walked the dog, the moon this morning was beautiful and the ocean quieter than in several days.

Winter appeals to me to work on my interior life, doing a spiritual inventory, and New Year’s appeals for working on the interior of our home.  Spring cleaning has a lot to recommend it since you can throw open the windows and drag things into the yard, but New Year’s is also a good time for making an inventory of what I’ve actually laid hands on during the last year and what I could actually do without. 

Today I am starting with my mother’s apartment and will try to get her to do the same.  I am descended from a long line of “pack rats.”  I consider myself in recovery, but I am sure that my children would beg to differ since they will have plenty to deal with when I am gone.  Truly, I am trying to pare down my pile so that the job doesn’t overwhelm them.  Right now I am tidying up for company and when I get back to Gig Harbor I plan to do some serious cleaning.

My mother’s pile has dwindled to a one bedroom apartment with limited space so occasionally it is necessary to eliminate things.  She balks at the idea of de-cluttering.  She wants her stuff out where she can see all of it all day long.  The idea of rotating knick knacks is an anathema to her.  How many Ichiro bobble head dolls do we need on the buffet and oh, yes, didn’t he go to NY?  I will be lucky if I am able to dust around Ichiro, much less get him moved for the basketball season.  Spring training is just around the corner, you know.

New Year's Diets

 

 

The Winter Solstice came and went without the World ending.  Winter is a time for turning inward and nurturing our interior lives so that we can bloom in the Spring.  It is probably not accidental that we celebrate New Year’s at this time of year or that most people’s thoughts turn to creating better lives in some way.  The dark days and nights give us time inside our homes and heads to think about what we can do to improve ourselves, our community and the World.  If this is a new era, as was actually the Mayan’s belief, then are we not each of us a part of that?  If we make our own lives better are we not making our community better as well?

Like most people my New Year’s goals are always to be physically healthier.  Actually, I’ve been working on that since my life hit a perfect storm of my husband leaving to work out of state and my discovery of some health issues that have caught up to my Baby Boomer body.  I’ve managed to lose some weight, am working on keeping my blood pressure down (not an easy feat with Dave 1,500 miles away) so that there’s no further damage to my heart and eyes, and getting my right eye treated for an occluded vein.  A friend recently asked me how I was keeping from over indulging in the sweet goodies of the season.  It’s simple.  I don’t want to die just yet.  I’d like to live long enough to enjoy my husband’s company when we are living together again.

The other sort of health that we are working on is fiscal health.  The reason that Dave went from our home in Gig Harbor, Washington to Prescott, Arizona was to get our finances in better order for retirement.  The bursting of the real estate bubble and the “Great Recession” of 2008 deflated our plans for retirement.  We are several years behind in our plans for selling our Gig Harbor home (or even the ability to do so) and moving to our 131 year old Victorian cottage by the sea. 

Since Dave left in June of this year there have been some glitches along the way including a hiking accident he had in Arizona necessitating him coming home for surgery, going on short term disability (less money), and trying to get compensated for out of state physical therapy.  We also saw this Christmas as a last time to give generously albeit not excessively.  With the beginning of what is supposed to be Dave’s last nine months as a “commuter husband” we are working toward the birth of fiscal stability and the creation of a new life and maybe a new bathroom in our antique house.  Nothing fancy, but our current one was installed in the former pantry when indoor bathing was instituted in the house.  I’d like the pantry back to its intended function and a shower that is actually supposed to be a shower and not a shower head nailed to a piece of 2X4.

By living frugally in Arizona, Dave has been able to pay down our home equity loan from $43,000 to $8,000 today.  Having a debt-free retirement home should be a piece of cake, but we’d like that bathroom as well so the challenge is to spend as little and save as much as possible.  In the past when I have written about frugality for the Tacoma News Tribune I have been accused of attempting to undermine the American economy.  I have actually been called un-American.  It seems to me that as American individuals we have spent our way into the situation of the past four years through over-consumption, easy loans, and living beyond our means.

So our physical diet and rehabilitation will be accompanied by a fiscal diet and rehabilitation as we head into what I hope will be lucky ’13.  My mother-in-law called it “making a penny scream.”  I spent enough time as a low/no income single mother to know how to do that.  I can make do pretty well and while I’m not disposed to go to the extremes of those on The Learning Channel’s “Extreme Cheapskates” (I will NOT recycle tush wipes), I can cut the fat out of both sorts of diets.  I'm not sure whether or not the nation should or will go off the fiscal cliff.  Maybe everyone should count on a fiscal diet...oh, yeah, that would make everyone unAmerican.

I believe that the main reason “New Year’s Resolutions” fail is our belief that a day or two of falling off our wagon means failure.  Every new day can be a New Year’s as long as the sun comes up and now that we’ve learned that the Ancient Mayans saw us as not ending, but as entering a new era we can make each day a new beginning.  Things to ponder as sleep our Winter's nap with dreams of Spring.