Resolutions revisited (yes, it's January)

I don't have any fun trips or activities to report on today, except for the lovely Super Wolf Blood Moon Eclipse Saturday night (the photo shows the very beginning of it). It's just been January. During the day on Saturday Rocket Boy took the twins and Z from next door to the Botanical Gardens -- and I wanted to go, wanted to see the orchid show, but when it came right down to it, what I really wanted to do was stay in bed. I'm a good sleeper, generally, but I don't get enough sleep (stay up too late reading, mostly). Last week I had some sort of nightmare or otherwise disturbing dream almost every night, so by the weekend I was TIRED. So I got some rest while they went to the Botanical Gardens, but the disturbing dreams have continued.

Last night I dreamed I was cooking a lot of Indian food over a Coleman stove, including rice pudding. I decided to make waffles using the rice pudding as batter, so I set our old iron waffle maker on top of the Coleman stove and did so. I kept accidentally unplugging things, and once the waffles were done I unplugged something that caused a gas jet to explode. I called to Rocket Boy to help fix the disaster. "Just a minute," he said fussily, finishing his breakfast and then washing his hands. I wake up from these dreams thinking, "what was the point of THAT?" Why did I have to upset myself over something as silly as THAT? We won't even discuss my dream about trying to write my dissertation while a penguin.

So, anyway, with nothing especially fun to write about today, I thought I'd revisit my New Year's resolutions, the ones that made me so unhappy a few weeks back when I made them. I've studied them a few times since then, considered dumping them and starting over, and eventually decided to keep them but tone them down.

See, the problem I have with New Year's resolutions is that I still make them the way I used to, when we had some money and I wasn't tired and depressed all the time. I look around the house and I think, I'd like to get this room fixed up. So I make a resolution about it. And then I look at that resolution later and think, oh my god, no. And yet I still have the wish to improve our lives, to make things better. But the resolutions need to be things that (a) don't cost money and (b) don't require a lot of time and energy. Which leaves me back where I started, with nothing.

So I took another look at my resolutions.

Some of them are OK.
(1) Keep my job (or get another).  We'll focus on the non-parenthetical part of that sentence. I don't love my job, but I love my little paycheck, and I especially love my health insurance.
(3) Maintain the home front if RB has to move away for a job. I mean, what else am I going to do? Unplug something and let it explode?
(11) Read at least 78 books. So fun and so do-able. And so free (thank you, Boulder Public Library).

Some of them are too vague.
(10) Help Kid A and Kid B with their issues. Well, that's sort of the definition of being a parent, right? Maybe I should revise it to "Don't forget you have two kids."
(22) Keep in touch with friends. Keep in touch how? Send birthday cards? Go out for coffee? Or ignore this one because it's so vague and thus lose touch with more people?

Some of them are nuts.
(17) Get the trees trimmed and the volunteer elms removed. Yeah, right. Maybe someday.
(20) Set up a cleaning schedule (or get a cleaner). This is just fantasy. I'm constantly setting up cleaning schedules, none of which I adhere to, and we can't afford a cleaner. "Embrace chaos" might be a good rewrite.

But some of them might work with a little tweaking.
(5) Start saving money for taxes, emergencies. This is tricky. Last year, after two different people asked me why I couldn't set aside a LITTLE money each month to save for a vacation, I started setting aside a little money each month. And then we had a couple of bad months and I had to dip into the savings and spent it all. However, that doesn't mean I couldn't try again. So I've now rewritten this one, as follows:
(5a) Put $50/month into my savings account and try not to spend it.
(5b) Figure out how much I SHOULD be saving each month to cover property taxes and insurance -- and maybe even a vacation -- so that if our financial situation changes, I could start setting aside the correct amount.

Another problematic category is the diet & exercise one.
(7) Try to walk 5 days a week.
(8) Try to lift weights 2 times per week.
Both of these are things I used to do, effortlessly. For a variety of reasons, they are no longer effortless and they no longer happen. So what can I do about it? I decided to scale them back.
(7a) Try to walk 1 day a week
(7b) If I happen to start doing that, try to increase to 2 or more days a week.
(8a) Find my hand weights. They're around. I can see the pink 5-lb ones from here.
(8b) Try lifting them once a week
(8c) If I actually do that, try to increase to twice a week.
(7x/8x) Keep revisiting this every month. January is a pretty crappy time to start an exercise program unless it involves skiing. February's not much better. I just have to keep trying.

You get the idea. Instead of berating myself about my inability to improve my life in any way, I'm trying to figure out the least, tiniest thing I could do that I might actually DO. It's a start.

Catching up -- how we amused ourselves over vacation

Looking over my posts I see that I didn't write much about our winter vacation activities. And since this blog functions partly as a diary and partly to let my relatives know what we've been doing (and partly what else? hmm), I should spend some time catching up.

Seventeen days the kids had off, counting three weekends, and I had those days off too (that is, I took seven days of leave, four holidays, and the weekends). I worried about how we'd spend all that free time, and made various plans to fill it, but in the end it turned out not to be important. We were all so happy not to have to get up early and rush off to school/work every day that we were all in pretty good moods much of the time.

Which has changed, now, of course, because we've been back to school/work for a week, and it's January, and bleah. But the merry Christmas season is always followed by bleah, January. Some day we'll be retired and the twins will be grown and gone -- and I'll miss them!

But back to vacation activities. We did two special holiday light things: Blossoms of Light at the Denver Botanical Gardens and Zoo Lights at the Denver Zoo. We went to Blossoms of Light (not expensive at all, because as members we got two free tickets) two days after Christmas. We drove to Denver in the afternoon so I could have coffee with my old friend Betty and her husband Mark, who were visiting other friends in Denver. Rocket Boy and the twins spent that time at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and then we joined up again and went to the Botanical Gardens.

I enjoyed Blossoms very much. Of course, we went last year, and it wasn't very different this year, but that didn't matter to me. The boys, though, were not especially enthralled last year, and definitely not enthralled this year, at least not by the lights. Mostly they complained about the cold.

What enthralled them was the hot chocolate bar, which unfortunately I don't have a photo of. But basically you got your cup of hot chocolate and then you could add whipped cream, chocolate chips, toffee bits, peppermint bits, and a variety of flavored syrups. Kid A added everything, while Kid B was a bit more selective. Then we took their hot chocolate with us into the Seeds cafe where we had sandwiches for dinner (and RB had a cup of coffee, no peppermint bits and flavored syrups for him). It was a nice evening -- cold but lovely -- and Rocket Boy did all the driving, which made it especially nice for me.

Three days later he drove us back to Denver for Zoo Lights, which we had not seen before. Even though we're zoo members, we had to buy all four tickets, and even with our discount it was pricey. But it had its own charm. The night we went, it was sold out, and we had to wait in an enormous line to go in, but the line moved quickly, and once we were inside nothing seemed crowded. In addition to lights in (some of) the trees, there were all these light sculptures of animals, some of them moving. I particularly liked a moving light sculpture of an eagle. The zoo website had warned that we wouldn't be able to see most of the (real live) animals, since it would be dark and many of them would be indoors. In some cases (elephant house, giraffe house), you could go inside and see them. But some of the animals were still outside. We could see a little blotch of white up on Sheep Mountain -- presumably the Dall's Sheep, sleeping out of doors. We walked past a llama pen and you could dimly make out a llama, lying down and looking at us. And all the penguins seemed to be awake.

We rode on the zoo train and the kids rode the merry-go-round. Everything seemed just a little bit more fun in the dark, and it wasn't as cold as Blossoms was. And, helpfully, there was no charming cafe in which to spend a lot of money on sandwiches. I bought each kid a bottle of lemonade (for some reason, they were thirsty), and that plus the tickets and the train and the carousel was all we spent. I'd do it again next year if the kids want to.

What did we do besides attend lighting displays? Well, we played with our new toys and we ate a lot of treats and we watched a lot of movies. We got the boys to read (or write) every day, and in exchange we let them have an hour of computer time. They had a playdate or two, and once or twice Rocket Boy took them on outings. There must be more than that. How did we get through 17 days?

One of my plans for the holiday was to get some form of exercise every day, and not surprisingly, that didn't happen. The weather wasn't bad, but we did have a number of very cold days. But the main problem is that I have gotten to be a real slug, and that is why I wanted to get a dog, and instead we have Chester the wonder kitty. Mr. Fluffypants does not encourage one to exercise the way a dog would.

But Rocket Boy desperately wanted us to go on hikes, because hiking is as important to him in his role as a parent as reading is to me. I don't get as stressed about hiking with the kids, because that's not something I learned to enjoy until I was older. I have faith that the boys will grow into it. But I do understand that getting kids out in nature is important, and we did manage to take two hikes (in 17 days, sigh). The first was on Christmas Day, and oh my did the twins ever not want to go. We settled for a low-key walk down the Bobolink Trail, and of course they ended up having a lovely time. Silly twins.

The second hike was just before we went back to school/work, and it was the Lichen Loop at Heil Ranch, where we'd gone last summer when my old friend Rita and her kids came to visit. We always said we'd go back in the fall, and didn't, but the winter landscape was fine too, especially since there was barely a patch of snow anywhere on the trails. It just had that barren January look, reminded me a bit of Death Valley at that time of year. Dry and cold, with a sense that almost everything's gone to sleep. And it wasn't really cold, either (you'll note that Kid B is wearing shorts). We even had a picnic, though it was just slightly too cold for it (or we were just slightly underdressed, except for Kid B who was exceptionally underdressed).

When we were there in August, we saw wild turkeys, but I suppose they've gone somewhere else for the winter. But we did see several deer, as tame as sheep. Colorado is such a lovely place to live.

Old year, new year, and what I read/plan to read

I usually write a post about New Year's resolutions, and I'm sure that's coming sometime soon, but I'm kind of stalled on those resolutions right now. I wrote them, as I always do. I took a piece of paper and drew a line down the middle of it. On the left I wrote all the things I could think of that might be called "accomplishments" in 2018. On the right I wrote all my plans for 2019, 24 resolutions in all. And then I looked at them and I felt really really depressed. These plans aren't fun, they're a slog. They're things like "Get at least 7 hours of sleep each night" and "Lift weights at least 2 times a week." There are plans for housecleaning and plans for fixing the house and yard, plans for losing weight and plans for saving money. It's all so ghastly that it makes me want to run away screaming.

So, instead, this post is going to be about one of the very few "resolutions" (and "accomplishments") that's fun: read a whole lot of books, with 78 being the specific goal for 2019. In 2018 I read 86 books, so 78 is not unreasonable, though I won't necessarily make it -- but if I don't, that just means I'll have less fun than I'm hoping to. Reading continues to be my absolute favorite activity in life. I'm so sorry that my own boys don't like to read, but they like to be read to, and maybe someday after I'm gone they'll make books a part of their lives. I cannot imagine wanting to go on living if I couldn't read (or at least listen to) books.

Specific goals for those 78 books? Not really, though I would like to read a lot of the books that have been in my "to read" pile for years now. I'd like to either read them, or get rid of them, make room for other books that I really do want to read. Beyond that the goal is to read whatever pleases me, read widely, read things out of my comfort zone -- but nothing that makes me unhappy (unless it's for the book group or my kids want to read it).

And here is a review of what I read in 2018, by category.

Children's Books (29): In past years I haven't counted children's books, but in 2017 I started to, and in 2018 I went all out. Almost everything on this list I read aloud to the kids, though we did also read a few adult books and I read one or two of these on my own.

• In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse by Joseph Marshall
• Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo
• Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
• Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library by Chris Grabenstein
• Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics by Chris Grabenstein
• Schoolhouse in the Woods by Rebecca Caudill
• Mr. Lemoncello's Great Library Race by Chris Grabenstein
• Dragon Overnight by Mlnowski, Myracle, & Jenkins
• Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill by Maud Hart Lovelace
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
• Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
• The Lost Rainforest by Eliot Schrefer
• Up and Down the River by Rebecca Caudill
• PIE by Sarah Weeks
• Matilda by Roald Dahl
• Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones
• A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle
• Zane and the Hurricane by Rodman Philbrick
• Story Thieves by James Riley
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
• The Penderwicks at Last by Jeanne Birdsall
• Story Thieves: The Stolen Chapters by James Riley
• Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
• A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
• Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley & Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsburg
• Story Thieves: Secret Origins by James Riley
• Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell by Chris Colsen

Books for the Book Group (9): My book group tries to meet every month, but sometimes life interferes. Our choices are pretty random: mostly we read whatever someone in the group has just heard about. This is, as always, an eclectic list: fiction, nonfiction, mystery, science fiction. My favorite might have been Annihilation. I really wanted to read Lincoln in the Bardo, but ended up being disappointed by it.

• January: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
• February: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
• March: The Baker's Passage by Colleen Jiron
• April/May: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
• June: The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone
• July: Death in Cyprus by M.M. Kaye
• August: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
• September/October: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
• November/December: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

Mysteries/Thrillers (18): Usually my biggest list, but this year it was eclipsed by the children's books. I find that after all these years of reading mysteries, I'm growing a little tired of them, and have been choosing more psychological thrillers, with Tana French a current favorite. I read her first standalone novel, The Witch Elm, right before Christmas and was so disappointed with it. I hope she goes back to her series.

• Faithful Place by Tana French
• Broken Harbor by Tana French
• Y is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton
• The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carre
• Call for the Dead by John Le Carre
• Closed Casket by Sophie Hannah
• Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter
• The Secret Place by Tana French
• Song of the Lion by Anne Hillerman
• Death in St. Petersburg by Tasha Alexander
• The Trespasser by Tana French
• The Likeness by Tana French
• A Map of the Dark by Karen Ellis
• A Minister's Ghost by Phillip DePoy
• The Witch's Grave by Phillip DePoy
• A Country of Old Men by Joseph Hansen
• The Witch Elm by Tana French

SciFi/Fantasy/Horror (7): In 2017 science fiction was a big part of my list, but this year I took a slight break from it. I enjoyed discovering Jeff VanderMeer, though. After reading Borne, I convinced the book group to read Annihilation (no one liked it but me) and then went on and read the rest of the Southern Reach Trilogy on my own.

• Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
• Emergence by C.J. Cherryh
• A Winter Haunting by Dan Simmons
• Borne by Jeff VanderMeer
• The Strange Bird by Jeff VanderMeer
• Authority by Jeff VanderMeer
• Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer

General Fiction (9): This is a seriously random list, nothing caught my fancy and led me to read more of one writer or another. The two Pyms are from my annual re-reading of some of her books, every February.

• Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson
• August by Judith Rossner
• Jane & Prudence by Barbara Pym
• Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym 
• Help for the Haunted by John Searles
• Contenders by Erika Krouse
• The Novel Habits of Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith
• Journey into Christmas by Bess Streeter Aldrich
• What If It's Us by Becky Albertalli & Adam Silvera

Memoirs/Biographies (Presidential and other) (10): I like biographies and memoirs, but none of these really thrilled me, though Lost Cat was fun. I read four Presidential biographies this year, but they were all short bios, just checking minor presidents off my list. I'm planning to read a longer biography of Pierce this year, and will also try to read one of Buchanan and then start reading about Lincoln.

• The Goldfish Went on Vacation: A Memoir of Loss (and Learning to Tell the Truth about It) by Patty Dann
• The Blue Jay's Dance: A Memoir of Early Motherhood by Louise Erdrich
• James K. Polk by John Seigenthaler
• Zachary Taylor by John S.D. Eisenhower
• Calypso by David Sedaris (is this where this belongs, or do I need a humor category?)
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
• Millard Fillmore by Ted Gottfried
• Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology by Caroline Paul
• Franklin Pierce by Michael F. Holt
• Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max

General Nonfiction (4): I didn't read a lot of regular nonfiction this year, though it is true that nonfiction and memoir are really hard to separate these days. Every one of these four books contained some personal stuff. I found Lauren Slater's book on antidepressants and other mind drugs very interesting (if depressing), and I would recommend No-Drama Discipline to any parent.

• Monster Hunters: On the Trail with Ghost Hunters, Bigfooters, Ufologists, and Other Paranormal Investigators by Tea Krulos
• Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds by Lauren Slater
• Cat vs Cat: Keeping Peace When You Have More Than One Cat by Pam Johnson-Bennett
• No-Drama Discipline: The Whole-Brain Way to Calm the Chaos and Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind by Daniel J. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson