Last year I chose Rebuild, and despite a lack of evidence of it here on my blog, it was actually an amazing year for me as far as rebuilding was concerned, and many times over the year as I slogged through my own personal little trials and tribulations, that word came to mind and it helped me remember why I’d started the whole process in the first place, reminded me what I was trying to accomplish and kept me on track.

In between Christmas and New Years, I thought about One Little Word and that I had to pick a new one for 2011, but I forgot about it until I saw Ali’s post early today (or yesterday I guess), and the word embrace came to me immediately and so it came to be.

According to Merriam Webster, this is the definition of embrace:

Reading this kind of gives me THE SHIVERS showing me this is absolutely that this the right word, so yippee ki yi ya  to that and all that good stuff.

I also plan to embrace this blog and write in it more frequently, which I have said before but unfortunately, the 2010 rebuilding didn’t seem to include blogging that much.

But it’s a brand new year and I am feeling the urge to share it, so here we go again.

So I’ve spent a fair bit of time thinking of something that was “special” but also affordable and after a visit to the Chapters by my work* I came up with the perfect idea:

Every pay day, I will buy myself a book.

I love books and buying new ones really makes me happy, so this will a whole year of happy!  Yipee!

Since I have joined a book club and the October read is Salman Rushdie‘s Midnight’s Children, I’m assuming that will be the first purchase, but I do actually think it will be interesting to look back in September 2011 and see what I did actually purchase.

As part of the fiscal responsibility part, I’ve decided to make used book stores the primary point of purchase (and will need to go on a hunt for some excellent ones in the GTA), but as with the Rushdie book, I will buy brand spanking new ones as well.

You’d probably have to be a reader to appreciate how excited I am by this prospect, but I’m sure this post would find a few who would agree this is  a pretty excellent birthday present to myself.

Woot!

The cats are happy with my decision.  Generally speaking, this time of day is fairly active for them (if their early morning cat tussles are any indication), and both have spent equal amounts of time sitting on the windowsill, enjoying the addition of sound to the virtual world they watch on a daily basis.  I should try to do it more often, I would imagine it adds a little bit of excitement to their otherwise routine lives.

I have of course, not written in awhile.  This is due to a few factors; a perceived inability to think of anything  interesting to write about, and a bit of self censorship – the things that have been happening are not things I can talk about, at least for now. But this morning I decided that I would just start writing and see what came out of it, and here it is.

I watched the finale of Lost last night, and enjoyed it very much.  I actually liked that they didn’t answer a lot of the questions about the island because how could they have done so in a way which would have made everyone happy, and also because life doesn’t always come with answers, sometimes you just have to enjoy it.  And appreciate the people who take the journey with you I guess,  because what else is there?

And now, a cup of tea and the setting of an agenda for the week beckon.

We’ll see if today’s early morning writing is an anomaly, or the way of the future, in subsequent missives.

So I:  cleared out my back  storage room enough to move some things that didn’t belong in my living room back there, went through the mail and sundry papers that were hanging about and separated it into shredding and recyclables, moved all the books that tend to lounge around my front room onto a bookcase, vacuumed and dusted, did my dishes, cleaned out one of the cupboards in my kitchen, cleaned up the bathroom, went through the piles of clothes in my bedroom, hanging what need to be hung and putting the rest in the bureau,  stripped the bed, moved some furniture around, swept the whole apartment, made an orzo salad for this weeks lunches, and did my laundry.

And now, I’m too tired to make my bed.

In one of those things I am excited about that I think make other people think I’m weird; while watching TCM yesterday morning, I found out that they will be playing Akira Kirowsawa movies each Tuesday evening for the month of March.  As a fan of movies, I’ve often thought I need to expose myself to more of those that are considered to be classics and of course, he is considered one of the best directors in the history of the medium.  I’ve only seen one of his movies to date, Ran, which I enjoyed very much, not in the least because I found it so audaciously bent.  So of course my plans for the next few Tuesdays are now to watch as many of the films as I can, and as of now, to write about them but we’ll see how I actually make out with that part of it.

In other “things that make you shake your head” news, I had to drive to my local PetValu today to pick up cat food/litter* and while on my way, had to stop suddenly for a woman who backed out of her driveway without looking in any direction at all, she just got into her car and “proceeded into the street”, in cop type parlance.  When I honked at her to both let her know that I was there and was wondering WTF she was doing, she looked at me in confusion and then waved merrily as she drove off.  So you know, a pox on her and all of that fun stuff.

*I bought World’s Best Cat Litter.   Since I believe there is a direct relationship/correlation between how much something costs and a cat’s likelihood of using that product, this could be the beginning of an interesting experiment.

Of my goals/intentions for 2010, I had focused on four as being the ones with the highest priority:   working on my health/fitness, increasing income, starting RRSP and savings accounts, and enrolling in Law Clerk courses.   So an update in those areas:

Health/Fitness:  I have been woefully inadequate in this arena and pretty much need to get into the game or get off the ice, basically.  Vow for this upcoming week:  I will eat breakfast everyday (more problematic for me than you would think), and walk for 1/2 hour three times.

Increase Income:  I have actually been actively working on this one, alas,  no results have been forthcoming as of yet.  Based on that though, I have rethought, regrouped and expanded my outlook  and am formulating a new plan of action.  Basically, I realize this will happen however I cannot put a time frame on it and just need to keep putting myself out there.

Savings:  February was the last payment on a loan I was paying off, which will now free up a fairly substantial portion of my monthly income starting in March.  My plan is to open several savings accounts (probably via PC Financial’s high interest TFSA):  emergency fund, travel, and planned spending, as well as an RSP – and to save somewhere between $4 – $5,000 dollars (at least) this year in those various categories.   At this point in time, this is a fairly aggressive goal for me and I need to be really disciplined about my money going forward.  I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching lately though, as well as research into how to make your money work for you, and I’m confident that I have put my previously financial asshattery behind me, and that this goal is do-able.

Law Clerk Courses:  I wasn’t able to swing this for the January semester, and there may or may not be a strike by college teachers that may or may not affect my taking a course, so I’ve made the decision to wait until that’s been decided before proceeding.  So this will be pushed back to the spring or summer, depending on the outcome of the negotiations.

Oh, and my goal to take up snowshoeing this winter has been curtailed by a lack of snow.  Which I am conflicted about as it’s definitely a boon in the driveway shovelling area, but this winter has not been the one in which I threw myself out the door and rolled around in the season, unfortunately.   Still planning on kayaking though.

The first decade of the 21st century ends on December 31, 2010.

Expect my end of the decade lists on Jan 1, 2011.

Today is the last day of 2009 and although I know all years have their ups and downs, 2009 was a rough one for me.  It was a year of endings, the latest of which was the death of my beloved kitty Max, who had been my companion for 18 years.  Max and I shared a lot of history together in that time span – he was my “go to guy” when my mother had her first seizure and throughout her subsequent health problems, when my step-father died, for the end of numerous romantic relationships and the floods of tears that accompanied each one (he was also apparently a better judge of men than I was), as well a lot of other life disappointments and triumps.  He also still loved me despite my admittedly bizarre habit of speaking to him with an English accent (and I am Canadian).  His death was not unexpected but difficult nevertheless, not only with his actual loss, but because it also symbolizes for me the end of an entire era of my life.  A door has closed behind me and I need to step up and into what life has in store for me going forward.

Which I plan to do with anticipation and enthusiasm, and this is where my One Little Word comes into play.  The last year has been spent  Owning Up and Cleaning Up, 2010 is going to be about rebuilding my life  -  to that end, I’ve come up with a list of goals I plan to accomplish in 2010.  Some are more difficult and/or more time consuming than others, some are such that they will take more than a year to accomplish but I plan to start in 2010 so they qualify.

In no particular order, these are my goals for 2010:

1. Get to healthy body weight, incorporate regular exercise into life
2. Increase income by $7,000 – $8,000 a year.
3. Enroll in Law Clerk Courses
4. Learn to drive manual transmission (I want to buy a Jeep)
5. Start hiking again
6. Pickup two new activities:  snowshoeing (for winter), and kayaking (summer, obviously)
7. Learn to speak French
8. Go on a date
9. Take photography & art courses
10. Start RRSP & four savings accounts (emergency, travel, Jeep, savings) – have $5,000 in savings total
11. Enroll in one UofT course
12. Complete a sprint length triathlon
13. Keep a visual journal for the entire year (and keep track of accomplishments)

Next up:  the game plan, with timeline, next steps and all that fun stuff.

More about why I’ve picked these goals, and progress updates will follow, so tune in if you’re interested.

During a pre-Nuit Blanche shopping expedition, I spied a quilt that I loved and am pretty sure it will be the design I’ll use for my first attempt at quilting:

I would of course be using different fabrics, but I like the big squares and the needlework within each of them.  So the pattern has been decided, now I’ll have to check out fabrics and decide which way I’m going to go.  I also need to figure out how to get my hands on a sewing machine, since I don’t have one presently and although I know I could do it all by hand, I’m not sure that’s the way I want to go.

I haven’t done any further work on my plant pot, so it’s still bright red, I have a pattern in mind for it, but I’m going to practice drawing it on regular/tissue paper before doing the pot itself.  I will probably get started on the second one before proceeding with the first, as I definitely know what I’m going to be doing with it.

Also on the agenda:  fall photo shoots.  This is my favourite time of year to be out taking photographs, but unfortunately it’s been raining for the last six days or so  – hopefully that will clear up soon too so I can go out.  A friend will be visiting from Halifax next week and I’d really like to go down to the Guild Inn and get some shots of her down there.

Pics will follow, of course.

Update:  The ankle injury did turn out to be a 2nd degree ankle sprain, laying me up for six weeks.  I may not be the only person on the face of the earth to have cause such grievous damage to myself walking, but I’m the only one I know personally.

I did some painting on the weekend – a terra cotta pot as I have to replant one of my Christmas Cactuses.  I’ve painted the pot crimson red and am going to paint some kind of tree silhouette with curly cue branches.  I’ll be doing it free-hand so it could turn out to be very interesting, but if I manage to pull off what I want to do, I think it will look pretty cool.   I also did some work on my first ever art journal project – I used water colour pencils on paper and did a stripy background.  Loved working with the water colours, but I actually found all of the painting very relaxing and felt very serene and zen.

Tonight – after four or five months of no TV, I’m getting cable hooked up again.   I love watching TCM, plus there’s a channel here in Canada called Drive-In which features those cheesy black and white horror movies from the 50s/60s which I am a huge fan of.   Because I have other services with the cable company, I am getting their full package for three months, then I decide what I want to keep.   This also means I’ll get my all time favourite, (non movie) channel, Discovery Civilization!

So it appears my winter will be full of black and white movies, painting and Civilization.  Sounds fun, huh?