Morning, my dears, and happy New Year. I’ve spent the year (and decade) so far on:
– morning FB skim (which I kind of want to get rid of as a first step to the day, which probably means not bringing devices to bed at night….hmmm….)
– sleepily reading a chapter in bed on marketing my books (step 1 is apparently building a strong social platform — how am I doing? you tell me! 
)
– dressing in exercise-friendly clothes, which I’m hoping to do every morning
– making coffee
– feeding a child and making sure the child fed the pets
– telling said child that Sri Lankan tradition is that children get money on New Year’s (true), and that it only happens if they have a clean room (sort of true — you’re supposed to clean the whole house, but this can be his portion), and sending him off to clean his room. I’m expecting it to take Anand 3 hours to do 15 minutes of cleaning; we’ll see.
– heating up a slice of cold leftover pizza for my breakfast — I did a bunch of cleaning out of freezers last night, and plan to eat / serve much of it in the next few days, starting the New Year out on a more frugal and efficient note
– finishing watching an Agatha Christie mystery (_At the Bertram Hotel_, a good one, and it fed into some thoughts re: a post for perhaps later today that I’ve been mulling for some time, about literary & popular fiction
– finally repotting the calamondin orange tree I got Kevin for Christmas; he loves fruit, so I’m hoping to start building up a nice set of indoor citrus in the next few years; the last time I tried this, with a lime tree, it didn’t make it, but I invested in much larger tree this time around, so am hoping it’ll be more resilient, fingers crossed
Next steps:
– finally potting up amaryllises (months later than I normally would, so they’ll be blooming in, oh, March? not ideal, since by then the outdoor garden will be waking up, but better than not blooming at all, I suppose)
– 20 minutes on the treadmill, plus a sun salutation or two
– straightening up the mudroom and dining table
– setting a batch of lime-ginger shortbread baking (that Kevin made for Christmas, and which we froze because we had too many sweets already)
– setting some cider mulling
– packing up some things to mail and/or drop off at friend’s houses tomorrow
– re-reading a chapter of Pratchett’s Going Postal (after all the mailing and packaging I’ve been doing, it somehow feels apropos, and I’ll think some more about why I love his work and what makes for smart popular fiction
– and if I get to it before 11, editing and posting some videos for you all to enjoy
11 a.m. – 11 p.m. is open house, but I’m going to try to stay chill about it — no mad cooking frenzy this time. Little bits of cooking interspersed with chatting, board games, and hopefully some knitting / crochet — one thing that completely fell away last fall in all the busy was textile arts, and I think bringing it back will help with some much needed slowdown of my racing brain…
My mantra for today, and for the 2020: calm. Do all the things, yes, but if I’m not doing them in a state of relative calm and happiness, then try to slow down a bit. Our animals know; I’ll try to take a cue from them.
Wishing you much joyous calm in the New Year!
