Please Won't You Be My Neighbor?

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.  That's a lie.  It's gray and ugly, and worst of all, raining.  I am told repeatedly that this is not a typical Utah winter, and I am assured that normal winters are much colder, much grayer, but filled with piles of fluffy, powdery snow.  That sounds horrible and wonderful at the same time, like drinking a fine wine while someone takes a lead pipe to your kneecaps. 

Honestly, I don't remember the last time I experienced a typical winter anywhere.  Last year in Idaho, we started off the winter (or mid-late fall to most people) with monstrous amounts of heavy, wet snow that, had my jobs and the grocery store been outside of walking distance, would have paralyzed me and my economy car completely.  The previous winter in New Jersey brought more snow than I can remember.  More snow than anyone alive can remember.  For realsies.  Snowiest winter on record.  After the sky finished it's bulimic snow-purge onto the Eastern seaboard, we had about a four foot high pile of snow in my mom's front yard, between drifting and snow shoveled from the sidewalk. 

Is there even such a thing as a typical season?  Do we ever actually experience weather patterns that make us think, 'Hot damn, this is truly the epitome of spring in this geographic region'?  Or do we always find some flaw in the weather or deviation from our ideals or expectations that prompts us to assure ourselves 'This is highly unusual...surely next summer will be back to normal'?  Or is the whole planet just going completely cray-cray, as both Al Gore and the Mayans have so wisely prophesied?

But I digress.  I didn't intend to go on a tirade about the most banal small talk topic of all time.  My intended topic, folks, is one Mr. Fred McFeely Rogers.

from Wikipedia

I am him.  He is me.  We are one.

Aside from our mutual, undying love of cardigans, we share a very important trait.  You see, I have developed a curious habit of late.  I change my shoes when I enter the building.  I am now the person who walks to work in one pair of shoes, and changes into another when I get there.  You are probably thinking, 'Hey, that's not so weird, a lot of women walk to work in sneakers and put on heels when they arrive.'  But that's not it. 

The last three times I wore high heels (because those are the only times I can remember between high school proms and now) I was also preposterously drunk and wearing a dry-clean-only silk dress.  I don't do either of those two things at work, so why would I wear heels, either?  I'm not fancy, or short, or a masochist.   (Interestingly, Mr. Rogers was none of those things, either, as long as you believe that devoting over 30 years of your life to filming a wholesome children's show with spooky hand puppets and a "mailman" who maybe should have been on a sex offender registry wasn't painful.  Coincidence?)

So, why do I change my shoes when I get to work?  (The real question should be, why don't I change my clothes when I get to work, because let me be frank and admit that by the time I get there I am sweating like Rick Santorum at a gay pride parade because I am never not running late and therefore always power walking like an a-hole.)  I change my shoes because I am the proud but smotheringly overprotective mother of these babies:

Steve Madden

They're so pretty.  I could never taint them by trudging through snow, slush, puddles, or dog poo (seriously, people of Utah, why do you let your dogs crap on the sidewalk?).  I can't bear to damage them, so I wear them only on dry surfaces.  Every morning, I carefully pack them in my backpack with my lunch (don't worry, Mom, the food is in a separate compartment) and lace up my trusty 8 year old Doc Martins so I can speed-toddle down the street over the solid ice that forms on the sidewalks after anti-social homeowners don't shovel the snow in front of their houses and then people inevitably walk on it and pack it down.  Yes I have fallen.  No I'm not injured.  Yes I was annoyed.  Nobody saw (I hope).

I love a good pair of Docs.  Don't get me wrong.  But they don't really go with a lot of my clothes, and they kind of make me feel like Frankenstein.  But they are officially the only pair of shoes I own with any traction (snow boots might be a solid investment, but I like to deprive myself of functional items just for S's and G's).  And they are so comfortable.  Thus, I enter work looking from the knees down as if the 90s just coughed up a hairball.  Daria called, she wants her footwear back.  What?  But then I scurry into my cubicle and slip into these beauties and all is right with the world.  If loving my boots this much is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Plus or Minus

We had a wee bit of a pregnancy scare last night.  But don't worry.  Everyone's fine, everyone's barren.  The stray cat I found at the liquor store is not pregnant.  Probably.  It's kind of hard to tell.  Speaking as someone with little to no experience with pregnancy of the feline or human variety (ok no experience whatsoever) I can't really tell if her behavior and outward symptoms mean that she's pregnant or just in heat. 

I'm leaning towards 'in heat' because 1) I really do not want a pile of slimy newborn kittens showing up on my floor one day and 2) she's been slithering around all evening making this 'murrowww' sound that seems to be cat-speak for 'DO ME'.  Either way, GROSS.  I will spare you (most of) the gory details, but I want to spread a little of this misery around by making it quite clear that engorged cat nipples are disgusting on so many levels (including but in no way limited to the sheer quantity of nipples, oh my god) that I can't even begin to describe how uncomfortable it makes me to pet Hadley right now.  This little hussy cannot get spayed quickly enough.

Hadley was supposed to get her lady parts excised last Friday (on the ominous 13th), but she had a chest cold thing going on so we pushed back the surgery.  Maybe that was a bad idea.  Is there an abortion cut-off for cats?  I tried looking up the legal precedent set in the landmark Meow vs. Wade case, but my iPhone literally punched me in the face for making such a weak pun.  And I mean literally in the most literal actual sense, not the 'I really mean "figuratively" but I am literally too dumb to understand the meaning of the word "literally"' sense.  It's amazing how sassy artificial intelligence is getting these days.  And my (antiquated, Luddite) iPhone doesn't even have Siri!

So clearly, I should have made 'writing about cats incessantly' one of my New Year's goals.  I would be spanking that so hard right now.

In other non-cat related news:

We are going to Sundance this weekend!  I demand a Ryan Gosling sighting, or I want my money back.  I have no idea if he's even going (because, you know, we talk, but the topic never seems to come up) but seriously?  How could you not love him in Lars and the Real Girl or Half Nelson?  And how could you not adore internet meme Ryan Gosling?  In my humble and totally unbiased opinion, Librarian Hey Girl is by far the best one.

This is my favorite iteration.  It's naughty. 

Source

And in case you are wondering and couldn't fill in the blanks sufficiently on your own, allow me to translate.  That is the Library of Congress call number for the book, The F Word, by Jesse Sheidlower.  See for yourself. 

While we're tossing around a celebrity encounter wish-list, I also wouldn't mind a Rashida Jones sighting.  She's in a Sundance film with Andy Samberg (who I ALSO wouldn't be disappointed to espy from afar!) called Celeste and Jesse Forever.  It looks really cute - we aren't seeing it at Sundance but I'm going to keep an eye out for it when it comes to theaters.  But I digress.  I've been toying with the probably terrible idea of cutting my hair, and Rashida has been frequenting my radar screen.  And by radar screen, I mean she's carved herself a nice little niche on my Pinterest, and I have a tiny little girl crush on her.  And her hair.

Is that totally stupid to hope that I see certain celebrities (or any recognizably famous person, really)?  Yes.  Yes it is stupid.  But also fun.  And it's a behavior that has been ingrained in my personality since the height of Zach Morris mania.  True story.  Once upon a time in 1993 or thereabouts, I saw a commercial for the Philadelphia Auto Show.  There might have been some cars there, or something, but all I cared about, and all I could think about for the next month, was Mark Paul Gosselaar.  He was going to be there signing autographs, and obviously he was going to fall in love with the creepy jail-bait 8 year old seeking his autograph and we would live happily, if scandalously, ever after.

Amazingly, my awesome mom took me and my then 6-year-old cousin Michael to the auto show and waited in a forever long line for an autograph.  Naturally, I had Zach Mr. Gosselaar sign a giant Saved by the Bell poster that came as a centerfold in some random teen magazine.  It was the best day of my life, and the day I retired my even-creepier 'Ernest Goes to Jail' Jim Varney poster (that I used to kiss every night before bed because why?) and replaced it with something slightly more age-appropriate.

I have no doubt that Sundance will be a slightly less pathetic but no less euphoric experience.

The Blizzard That Wasn't

Yet.

I may be speaking out of turn. The forecast changed so many times throughout the course of today, it's really anyone's guess. We could still get 10 inches tomorrow, supposedly. All I know is that I was robbed of the opportunity to trudge almost two miles home from work in a blizzard and then complain about it bitterly afterwards.

Side note, you know how typing on an iPad is a delicate and not always accurate process? Well, that imprecision is amplified tremendously when two cats are vying for the limited space on your lap. And when one of those cats weighs almost 20 pounds and is crushing your organs, and the other is tiny and cute but likes to swipe at your screen and try to eat your diamond ring because it's shiny and waving around while you type. It's a first world problem, for sure, but life is so hard sometimes, right?

Other side note - small kitty just swiped the screen and somehow typed the letters 'non'. I am positive she was trying to type 'Nyan (and I'm purposely leaving off the closing apostrophe because every time I added it, this terrible iPad auotcorrected it to 'Nyanja' as if that is even any more of a word. What even is that? A poptart cat trained in martial arts? Please enlighten me). Point is, this cat is so smart. Real point is, Andy is away and the human to cat ratio is currently at a shameful level in this house. I feel a little weird about that.

Ho-ga

I am simultaneously awesome and terrible at yoga.  The physical part is no sweat, literally or figuratively.  Of course, the classes I attend are not advanced, but still.  I am so freakishly flexible that sometimes I feel guilty for being so awesome when I know that people in class who are struggling probably see me and wonder why their own bodies can't contort into completely unnatural positions.  Which brings me to the terrible part.  I am a complete and abject failure when it comes to the spirit of yoga.  I am a big old Judgey McJudgerson.  Judge Judy.  I am a mean girl.  At least, my inner-monologue is a very mean girl who would give Regina George a serious run for her money.

OMG, you're not seriously already sweating during the first downward dog.  Because that's gross.

Yoga is not about walking in off the street and being the best.  It's not a contest, it's not about winning, and there is no perfection in yoga.  It just doesn't exist.  And it isn't one-dimensional.  It's not just about how much your anatomy functions like a Gumby figurine.  It doesn't matter if you're a Cirque du Soleil performer with rubber bones and surgically removed ribs.  No matter how flexible, how strong, how balanced you are, if your ego worms its way into your poses, you're doing it wrong.  And I can't make my brain stop thinking about other people's flaws!  Yoga is supposed to be about YOU (me).  It's doing the best you can with what you have, and "honoring your body" and feeling "oneness" with others and all that foo-foo.  I can get on board with that, really, I can.  They are nice ideas.  But way harder to do than standing on one foot while holding the opposite big toe and drawing that leg up so my knee touches my face.  Way, way harder.

Last night, I went to my first yoga class in a while.  I was really looking forward to it, because I last attended two weeks before Christmas.  I was hoping this would be a soothing, quiet session, but two minutes into class, as we were sitting cross-legged with our eyes closed 'finding our center', my hopes were dashed.

There is a large group of girls that come to yoga every other week.  I gather that they are doing this for some kind of college requirement, as they seem to be about college-age, they travel in a pack, and they range in enthusiasm from moderately interested to apathetic to living in complete dread of every pose.  The lineup of this group has changed substantially from last semester to this one, but the pattern is the same.  They roll in a few minutes after class has started, and there are too many of them for this to be a silent, unintrusive process.  They come in chatting and laughing and take their good old time removing coats, shoes, and socks.  Those of us who had the courtesy to arrive on time are forced to break concentration and rearrange our mats to make space for the late-comers.  I think it is at this point that I get irritated and start giving my inner-monologue permission to be a complete and total biotch.

To be fair (to myself), I will say that I'm not shallow enough to judge what these girls are wearing.  At least, I'm not judging the girls who look sloppy.  Because this girl right here isn't winning any fashion awards in her hunter green polyester/fleece blend American Eagle lounge pants circa 1999.  Unless people get fashion awards for wearing part of their high school gym uniform 8-12 years later.  I know I look like a scrub...after hearing the phrase "it's not a fashion show" ad nauseum throughout my entire childhood and adolescence whenever I agonized over what to wear, I can finally accept that the gym is definitely one place where I should not care about my appearance.  That being said, I will relentlessly judge anyone who looks too dressed up for yoga...like the 65+ year old woman who comes on Saturday mornings, late, fully coiffed and made up, with some kind of leopard print silky shirt and lots of jangling gold bangle bracelets.

But I digress.  So these hussies tramp into the studio like they own the joint and, to the instructor's credit, she doesn't miss a beat and she doesn't backpedal to accommodate these egregious violators of the social contract.  Eventually they settle into place and start halfheartedly taking poses.  Soon we find ourselves hanging out in a downward dog pose after we cycle through our first 'vinyasa'.  You may or may not have ever found yourself in this position before, but after viewing the illustration below, you will probably agree that it does not look difficult. 

Source

It is not difficult.  It is a basic warm-up stretch.  So you will join me in my surprise and sadness when I report that I saw, from my upside-down vantage point, two girls behind me panting and sweating.  They had dropped down to their knees and were guzzling water and toweling the dripping sweat from their faces.  In the first 10 minutes of class.  Does.  Not.  Compute. 

If I were a better person, I would channel that observation into thinking positive and encouraging thoughts for these girls, and feeling grateful for my own body's abilities.  But I'm not.  I'm a terrible person!  Instead of doing that, even after the thought crosses my mind, I twist it into feeling superior!  It's horrendous, and I'm pretty sure if anyone else in class could hear my thoughts, I would get jumped and summarily smothered with a yoga mat.  And they would probably use the sweatiest one, just for good measure.  Like, ew.

But fortunately, my terrible thoughts are my own, so we soldier on.  The girls who aren't writhing in pain or hyperventilating continue to apathetically follow the instructor.  There is usually a lot of self-conscious giggling from these girls when they inevitably really suck can't do something or look feel ridiculous.  That's super annoying, because I've been programmed to assume that anyone giggling behind me is giggling at me, and then before I can reason with myself I'm all, "Yea, I'll give them something to laugh about" and I start pushing harder into whatever pose we are doing.  This just serves to push me farther to extremes, physically getting more out of yoga but mentally backsliding. 

It's a terrible inverse proportion of success, and the more I think about it, the more I think I should just go to a more challenging class that will put my ego back in check.  One where I will consider it a victory simply if I make it through class without farting.  You know what?  Let's be honest, that's never not a victory. 

Tabby cat doesn't give a $^%+

You know what needs to happen?  Someone needs to film our new kitty, and have a fabulously flamboyant-sounding man narrate her behavior.  She is the honey badger of the feline world.  She seriously doesn't give an s-word.

Let me back up and tell the whole story.  Long ago and far away, in a dark and frozen land, this cat chose me. 

It all started the Monday before Christmas.  It was a bitterly cold, malodorous night in Utah.  An inversion of polluted, stagnant air had settled over our little valley, and the smell that filled the air was not chestnuts roasting on an open fire, or peppermint, or gingerbread or anything remotely festive.  In fact, the smell was not unlike the odor of a dumpster full of hamburgers left open during a downpour.

I set out for the state liquor store to obtain a bottle of wine for our friend who would be taking care of our cat, Ajax, the gentle giant, while we visited New Jersey for the holidays.  When I left the store, brown paper bag of sin-juice in hand, a little tiny kitty was loitering just outside the door.  I'm a sucker for baby animals, and become totally oblivious to possible diseases and perils when an opportunity to pet one arises.  So of course, I crouched down and put out my hand, and the kitty bolted over to me. 

I pet it for a minute and then I realized two things: 

OMG, it's way too cold for something this tiny to be outside exposed to the elements

and,

OMG, dirty stray animal!  Fleas!  Rabies!

So I stood up to call Andy to see what he thought I should do about this cat.  It was super cute, and I wanted to keep it, but there were multiple reasons why that would have been a bad idea, including the illegality of harboring a stray, and the logistics of getting a new pet right before going on a long trip.  I was wearing a long knitted scarf with fringe, and the kitty starting batting at the low-hanging yarn.  CUTE OVERLOAD.  Then, it jumped up on the ledge of a raised flower bed and stared at me intently.  Before I knew what was going on, I was standing in the liquor store parking lot with a phone in one hand, paper-bagged booze in the other, and a cat on my head.  If that doesn't scream classiness and mental stability to you, we might need to have a talk.

Andy talked me down from the ledge of cuteness-induced poor judgment, and I called the local Humane Society.  They were closed for the night, so I had no choice but to call Animal Control.  It felt vaguely wrong, since I was essentially calling the cops on a baby animal.  I also felt a twinge of shame telling the dispatcher that I found the kitty outside the liquor store, because the odds that I was talking to a Mormon were overwhelming (and I know, I know, super nice people, they probably weren't judging me, and all that jazz...).

The dispatcher told me an officer would call to arrange a pickup, so I scooped up the kitty, plopped it on my backseat, and drove home to wait for the officer's call.  Little baby kitty obviously had to explore this moving vessel, so it wandered all around the car, which could have been the first warm, soft place it had ever experienced.  After about two blocks, it settled down in my lap where it curled up and started batting at the keys dangling from the ignition.  I had to think about some seriously awful things to block out this second cute overload, or I would have driven straight off the road .  Must.  Fight.  Cuteness.  With thoughts of nuclear holocaust.  And Comcast customer service.

Thoughts of wiping out civilization and/or having an stroke from severe anger and frustration got me through the ten-minute drive unscathed, but once I was back in my driveway, all bets were off.  I sat in the car petting the kitty and hoping the Animal Control guy wouldn't show up.  Unfortunately, he did.  He told me they'd keep the cat in jail for five days, and if no one claimed it, it would be turned over to the Humane Society to be put up for adoption.  Jail!  A kitty in jail! 

I pushed aside thoughts of taking it some Fancy Feast with a nail file in it, or busting it out myself and becoming the first human-feline crime duo.  Once it was gone, I regained some perspective on the situation.  Two cats?  Did we really need two cats?  With two litter boxes?  And two shedding coats?  When my mom and most of our friends here are highly allergic to cats?  I don't want to be a crazy cat person...does having an equal librarian to cat ratio in your household automatically make you a sad stereotype?  It might.

I decided I had done my good deed for the year.  Turning the cat in was enough, so I went inside, stripped down, and threw every article of clothing in the dryer while I took a hot shower to ward off a possible flea infestation.  I would later find out this was a pointless exercise, because it's way too cold here for fleas to thrive on outdoor animals.

The days passed, we flew to New Jersey, Christmas drew closer, and I tried to put this hilarious, adorable encounter behind me.  Andy, however, had different plans.  He was adamant that we adopt this cat so Ajax could have a friend.  I wasn't sold at first, but then I realized this cat could be MY friend, too.  Ajax is our cat, but he's not really our cat.  He's always been more Andy's cat than mine.  He just uses me as a food provider when he's hungry and Andy isn't around.  So basically whenever Andy isn't around.  Because Ajax is never not hungry.

After a flurry of correspondence with the Humane Society, we found out our cat was there, it was a girl, and she was in alleged "good health".  They posted her picture online with the other adoptable cats.  All the other cats were decked out for Christmas, some wearing Santa hats or posed in front of festive displays of wrapped gifts.  Our cat was photographed through the window of a smudged, cloudy plexiglass box.  The other cats had fun names and quirky write-ups about their personalities.  This cat was just 'unknown stray cat, age 1 year'.  We thought there was no way anyone would adopt her in such a state, which was a relief, because there was no way to put a deposit on her or reserve her in any way while we were still back east.  Then they updated her profile with a mind-blowingly adorable picture of her perched on the shoulder of a shelter volunteer, looking alert and curious and fuzzy.  They named her Bonnie, because she seemed to be so happy. 

That was it.  She was going to be gone in five minutes, for sure.  But luck prevailed, and she remained in the shelter until the window of opportunity arrived during which we could place a 24-hour hold on her.  Once we were fairly certain she would be ours, I immediately set about the task of renaming her.  With a real-life awesome human friend named Bonnie, it would have just been too weird to keep the name the shelter gave her.  Something booze-themed seemed only natural, given her place of rescue, but I didn't want to be obvious and name her 'Cabernet' or 'Kahlua' or something.  So I devised the best possible mash-up:  Alcohol and literary references. 

After much deliberation, I decided to name her Hadley.  She is named after Hemingway's first wife, whom he often called 'little cat'.  It's no secret that both Ernest and Hadley were big-time boozers, so it works on so many levels.  Or two levels.  But so many.

We brought Hadley to her 'forever home', as shelters love to call it, on Monday.  The woman at the shelter assured us she was healthy.  We asked if she had been tested for feline AIDS or leukemia.  "Oh, well, we don't test for that here."  Exsqueeze me?  How can you be sure she's healthy if she might have AIDS???  Is this little hussy going to infect the perfectly healthy cat we already have?  But it was too late; we were in too deep.  We took our possibly FIV-ridden new fur-child home and kept her in isolation in a spare room until we could get a vet appointment.  It turns out she's clean, but she had some nasty ear mites and a runny nose.  So, thanks, Humane Society, for giving us a cat that could have had the FIV, and did have some gnarly business in her ears.  I guess 'healthy' merely implies alive and not bleeding or vomiting.

Now that Hadley has been in our house all week, we've had some time to really see her personality shine.  This cat is fearless.  All she wants to do is play, and she will play with anything that moves.  She tries to attack my hair, and she has tried to eat it the way a human baby might.  She has jumped on my head several more times since our first encounter.  She has also punched me in the face.  Seriously.  She batted me in the eye.  On my eyeball.  A cat touched my eyeball.  I can't even tell you how disgusting it felt, or how quickly I tore out my contact and flushed out my eye with water.  I don't know how, but she hit me so hard that it left a tiny bruise under my eye.  A 5.6 pound cat gave me a black eye.

She is also desperate to play with Ajax.  She wants nothing more than to be his best friend.  He is three times her size, and could destroy her if he had the slightest inclination.  But she does. not. care.  We haven't officially let them interact yet.  However, she escaped her area the other day and bounded right up to him.  She was all 'Hai friend, let's be friends, let's be the best of friends, forever, and let's play!'  And he was all 'OMG, HISS'.  And then he ran away and sulked. 

I don't get it.  Does he not understand that he is enormous?  Does he not realize this is a David and Goliath situation, only nothing important or 'righteous' or mythical is at stake, so, as the Goliath figure, he could probably eat her or sit on her or otherwise decimate this tiny adversary?

As I write this, surly old Ajax is sulking under the bed while Hadley bounces back and forth between me and Andy, batting at our iPad screens, biting Andy's head, and shoving her entire head in a coffee cup that recently contained milk.  Earlier this evening, she tried to scale the curtains on the sliding glass porch door.

I'm so glad this 5 pound tornado clawed her way onto my head and into my heart.

I Blog, Therefore I Am

Oh, hay.  Still alive over here.  The second half of 2011 was so very.  That's the best way to describe it.  Take any adjective and just put 'very' in front of it, and that was our year.  Very busy.  Very overwhelming.  Very fun.  We bested our personal moving frequency record and moved twice in four months.  Thankfully, the second move was a mere cross-town move, and hopefully it was the move to end all moves.  We. Bought.  A house. 

That's right, no more listening to our neighbors flush the toilet, sing, or get it on.  No more smelling their cigarette smoke, no more watching them come and go with large amounts of fast food immediately before and after hearing them get it on.  Clearly there's more to home-ownership than avoiding your neighbors (because if anything, home-ownership has brought us into some awkward proximity with some of our new neighbors), but seriously.  It's the best.  Also, we have not one but three bathrooms.  I never want to share a bathroom again for as long as I live.

But now that the whirlwind of new job starting/house hunting/mortgage applying/house buying/moving/unpacking/decorating/wedding attending/Christmas vacationing is behind us, I'm looking forward to settling back into a routine and hopefully being a little more active on the internets.

I also have a few goals for the new year.  Gotta make it count!  After all, if the totally appropriate and not at all creepy card one of our neighbors (who we have not yet met) taped to our front door is correct, we have just 355 days left to live.  Assuming I remember to post this today, January 2nd, and also assuming I can correctly do math and subtract from 366.  Because if the year has to end, at least the Mayans did us a solid and predicted the Apocalypse in a leap year so we'd get an extra day.  Also, this card thanked us for being their 'best neighbors'.  Did I mention we haven't met them?  Because we haven't, but I'd really like to high-five them before the restraining order takes effect. 

Now, by goals, I really mean the kind of goals that mesh with 80's child rearing style.  The kind that says, 'Shoot for the moon, because if you miss you'll land among the stars' and where everyone gets a participation trophy and the losing team still gets ice cream, and the fat kid in gym class (me) still gets an E for effort.  The word 'resolution' just sounds so legalistic and foreboding and certain.  'Goals' has a shiny, happy ring of unaccountability to it.

Without further adieu, here are my 2012 Pre-Mayan Apocalypse World Collapse Ruin and Doom Life Goals

1.  No hangovers.  Seriously.  I seem to have 1 or 2 episodes every year where things just get really out of control and it isn't cute.  I once projectile vomited with such force that I burst a capillary under my eye.  This is because, and I mean this in the least racist, most sincere way possible, the 1/16th or 32nd of my ancestry that is Native American has manifested itself in my liver.   I have a mortifying inability to metabolize alcohol.  I don't drink that frequently, and I usually try to keep it to a glass or two of wine, which is okay.  But anything more than that and I'm doing rain dances and applying war paint.  Okay, that might seem a little offensive, but get off my back, guys, I just said I was Native American, so I'm really just taking ownership of the stereotypes.

2.  Cook new recipes.  This would be a good time to apologize to Andy for cooking a pretty constant rotation of the same 10-15 dinners (that might even be an overly-generous estimate).  I should also apologize for the time I made vegetarian burritos that were so spicy they hurt him, and for the time I cooked such spicy food so consistently that he is convinced it gave him an ulcer.  But I regret nothing.  I make healthy, fiber-rich meals full of antioxidant-laden spices.  I don't hear any complaints from my digestive system (in fact, Christmas vacation, full of rich comfort foods, cheese, and nary a single bean, made my intestines cry.  And not a cute cry with big ol' sparkly tears, but the ugly cry where you just open your grimacing, contorted maw and wail, but no tears fall.  Sorry, too detailed a metaphor?).  But I digress.  It would be nice to branch out, but I work until 5, at which time I am ready to cry from hunger and exhaustion.  It's so easy to go on auto-pilot and cook something I've already made 25 times instead of trying to decipher a new recipe using the 2 remaining brain cells that my body hasn't burned for fuel.  It will require a little bit more planning, and maybe a mid-afternoon snack, but I'm game for it.  And hey, does anyone want to give me a pat on the back for actually cooking real food instead of microwaving something out of a package?  No?  No takers?  Now I'm embarrassed, you guys. 

3.  Exercise more consistently.  A little blood just trickled out of my ear from the aneurism this cliche caused me to have.  But let's get real.  I've been working out pretty regularly since the spring of 2008.  At first, it was painful.  I was pretty out of shape in terms of endurance and strength.  But after a short time, I could honestly say that I enjoyed exercising.  I get really grouchy when I have to be sedentary for more than a day or two because of random obligations/bad weather and lack of access to exercise facilities/illness.  However, my work schedule makes it really inconvenient to go to the gym during the week.  Our old apartment was right across the street from the gym, so it wasn't a huge ordeal to work out in the morning before work, or to pop over for a quick workout after work.  But now, it's like, ugh, I have to get up, get dressed, and drive all the way across town?  No thanks.  And it's the same story after work, only by that point I'm also in the blind rage of starvation I like to call 'hangry', so my response would be considerably less civil than 'no thanks'.  I often walk to and/or home from work, which is 1.8 miles each way, so that's better than nothing, but I have a hard time counting it as exercise since I'm not sweating or significantly raising my heart rate.  So this goal and goal #2 are kind of in competition with one another because they both require time and energy that I just don't have after working from 8-5, but I'm determined to find a way.

4.  Earn a faculty-level position at work.  I'm really fortunate to have a job with benefits, period.  I also like my job and work with super awesome,  nice, supportive people.  However, the work I'm doing is not what I ultimately had in mind when I was getting my master's degree.  Aside from the obvious financial gains, moving into a higher-level position would be tons more stimulating and fulfilling, and probably more flexible.  In a perfect world, goal #4 would be awesome in itself and also pave the way for goals #2 and #3, but we'll see what happens.

5.  Go to Las Vegas.  Clearly, this needs to happen.  I feel like it will be Jersey Shore, desert edition, but with a lot more money floating around.

6.  Visit the Grand Canyon.  This is obvious.  I can't be living less than a day's drive from the Grand Canyon and not be able to say that I've been there.  We bought an annual National Park passport when we went to Zion and Arches over Thanksgiving, so we might as well visit as many national parks as humanly possible between now and November 2012.

7.  Start riding my bike to work.  This one will have to wait until morning temperatures reach an acceptable level of non-gangrenous-frostbite-inducingness.  Walking to and from work isn't that bad, but icy wind blowing in your face at a high speed?  Sorry Earth, but I like having skin and not frozen leather, thanks.

8.  Get a new kitty. We checked this one off with flying colors this afternoon, but we need to have her tested for the FIV to make sure she isn't going to infect Ajax. To make a long story short (so I have a topic for another post), I found a kitty, and it loved me, but I did the right thing (oh hay karma points) and turned it in to the local Humane Society in case it was someone's lost pet.  No one claimed her so she's totally my new BFF.

9.  Sew curtains.  I finally bought a sewing machine just in time to start and not (yet) finish Andy's main Christmas present (more on that some other time, because I find it hilarious), and my mom gave me a sweet gift card to JoAnn's for Christmas, so, game on.

10.  Blog more.  This one will be easy.  I think if I post at least twice a month I will probably surpass 2011's average.

11.  Paint the master bedroom and office.  A lot of our house was already painted, but the previous owners were still in the process of remodeling some of the rooms, so our bedroom is currently an institutional white.  After so many stark-white apartments that we weren't allowed to paint, I think I need to either go whole hog and pad the walls, or break the cycle and add a little color to my life.

12.  Ski on Utah snow.  I'm really excited about this one.  I think.  I have skied on East Coast snow in the Poconos several times and once in upstate New York, but never often enough to become a proficient skier.  I'm naturally highly risk-averse, so the thought of whizzing down an icy hill with slippery boards strapped to my feet has never sounded like a fun thing to do.  I can shakily navigate the bunny hills, and can sometimes even get off the ski lift without falling, but that's about the extent of my skill/ambition when it comes to skiing.  I am told (repeatedly, ad nauseum) that Utah has the best snow on earth, and that apparently snow can come in powder form and does not always fall from the sky and immediately form an impenetrable icy cement upon contact with other snowflakes.

13.  Plant a garden.  An edible one.  I'm thinking garlic, onions, lettuce, kale, tomatoes, and raspberries.  If I could also grow some beans and bananas, and get a goat for milk, I'd never have to go to the store, ever. We'll see how this one goes, since I've managed to kill many a house plant, including cacti.

14.  Send out Christmas cards, and remember to send birthday and holiday cards to close family members.  I mean, I obviously remember immediate family, but it's time to put on the big girl panties and cast the net a little wider.  Also, I have been dying to take a subtly ridiculous Christmas card photo for a long time, but it seems like something really distracting and time consuming is always happening in November and December and I don't get around to it.  This will be the year.  I can feel it.  I might even take one this week just to make sure there are no excuses when November rolls around.  Plus if I end up pregnant by then, I can still be (relatively) skinny for the card.  I kid, I kid.  That better not happen.

15.  Get a DSLR camera (birthday...hint, hint...except more like birthday and Christmas for the next 2 years because those bad boys are not cheap) and start doing photography again.  I am constantly looking at some landscape or close-up detail of something that I think, wow, this would make a great picture if only I could control the depth of field or the light exposure.  But alas.  My point-and-shoot digital camera is pretty good, and it has a panoramic function that I am obsessed with, but it's just not the same.

16.  Get better about keeping in touch with friends and family.  My fingers aren't broken, there's no excuse for me to not pick up the phone and use it.  I need to get over my phone-phobia and stop worrying that I'll be bothering people or that I don't have anything interesting to say.  I mean, both things are probably true, but who cares, right?

17.  Stop apologizing so much and feeling guilty about everything.  I am pretty good at deciding to keep my mouth shut so the first part should be easy, but I actually might not be able to help the guilt.  It's hereditary, just like my uncooperative liver.  Except in this instance, it's only my imaginary fantasy Jewish ancestry.  But I'm NOT going to apologize for that.  Let's mark that down as one point for me, okay?

18.  Volunteer somewhere.  After all this talk about ME, should I maybe think about someone or something else for a change?  I'm thinking either the animal shelter that held our kitty, or a food bank or something. 

19.  Next Christmas, ask people to get me Heifer International gifts instead of actual presents. 

20.  Learn to pack lighter.  This actually goes hand in hand with goal #19, and reveals how that seemingly selfless goal is actually rooted in laziness.  This Christmas, we deliberately flew back to Utah on Southwest because you can check 2 bags for free, and we knew we'd need the the extra space for presents.  We actually had to borrow a full-size suitcase from my mom, which we then filled with our holiday haul.  I blame Andy for receiving a pair of hip waders, which took up 40% of the space in said suitcase.  There may have been some tense moments with a bathroom scale during which we had to carefully redistribute some items so that none of our three suitcases weighed more than 50 pounds.  I also unpacked my suitcase yesterday and realized I didn't wear about 1/3 of the clothes I had taken with me.  In an effort to not apologize, and to not give Andy the satisfaction of saying 'I told you so,' I will justify this outcome by saying it was unexpectedly warm in New Jersey, I did laundry while we were there, and I wore some of the clothes I received for Christmas.

21.  Start using more natural cleaning/hygiene/beauty products.  I do so much other stuff to try to be healthy and feel good, I don't need gross chemicals bringing me down.  I already use Tom's deodorant (in the non-sweaty months...sorry Tom's, but you just don't cut it in the summer) and some various natural cleaning products, but I'd like to incorporate more of these things. The only barrier, really, is the expense, so goal #4 would totally allow this goal to become a reality.

I was going to set some more goals, but I figured 21 was plenty, and it's an appropriate number given that the world is going to end on December 21 anyway.

OH MY GOD, less than a year to (think about) attain(ing) these goals.  Better get busy!