I am notorious for posting my New Year’s Resolutions and then promptly forgetting about them–aren’t we all?–but this year, I’m going to put a link to them permanently, so I can access them easier.

Nothing on my resolution list for this year is impossible. I didn’t make any sweeping goals like ‘lose 20 lbs’, and I thought very hard about what I did write. One of the resolutions is going to be on next year’s list definitely, and probably a couple of other ones will migrate too, since they’re ones that could be repeated forever.

So without further ado, my New Year’s Resolutions for 2007:

1. Pay off all extraneous debts (which includes: credit cards, Dad, and Bekah, but doesn’t include: House and car.) I have a financial plan for this, and I need to stick with it. Once my credit cards are pair off, cancel Capital One and maybe one other, and keep the other two for emergencies ONLY. I should be able to live within my means. (Or, alternately, give myself a monthly spending limit for the credit card, providing I can pay it off in a month or two.) I did get rid of one major credit card bill already, so there’s really only one and a tiny half left.

2. After extraneous debts are paid off, start saving for my six-months living expenses/emergencies savings account, which can also be used for emergencies. I need about $10,000–and that’s a very generous amount. (It should take me about 18 months to save $10,000 after the extraneous debts are paid off, so this will be part of 2008’s resolutions as well, not counting ebay money or craft show money. My goal is to shave off a few months with craft show, extra money, and ebay money and save that amount in about a year. We’ll see.) This is a bit of a derailment from my previous financial plan, but I do like the idea of having this emergency money in the bank first before I start paying off the house and the car in earnest.

3. Exercise. It’s good for my health, after all, and well-being. I ordered a fitness kit from Sierra Trading Post, and I intend to use it. I also need to utilize my 15 minute programs more often. I am going to try to come up with a schedule for this. I also now have a new bike. Once it’s repaired, and since the brakes work (!!! Important, don’t you think?), I am planning to ride it.

4. Finish The Seventh Secret, revise Heart’s Desire, finish So You Want to be a Vampire, rewrite Fire and Water. Write The Sixth Stone, late in the year. Maybe do another Karen Montgomery story too. And submit, where applicable. Obviously, I’m not going to get The Seventh Secret done this year. However, it’s going well, and I’m really curious to see how it turns out. So I’m not going to rush it.

5. Make all Christmas gifts for 2007, but I’m going to allow myself the option of buying one handmade item per person (this would be like from Etsy or something similar; directly from the artist.) To do this correctly, I’m going to have to ask everyone what they want for Christmas that I can make. This might not be as difficult as it sounds. We’ll see.

6. Keep selling dolls on ebay; post more on Etsy as well. All ebay/etsy money should go towards a. savings or b. paying off something more quickly. I enjoy making dolls, and I think the recipients enjoy receiving them.

7. Think twice before buying anything that I want but don’t really need. I haven’t been doing this, but I think it’s a good idea. This means that even if something is on sale, or very cheap, if I don’t really need it or won’t be able to use it frequently, then I should think twice–or even three or four times–before I buy it. Case in point: While buying Christmas presents from Sierra Trading Post, I found a pair of chukka boots that were marked down to $14.95 from $60. Great deal, right? But did I really need another pair of boots? I like the pair I wear all the time in the wintertime, and I have three or four pair of snow boots already. Odds were that this pair would end up in the shoe container in my bedroom, because I can only wear one pair of shoes at a time. So I ended up not buying them, saving myself from charging another $15 to my credit card.

8. Start paring down my possessions. Do I really need five sewing machines? No. I need to go through things and sell them or give them away, depending. I don’t want to fill up my entire house by my third anniversary of being here. This also applies to clothing. I really need to weed my clothes and get rid of the ones I haven’t worn in years. And then, resupply with ones I will wear. If I keep a good list of what I need to buy, odds are I’ll find what I need at Goodwill fairly simply. It’s when I go without a mental idea of what I need that I get into trouble.

9. Instead of waiting until the last minute to get ready for the craft shows, make something for the craft shows every month. It doesn’t have to be a lot of things, but if, for example, I want to make throws to sell, then I really need to make one a month. I can experiment if I have more time, after all. (I will also need space to store these items, so I need to find space to do that as well. Thus the paring down of #8.)

10. Create a cleaning schedule, and stick to it. My days of absolutely ignoring what I consider to be a messy house are over. I really just need to buckle down and do it, already. It’s not so bad, especially after we spent a lot of time cleaning. But I seriously don’t want to end up doing a yearly cleaning of my office, unless that yearly cleaning also helps me get rid of stuff.

11. Find extra money wherever I can. Submit mileage reports at work. In six months, I’ve gotten almost $500 extra, just for filling out a piece of paper. Bug publishers who haven’t sent royalties out (only one, really, and that one I’m not really worried about yet.) Make sure the “think twice” rule works. Sell the things I’ve bought on a whim that I won’t really use. If I buy something with a rebate, mail it in! Etc. This should be a pretty obvious one, but I’m really bad about doing things like this.

12. Work on making the garden more productive. As in, I’d like to have to buy less produce and canned or frozen stuff vs. growing what I want to eat. So before spring comes around, I need to map out the garden and figure out what it is I really want to grow and eat. There will be squash, I’m sure. And potatoes. ? But maybe not so many beans. Along with this is to continue to plant mostly edible stuff, but I’m seriously contemplating only doing one new bed a year from now on. 2007’s new bed will be by the cistern, and will have more herbs, I think. (And garlic!) And I’m expanding Ethan’s garden a bit as well, and the big garden too. But I think I will leave the expansion of the side flowerbed (in the front yard) until later, but we’ll see.

13. Clean out the shed. I really shouldn’t have to say anything more than that.

14. Put a new roof on the kitchen, the shed, and the side porch. This isn’t difficult; we just have to do it. And we’re doing it ourselves. Not a big, huge deal at all. We just have to make time to do it.

*15. Bake more. Cook more. I really enjoy doing both, and hey, it’s healthier to cook and bake things myself anyway! I have lots of neat cookbooks with recipes that are just begging to be made. So I resolve to make them. (Especially bread!)

And there they are. Let’s see how well I do this year.

* Oops! When I cut and pasted my resolutions, #15 wasn’t there and I didn’t notice until now.

I went down the road with Dad this afternoon to Goodwill and Lowe’s. Ended up with a bike from Goodwill–an incentive for me to ride it, don’t you think? It’s lovely–a brand new Schwinn Jaguar. Considering my other bike is a Huffy, and the brakes are shot, I think I’ll ride this one quite a bit more often than once a year.

There’s an issue, though; the gear piece broke off and it needs to be replaced. So on Tuesday I will take it to the local bike shop to see how expensive that will be to fix. (The bike itself cost me $30, so even if it’s expensive, it’s still going to be cheaper than buying it new. And it’s just a part and a new chain, which is bent. It can’t be that much.)

I would have dropped it off today, but I got back at 4:15 and they closed at 4. I have my doubts they’ll be open on Monday, but I will check.

At Lowe’s I picked up two Christmas cactii for $2.50 each (two different colors, according to the tags) and two plastic containers–we’re rearranging a bit. Then I came home and moved some stuff around in the Green Room. Just by removing a bookcase and replacing it with a table, it looks so much better now.

I bought some Snapware (plastic jugs and containers with airtight lids) with my Sears gift card. The Snapware will soon hold our cereal so I can clean out the third ‘pantry’ cabinet and put my pots and pans in that cabinet instead of the smaller one they are in now. That will allow me to put away the new pots and pans, which will be nice!

So, organizing is progressing. I have a long list of stuff that I want to do to organize things a bit better, and doing what I did today was on that list. (Well, not buying a bike. But I have been seriously thinking about it, and I just couldn’t pass it up. Maybe the weather will hold out after it’s fixed and I’ll actually be able to ride it a bit. In January. Sheesh!)

I am going to try to sleep without the Nyquil tonight. We’ll see how that works.

I’m cleaning today; getting rid of boxes and such from Christmas presents and just trying to tidy up a bit. It’s so nice outside that I might even work outside too; we’ll see. It’s supposed to be nice all weekend long. I *almost* want to open a window or two. And that’s really pitiful, at the end of December where it’s supposed to be cold and snowy.

Let me put it this way: If my lettuce had lived through the cold weather (and really; some of it’s still alive, only not looking good at all) I would be eating lettuce now. And that’s just pitiful!

And I’m working on revising my Resolutions a bit, too. I’ll probably post them tomorrow.

So anyway…

Christmas Eve night, I couldn’t get to sleep. I kept coughing all night long, until I finally drifted off around 1:30am. At 3am, I was awakened by a strange sound–it sounded like someone moaning.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. (like that.)

It got louder, then softer, and then vanished all together, but I was wide awake by then, so I walked downstairs to make sure someone hadn’t hit a dog (or something) on the road. I looked out every door and window, except for the west side of the house for some reason. Then, because I figured I might as well, I decided to go to the bathroom.

No sooner had I sat down than I heard someone muttering outside. It sounded like it was right outside my bathroom window, and it was a man’s voice, just muttering, not any words that I could make out. I freaked, switched out the light as quick as I could, and tiptoed to the Green Room window, since I can’t really see out the bathroom window (it’s frosted.)

At first, I didn’t see a thing, but then I noticed a movement at the back of the house on the corner, where a very old lady lives (at least as far as I know.) There was a guy rocking back and forth against the back of her house with his arms pressed over his stomach.

My first thought was that he had been hurt. My second thought was that he had been shot. My third thought was that he was drunk. Since my 83-year-old neighbor’s yard butts up to this yard, and since I was 99.999999% sure this guy did not belong there, I called 911.

The police responded quickly, but the guy moved between the two houses as soon as he saw the headlights. I even had a visit from one of the officers (just as one of the cats went to the bathroom, of course) to show him where I’d seen the guy last. The guy wasn’t walking very good, so I didn’t think he could get far, and I did see the officers put someone in the back of the one car, but they didn’t call me back or anything, and I ended up going back to bed around 3:30am. I didn’t sleep very well.

Needless to say, I wasn’t very awake on Christmas Day.

However, after asking for “lots and lots of underwear”, I managed to score twelve pairs (this is a good thing!) and a bunch of other cool stuff. Ethan enjoyed his frogs, of course, and his other gifts, and Mom and Dad liked the throw I made. I think everyone liked their gifts from me. Even the weird-o rain boots I got Bekah and Jess were relative hits.

I got a really neat old wooden jointed bear, two walkingsticks, a clay teapot in a frame, some t-shirts, the “Careful, or you’ll end up in my novel” t-shirt, and the usual amounts of shower gel. I asked for and received lightbulbs (Okay, I had a hard time thinking of things to put on my list this year, and anyway, I’d rather get my fluorescent bulbs as gifts vs. having to buy them myself), sweatpants to wear to bed, and a set of flannel sheets. It was a nice, slow day. I even took a nap.

However, I’ve been tired all week long, probably due to that one night. I’ve been taking Nyquil all week long too, which probably doesn’t help, but I’m going to try to go without it tomorrow night. There’s only so much of that taste I can bear for one cold.

I am feeling better, though, which is good, because I have some resolutions to revise and post and implement, and a house to clean this weekend. More thoughts about organizing things later, I think, since this post is already long.

Hope everyone else had a good holiday if you celebrated!

Boy, Blogger is slow tonight!

I’m still here–and I have a lot to write about, but it’s already late so that will have to wait until tomorrow.

We went to see Night at the Museum tonight. It wasn’t as bad as the review I read. It had some good parts. But there were some really awkward parts too that could have been cut.

Saw reviews for Spiderman 3, Arthur and the Invisibles (? Something like that), and Happily N’ever After (which looks like a good concept, but not so good computer animation. Think “Toy Story”–I thought they were beyond that, technology-wise. The evil what’s-her-name (Sigourney Weaver) seemed awfully stiff to me.) Also Eragorn, which I have no desire to see.

And it’s time for me to go to bed, so just a very small update for tonight. I’ll write about my Christmas Eve adventure tomorrow (I hope!)

To: Ethan Fisher

From: Santa
1211 Candycane Ln.
North Pole

Dear Ethan,

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas and the elves were asleep,
Sleeping so soundly and dreaming of sheep,
I had just powered up the sleigh and the crew,
Getting ready to deliver the presents to you,
When outside my door there arose such a clatter
That I had to go see just what was the matter!

Imagine my surprise when I saw a small car–
And a postman, quite frozen, who had driven quite far.
“Oh Santa,” he said, “Please forgive me, oh please!”
He held out a letter and started to sneeze.
“I meant to deliver this letter to you–
But it got lost in my bag–oh what shall I do?”

The letter he held was a rumpled old thing
Held together with tape and a small bit of string.
It was postmarked with plenty of time before Christmas,
But if the postman had been any later, it would have missed us!
I opened it carefully, and read the short note.
It was from a boy named Ethan, and this is what he wrote:

“Dear Santa, Does Rudolph’s nose really glow in the dark?
Do you ever get lost? Have you flown through the park?
Do you know where I live? My Pa looks like you!
Do you think Tea will fix my snowman with glue?
Will you bring me an Iceman backpack this year?
I will leave out some carrots for your eight reindeer!

Could you bring a new bone for Mabel the dog?
And could you maybe, just maybe, bring me two frogs?
I know I’m only four, but I swear
I will feed my frogs crickets and take extra care
To make sure that they get everything that they need
WIth my Mama’s help, since I don’t know how to read. (yet)

Love, Ethan Fisher”

Well, as you can imagine, I was quite dismayed,
Since letters to Santa aren’t usually so delayed.
But what could I do? It was Christmas Eve!
But they don’t call me Santa for nothing–I had something up my sleeve…
Without a word to the postman, I jumped in his car,
And drove like a madman to the nearest swamp (it’s very far)

And while my reindeer all wondered if Christmas would be late,
I knew I couldn’t disappoint you, Ethan, so I didn’t hesitate.
With a small green net I searched on the ground
For the source of the croaking I heard all around.
But there wasn’t a single frog in sight!
Oh what would I do? It was Christmas Eve night!

Just about to give up, I leaned against a nearby tree,
But wait! What was that? What did I see?
The frogs weren’t on the ground at all,
But up in the trees–and they were quite small.
They changed colors from green to olive to brown
But the swamp was full of frogs all around!

I quickly asked two if they wanted to be
The pets of a nice young man, you see.
I promised them crickets and plenty to drink
And they hopped in my net before I could blink!
So quickly I drove back in the postman’s small car
For some reason, this time, it didn’t seem so far.

Once I arrived, I hopped on my sleigh
With the frogs nestled in my beard for most of the way.
I had to hurry, and I had no time
To fix them up a cage, I hope you don’t mind.
But they were so comfy that they fell asleep
And I forgot to deliver them–they didn’t make a peep!

So I caught your Aunt Tea before she left your house–
I snuck up on her, quiet as a mouse!
“Oh, Santa,” she said, “Aren’t you a bit late?
Ethan’s not here–he’s in Bethel-Tate!”
Without wasting a moment, I explained the events,
and showed her your letter and your late presents.

The frogs croaked and hopped onto Mabel’s head
But she didn’t try to eat them–or else they’d be dead!
Tea found them a cage and set it up nice
And promised to deliver them to you for no price.
While she was busy I wrote out this verse,
And tried to make it rhyme with many a curse!

Then I hopped in my sleigh and woke up my crew,
And as we flew away, I knew what I had to do.
I waved to your house, and flew over your tree,
Shouting, “Merry Christmas to Ethan, Mama, and Tea!”

Love,
Santa

P.S.–I will be watching you!!!

(copyright 2006 Jennifer St. Clair)

So yesterday, Eastgate was nutso, and after not being able to turn left from the office for ten minutes, I turned right instead and drove to Beechmont to get home, figuring that if all of the shoppers were in Eastgate, Beechmont should be fairly light, traffic-wise.

I was right, and since I was making decent enough time and I didn’t have to be home to let Miss Mabel out (Bekah was already home), I stopped at Goodwill.

I only got two sweaters for fabric, and a box of Singer sewing machine attachments, and a quiche pan (Pfaltzgraff), and a wooden cat. Not so bad, really. And I was second in line at the checkout, which was cool.

The lady in front of my was 73 (or so she told the cashier when asked if she got the senior discount), and she had two carts. One full of clothes and one full of something else. Her husband (I assume) was with her, and he was loading up one cart while she was unloading the other one.

I was standing right behind her cart with my armload of stuff when she dropped a sweater. I moved in to grab it for her, but she beat me to it by shoving her cart backwards–at me. (There is no way she couldn’t have seen me standing there.) Luckily for me, I didn’t get hit.

A minute or two passed, and she’s chatting with the cashier and settling her bill. I don’t really mind, since it’s not at all busy and I’m not in a big hurry. But she starts moving away, leaving her cart blocking the checkout, so I asked (nicely), “Is this your cart?”

She nodded at me and said yes, and she moved towards it a bit, so I assumed she intended to take it with her. But then, as soon as the last bag was in the other cart, she walked off with her husband, leaving her empty cart behind.

Now. What kind of an idiot just goes off and leaves their cart blocking the aisle? Just blatantly?

I glared at their retreating backs and pushed the cart forward. Then I had to push it again to get past it when I left. Would it have been so difficult to return it to the cart corral that they passed on the way out?!

That’s just rude, I’m sorry. I can’t see someone doing that in a grocery store or any other store. Leaving it at the end of the checkout counter, maybe; that wouldn’t have been so bad. But just leaving it there to block the next person in line? That’s plain rudeness and nothing more.

Today, leaving Eastgate was an interesting experience. I drove down a packed Eastgate Boulevard–packed meaning that everyone was either trying to get to the mall or 32, which was a parking lot. No one seemed to be trying to get out of the mess except for me and a handful of cars. It was a really strange feeling to pass backed up cars for a mile–almost to the light at the end of the road I go down–and see even more cars attempting to get past the congestion.

Honestly, even if they were giving away stuff at the mall, you wouldn’t catch me there tonight. I had to pick up Ethan’s pictures at the mall this morning–the appointment was at 3pm but I called them and went around 10am. At that time, I had no trouble getting in and out. But after lunch, the parking lot exploded with cars.

I know I read that more people were waiting until the very last minute to shop, but give me a break, people! The traffic was not even close to being this bad last year at this time. What gives?

I’m feeling a bit better–now it’s down to the cough and stuffy nose. My voice still sounds funny, though.

And although I only work/ed three days this week (I haven’t worked tomorrow yet, so I can’t really count it yet, can I?), this week seems to have gone on forever. I know it’s because Christmas is Monday, but I just really wanted another weekend. Really! Maybe I’ll get to sleep in a bit on Saturday. That would be nice.

I have a recipe for an eggless, no sugar added fruitcake. I’m going to try it, if only for the novelty. We’ll see how it tastes. (This will be Saturday, I’m thinking…) I also have to make Dad’s cookies yet. But that’s about it.

I would so like this cold to be over and done with!

I could very easily crawl back into bed right now and sleep until noon. I hardly slept all night. I’m going to blame that on the drainage of this thrice-damned cold! Argh.

The funny thing is (well, not funny, really) that my nose is clear. I can breathe out of it just fine. But my voice sounds hilarious.

**hoping I don’t have to answer the phone at all today**

Argh. I didn’t want to get sick until February. FEBRUARY!! This is sooooo not February.

(Although I stepped outside this morning and smelled snow. It’s supposed to be 54 today, so we’re not getting any, but I smelled it from somewhere.)

(I am going to work, though, for those wondering.)

110 pieces, after adding less water to account for the humidity.

(I figured I could sit and stir just fine. And any germs wouldn’t live anyway, so it’s all good.)

One blister, of course.

Second batch didn’t work out, though. This might be it for the year.

And I’m out of sugar.