Okay, so my friend says that you must blog on the first day of the New Year, even if it's boring stuff. Well, I seemed to have missed the first day of the year with all the craziness at my house leftover from the night before. Kidding. New Year's Day brought Dan watching football and me escaping to Alpine to find the bargain love at Target, Marshall's and T.J.Maxx. But that little venture left me depressed as I realized that the weight that I had lost in the fall was back, with friends, I think.
And so, I proceeded to further feed my love of food by picking up a book on food to read last night...Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell. I have had this for several years now--isn't that always the way with books? We are so excited to get them, and then we banish them to a bookshelf to wait for a brilliant discovery years later. Poor things. Anyway, the book is about this...Julie Powell's life was falling a bit out of control when she picked up her mother's copy of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking while visiting home. She decides to cook her way through the book, her husband tells her about this new thing called blogging...and the rest is history. She got a stinking publishing deal out of it--wow. Anyway, as I read Julie's entries, I realize several things: 1) aspic is disgusting, 2) I would have gotten bored after the first ten recipes, and 3) I will never attempt to take bone marrow out of a cow's leg.
That said, the book is humorous and has some great lines including this one:
"...That's what's so great about blogging--people, some of whom you've never met and know nothing about you, pay inordinate attention to you, and pretty soon you are convinced that you're clever or crazy or daring or cool or whatever it is you'd like to convince yourself you are. Which is also, of course, the downside of blogging. Because you probably aren't."
And speaking of food again...I go now to my New Year's Resolutions. Brilliant, isn't it that a total of 5 people read my blog and now will be able to hold me accountable to them? And one of them is my husband? Dan, you may stop reading now.
1. Stop eating. Okay, that's not a good start. How about this? Get back on the Bob Greene plan and eat more fiber, excercise every day, drink a blasted amount of water, eat those salad greens and stop snacking on all those sweets. Amen. Did I mention that I promise to exercise? Okay, we're good starting Monday.
2. Write more. As in, get off your butt and blog, woman! And from that shall come forth words upon words upon words that maybe could be used on other projects.
3. Quality time is important with Zach and Dan. Laugh together, play together, and hug them more times a day than you can count. With a certain 10 year old turning 11 in a month, remember that time's a fleeting. And for that matter, Dan is not getting any younger either. HA!
4. Get that Photoshop Elements book out and practice (because it's a really cool book and you paid good money for it). Besides continuing to take pictures as often as I can, figure out the camera more and then learn how to photoshop the end results to make them BETTER. Technical techniques are not my forte so this will take awhile to accomplish. Just guessing on that.
5. Be grateful. I do have so much in my life to be happy about, but yet I constantly forget to tell myself what they are. I have a Gratitude Book that I've been writing in and it's a nice way to mini-journal, but also to keep a running list. After reading that John and Kelly Travolta's son passed away today, I realize more and more how precious life is.
So, there. The second day of January and words upon words upon words have been written. Gotta love that. Here's to 2009...what can we dream it to be?
