As for me, I’m keeping it real, attainable, and utterly basic, so as to actually realize a few goals. Gone are the “read 30 classic novels in one year,” “become fluent in French” and “learn to play Bach.”

Here’s my top ten New Year’s Resolutions for 2010, unsophisticated and no-frills:

1. Limit frozen pizza to just one dinner a week.

2. Change my sheets at least once a month, vacuum, ditto.

3. Never go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink…at least 5 out of 7 nights.

4. Never go to bed with my day clothes on; same for the kids - pajamas every night!

5. For goodness sake, always have toilet paper and milk stocked.

6. Stretch every morning with the goal of touching my toes (without bending my legs!) by mid-year.

7. Write at least one paper and pen and stamp letter each month to someone I love.

8. I will be a paper-attacker - no stacks of letters will accumulate on my kitchen counter.

9. I won’t waste time surfing the web, and especially won’t click on the latest scandalmongering from Hollywood.

10. Return every library book on time. And pay all the old fines.

How about you? What are your hopes for keeping it real in 2010?

Happy New Year!

Technorati Tags: New Year’s Resolutions, family life, 2010

The last of the Christmas cards went out yesterday; mine via email due to lack of time or resources - I do apologize if this is too tacky for your taste, I don’t particularly like it either; and my mother’s via post.

My mother. Four Christmas cards were prepared for Uncle Doug, three for Aunt Pat, and duplicates for several others. It’s her mind. I usually run interference and rescue the bonus cards (and their accompanying stamps), but this time, I sent them all. They need to know, right? Oh, a terrible thought, what if they think they’re the ones going crazy? :-)

Jane is coming for dinner tonight. I ran into her at the grocery store last week. She was in the baking aisle, putting along in her electric chair with oxygen tubes giving her breath. She wept tears of joy upon seeing us, me and JoJo who loves her like a Grandma. It’s not like it used to be when we lived half a block away from her sunshine yellow house and visited several times a week.

“Can I bake you some cookies?” she wanted to know. Of course I replied. I missed her 85th birthday and feel terrible about that. It’s a few days from Thanksgiving, and what a time to try to remember a birthday. Her mind is yet sharper than my mother’s, so I know she noticed. We’ll make it up to her. I’m just wondering how I’ll get her into my van and how I’ll keep my five year old from tripping over the miles of oxygen tubing.

My two girls are scrubbing toilets as I write, and the older sister, just eight, asked if this can now be her job. “Since we haven’t been composting as much (her other main job), can I be the toilet scrubber?” Who knew it was such fun. Note to self: meaningful jobs make kids feel a mile tall.

Well, Merry Christmas to all! Hold your dear ones tight, reach out to a soul in need, and love, as we have been loved by our Creator.

Technorati Tags: Christmas, elder care, seniors and aging

J: No, no, the angels are looking at nothing!

L: Well, let’s move the shepherd back here, he’s a lesser one anyway.

J: The Wise Man can’t be giving his gift to the cow, move him!

L: Oh, here’s the little lamb that broke last year. Oh well. It’s just one.

J: How cute, the camel is peering through the gate!

L: If only the angel could sit on top of the stable, there’d be more room and she’d be looking right down at Jesus. But she’d fall.

J: Everyone has to be looking at the baby Jesus!

(after many minutes of shuffling, conversing, and pondering the cramped quarters, the children reach an agreement)

L & J: It’s perfect!

Technorati Tags: Christmas, creche, manger scene

Actually, one of my kids found it in a box of my scant childhood mementos.

I wrote last December:

What was so magical about this double-paned case of shifting sand? For a little girl in a rather impoverished and remote desert region of the southwest, I could dream, carried away to nowhere in particular but someplace beautiful on every twist and flow of those magical grains. I longed to touch the sand that surely was silky smooth and would flow through my fingers like fairy dust.

Here it sits, right at home in my bedroom window, a magical melding of past and present. This was the first day of snow in Central Oregon, several weeks ago now.

Gazing out my windows at the crystalline air and bustling winterish activity, I had an epiphany. Something I can’t put into words, but a full circle was realized on this day.

My littlest made the first cheery snowball of the season.

His big brother followed suit in a grand way with his own ambitious snowball.

Who knew my little Magic Window circa 1975 would be a foreshadowing of such delightful affairs? I thought of a passage from Paul’s writings in the New Testament:

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 1 Corinthians 13:12.

Here’s to a continued revealing and clarifying of the “magic window” of our lives. May unspoken dreams come true. May dark days get brighter. May we soon be face to face.

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, childhood memories, Christmas, Magic Window