A Little of This and a Little of That

So it's almost the end of January already!  I mistakenly thought that life would calm down after the holidays, and in a lot of ways it has.  But I've found myself being blissfully busy in quiet ways: meeting friends for coffee, hanging out with family, hibernating indoors and reading lots of books and magazines.  Here are a few random thoughts about this very small sliver of 2013:

~My friend Meredith is home, and I love it.  We were close when she was in Texas with her family, always texting and Facetiming.  But her being home is exquisite.  There have been several occasions where we've spontaneously met at our local Panera to have coffee, a light lunch, or a comically caloric pastry.  I love many things about Meredith, but one of my favorite things is that we talk about serious things without the overall conversation feeling heavy and dolorous.  What I'm saying is, she is the type of friend who I can say anything to, and yet while I'm pouring my heart out, I'm also laughing and feeling good.  She is one of those people who make life easier just by being in her presence.  I love that she's home!

~I've been catching up on some great Kindle reads lately.  You must, you must, YOU MUST read "The Good House" by Ann Leary.  I love Ann Leary, especially her first book, "An Innocent, A Broad."  This book entangled me...I started reading it on a Friday night and was finished by early Sunday.  I loved it for so many reasons: it delves into the history and characters of a small town, but it also portrays the narrator as she starts absolutely unraveling due to her alcoholism.  It is juicy, suspenseful and intriguing.  I want to re-read it!

~After this book, I moved onto "When We Were the Kennedys: A Memoir from Mexico, Maine."  I'm a sucker for a good memoir, and this is just that.   It's heavy material: a large family of children loses their father unexpectedly to a heart attack in 1963.  It chronicles the first few months after his death, and in November when John F. Kennedy is assassinated, the family's story mirrors that of the Kennedy's.  It was a very somber topic but, in the end it was enormously hopeful. 

~I'm loving Zinio.   This app allows you to download magazines, and the best part is I can get them for free since my library is partnered with the app.  I admit that I'm getting sly joy out of reading issues of US Weekly.  Yes, it's tawdry and lame, but yes, I freaking love it anyway.  And I could lie and say I'm absolutely absorbed in "The Economist" but that just wouldn't be any fun at all.

~We did something pretty cool this year at work that I want to share with you.  Instead of making specific resolutions for the New Year, we each selected a single word that we want to focus on throughout the year.  My word for 2013 is "Hopeful."  This year will be bringing a lot of changes, some definite, and some unfixed.  I have a bad habit of being anxious about everything, but I'm trying to let that go.  For a change, I'll try always being Hopeful.  We'll see how this goes.  Believe me, there have been several times already where I've had to repeat the word to myself over and over!  But I wouldn't be me if that wasn't the case!

~I was blessed to grow up with a father (and mother) who made going to the theater a family event.  Growing up, our parents trotted us out to productions of "Phantom of the Opera," "The Wiz," "Peter Pan," "The Lion King, " "Beauty and the Beast," "Grease," "Miss Saigon," and I'm sure countless others.  Getting dressed up and sitting downtown at our lovely Playhouse Square Theater Complex to see Broadway shows is something that was a treat for us, and I grew to love it.  As an adult, I've been back to see many Broadway productions offered in our city, and I've grown very fond of Musicals in general.  After bawling through the movie version of "Les Miserables" with Meredith (while chowing down on popcorn and nonpareils, of all things) we decided to buy tickets to the Broadway production, coming next month.  I saw this production years ago (in the year 2000, actually) with Mr. My Blog for Bonnie after we had only been dating for a few months.  I remember trying desperately hard to stifle myself the entire time.  If you've seen the production or the movie, you know that nearly everyone is rendered a crying mess throughout multiple parts of it, especially at the end.  I tried to keep it together so as not to seem like a complete walking disaster in front of him.  Needless to say, if we saw it together now, I'd probably mortify him by my outright sobbing.  Indeed, I even had to consciously stifle a sob when I saw the movie with Meredith.  Rest assured, I'll be comfortable enough now, 13 years later, to really let loose when we see the production next week in Cleveland!  Hey, grown men fall to pieces at Les Mis, so I can be expected to totally lose it too!

~I've made it a goal to make more and more new recipes this year.  I pin a bazillion recipes to my boards on Pinterest, and I'm a cookbook lover.  So far I've made a lot of great things: Pizza Pull-Apart Bread, Spicy Meatballs and Spaghetti, a fabulous tortellini soup in the crockpot.... I'm having fun broadening our recipe repertoire.  Stay tuned.

~I'm also sewing more.  True confessions:  I SUCK at cutting fabric.  For one, I don't have a steady hand, and two, I am bamboozled by figuring out measurements and dimensions.  I come by this honestly because every single person in my immediate family is perplexed by math.  However, I'm overcoming these fears and doing what I love most about sewing: which is making quilts and using pre-cuts.  However, in the interest of being "Hopeful," I vow that I WILL attempt patterns this year.  Eeeeeeek!!!!

~I spilled a giant glass of my husband's RED WINE all over the kitchen this evening.  As I looked at it cascading down our white cabinets, hitting the fridge, ricocheting off our walls, I looked around and said, in my most skeptical and annoyed of voices, ".....Red Wine?"  That was the best I could do to capture the scope and tragedy of the situation.  And now, my kitchen smells rather like a winery on the Lake, which isn't a bad thing by any means.  And I mean, really, wine is alcohol, so in a very roundabout way, I was actually disinfecting my floors, cabinets and fridge when I dumped the wine all over them....right?